Five days ago I read a post on Richard Florida’s blog, in which he pointed to an expert opinion on the upcoming US presidential elections:

Obama is going to win it all — Iowa, the nomination, the Presidency. And I think it ultimately comes down to the fact that he is a rare combination in American politics, in that he is both the “emotional” choice and the “electable” choice. … Traditionally, we’ve always had to make a tradeoff between the emotional and the electable choices … But with Obama the two sets overlap.

While that struck me as a bold claim, the author that Florida quoted is surely more knowledgeable about American politics than I, so while I couldn’t dismiss the prediction, I was certainly skeptical.

Then today I read another post on RF’s blog. Take a look at the chart in that post. As my friend Evan would say…”Shift Of Power!” Fine, these are only prediction markets (a description Florida takes a poke at, since they’re awfully reactionary) but suddenly what seemed dubious five days ago seems pretty smart now.

[tags]richard florida, barack obama, prediction markets[/tags]