This one is bizarre.

A political "futures" market predicts election results better than polls.



* In 1988 the University of Iowa launched an experiment to test
whether a market using securities for presidential candidates could
predict the outcome of the election.
* In presidential elections from 1988 to 2004, the Iowa Electronic
Markets have predicted final results better than the polls three times
out of four.
* Despite the track record of the Iowa market, a fundamental
understanding of how prediction markets work remains elusive, and
economists are still trying to develop a body of theory to provide
definitive answers.

....

In 1992 the Iowa Political Stock Market was redubbed the Iowa Electronic
Markets (IEM), and trading was opened to anyone from Dubuque to Beijing
who could come up with the requisite minimum of $5. The Commodity
Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had granted the University of Iowa an
exemption from regulation because the IEM is mainly run for research
purposes (only minor sums are transacted).

The election exchange has continued to beat the polls consistently for
presidential elections and at times has prevailed in congressional and
international races. A paper being prepared for publication by several
Iowa professors compares the performance of the IEM as a predictor of
presidential elections from 1988 to 2004 with 964 polls over that same
period and shows that the market was closer to the outcome of an
election 74 percent of the time. The market, moreover, does better than
the polls at predicting the outcome not just around Election Day but as
long as 100 days before.


http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=...ter-than-polls