Partisan Gamers

Campaign Desk prints a warning from one of its readers about the Iowa Electronic markets that I think should be flooded to any news organization that decides it would be fun to write about its miraculous predictive powers in past elections:

“Once you get past the lack of acuity [of] markets … in general, there are simply too many additional problems with these minute exchanges” such as the Iowa Electronics Markets. “They are too small, have too little money at stake, and are therefore readily susceptible to undue ‘influence'” by mischief makers.

The fact is that in past elections nobody paid attention to them so there wasn’t the likelihood that anyone would think they would be worth gaming as they are this year.

Therefore, the IEM is best seen now as an unscientific online poll. The money is pretty inconsequential so it’s not very risky to make the numbers move and that’s exactly what’s happening.

There are a couple of ways to deal with this. One is to attempt to educate the media, as this piece does, about how easy it is to manipulate such a small market. The other is to fight fire with fire and put our own cash on the barrelhead.

I’m not sure how effective the first option would be since it’s never worked before. But, it might just be worth opening an account to trade in these last couple of weeks. Maybe it’s not a big enough deal to worry about, though. Still, for those with a lot of disposable income, this might be a place to wager a couple of bucks.