Bill Clinton: Bet on Barack

Bill Clinton, who not long ago famously criticized Barack Obama's stance on Iraq as "the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen," is now foreshadowing a fairy tale ending on Election Day. With his party on the mend and his own political stock finally showing some strength, the former president-turned pundit-in-chief is doubling down on a new prediction: Barack Obama is going to win big!

"I predict that Senator Obama will win and win pretty handily," said Clinton, who met Barack Obama for lunch at the former president's Harlem office.

For his own part, the Democratic nominee seemed convinced. "He knows a little something about politics," said Obama.

Bottom Line - If you buy the fact that Bill Clinton has regained his magical political touch, it's time to buy Obama on Intrade.

Matthews: 80 Million Americans Will Watch First Presidential Debate

Politickr is as giddy as Chris Matthews to watch the first presidential slug fest slated for Sept 26. Still, we think the Hardball host may have gone a tad too far when he predicted on his show that at least 80 million people would tune in on a Friday night for the first presidential debate.

Mathews made his own prediction after citing some statistics he said he had his intern dig up about the first presidential fireworks between Kennedy and Nixon. More than a third of Americans reportedly tuned in for the first presidential debate in 1960, which, coincidentally, also aired on Sept 26. What Matthews failed to mention, however, was that Sept. 26 fell on a Monday in 1960.

When asked by the host whether an equal or greater proportion of Americans (100+ million) would tune for the Obama-McCain debate, his guests could have been forgiven for responding with Matthews' signature "HA!" Or they could have simply referred him to this.

While Intrade has yet to announce a contract on the size of the audience for the first debate, politickr has suggested one. Let the trading begin!

Countdown to...Oct. 15?

NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd, appearing tonight on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, predicted that the 20-month election campaign will come to an early end.

"Because there's so much early voting in this country, where the race is on October 15 is where it's going to be," said Todd.

Approximately half the states allow for some form of early voting, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Still, it should be noted that Virgina, New Hampshire, and Ohio are conspicuously absent from that list.

Any predictions on where Intrade will be on Oct. 15?

New Zealand Launches First Prediction Market

iPredict, New Zealand's first real money prediction market, launched today with a layout that looks strikingly similar to Intrade's. The site, which is run by the Victoria University of Wellington and so far only features contracts related to New Zealand politics, wasn't accepting U.S. credit cards as of this morning.

Midas Oracle reports that the New Zealand site received regulatory approval from the New Zealand Securities Commission to operate as a futures exchange under securities law. 

With its flashy design and intuitive interface, iPredict it will catch on fast. I also predict, however, that MSNBC will not be happy.  

Any predictions on the fate of prediction markets in Asia? Is Intrade looking to break into the Chinese market? Let us know in the comments.

HubDub Partners With Huffington Post

HubDub, the play-money prediction exchange, announced that it will provide its market data to The Huffington Post. The popular liberal blog, which recently unveiled its Big News pages to aggregate info on politicians and hot topics in the news, will soon sport widgets containing Hubdub forecasts.

Look for Sarah Palin's page to contain the latest Hubdub numbers on whether she'll pull out of the race (now an 11% chance according to Hubdub and a 6% shot, according to Intrade).

"We think our news obsessed users will get a kick out of Hubdub's fun forecasting feature," said Mario Ruiz, vice president of media relations for The Huffington Post.

See the full release here.

About that Sinking Stock Market...Intrade Reports $100 million in trades while Wall Street Suffers

In a recent article on the predictive power of markets, the Financial Times buried the lede: Political traders at Intrade have invested more than $100 million in political stocks this election cycle, a six-fold increase over 2004! With a slick new site and more press coverage than ever, Intrade will continue to pad that number nicely over the final two months of the campaign.

With the Dow down nearly 350 points this afternoon, and with analysts like Henry Blodget predicting there may be a lot more pain to bear, prediction markets are poised to fill the void. Even as the CFTC is still deciding if and how to regulate political prediction markets like Intrade, some traders getting socked in the stock market have been diversifying their traditional portfolios with political futures.

One particularly bullish investor sees a very bright future in political futures. While acknowledging that such markets are still plagued by liquidity issues and other problems, he notes that "if a major exchange such as CME Group were willing to create a news event market and did it at their current standard it could become a trillion dollar (in outstanding notional value) market in months."

So, while traditional traders cling to the silver lining cited by Blodget after today's crash that "the farther stocks drop, the better the return long-term investors will be," and that "if the Dow drops another thousand points or so, investors might even be able to look forward to a 10-year return that exceeds that of cash" -- political investors are finding an unconventional way to stay afloat in the current trading environment.

McCain's Harriet Miers?

Political traders at Intrade are now betting on the likelihood that Sarah Palin, McCain's VP pick, will be withdrawn. The new prediction market contract, which was unveiled this morning and is currently trading at 13, comes on the heels of Palin's acknowledgement this weekend that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter is pregnant.

With the McCain campaign still too reticent regarding the rigor of its vetting process for some party loyalists, a handful of conservative bloggers are already expressing (pregnant) pause at their candidate's choice.

Still, Politickr is convinced that John Edwards would sooner claim responsibility for this pregnancy than John McCain would throw Palin under the bus for her straight talk. Any such acknowledgement that his first major presidential decision was so badly mismanaged would surely doom his candidacy. As a result, the new contract is a screaming short.

Other than the tabloids, the biggest winner here appears to be Intrade itself. The new contract has provided major news outlets, like Reuters, The Washington Post, and Huffington Post, with the news peg they need to write about a topic that has so far only generated off-the-record whispers.