There are currently 165 active traders in this market. Since I created the market in late May, there have been nearly 2,000 trades. By comparison, Blue Hampshire’s market on the New Hampshire Democratic Presidential Primary, which has been active since December of last year, has had just under 1,700 trades.
The Fifth District market has been volatile – the lead on a daily basis has changed four times in the past week. It perhaps does not yet reflect objective reality, but perhaps as we get closer to the primary on September 4, participants will get serious about their positions.
In the past few days, I created a market that poses the question of what percentage of the line-item vetoes made by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick on the state fiscal 2008 budget will be overidden by the state legislature.
On Thursday, Governor Patrick signed a $26.8 billion budget for the new fiscal year. At the same time, he used his line-item veto authority to veto $41.4 million – or less than 0.2% of the amount approved by the legislature. The legislature has the authority with 2/3rds votes to contravene or override these vetoes.
In this market, the price represents the consensus of the market as to the percentage of the vetoes (dollar amount) that will be overridden. One trader has invested so far putting the price at $52, or 52 percent of the vetoes. This would imply a market consensus that $21.5 million of the vetoes will be overridden, leaving $19.9 million of the vetoes in place. The payout at the end of the market will be the actual percentage (dollars) of the vetoes that are overridden.
Given the fact that Governor Patrick agreed to more than 99.8% of the funds approved by the legislature, this exercise will say less about substantive policy than about the temperature and the direction of politics and power on Beacon Hill.
I had been thinking the override market was measured by the percentage of items, but now I see that your intent was percentage of dollars.
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I haven’t heard any scuttlebutt about the inclination of the legislature to override, but if they decide to do so, I suspect it will be a high number. I think you’re absolutely right that this is more about tenor than it is about substance.
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I was encouraged to see that the Speaker is amenable to allowing a vote on the telephone pole tax issue despite the flap over economic development issues that was reported in the Globe the other day (I don’t have a citation handy).
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As for MA-05 race, I’ve been one of the 165 traders (as you know), and it has been fascinating to see the lead change, sometimes more than once during a single day. I suspect the current prices are reasonably reflective of the objective odds at the moment (as, say, would be reflected in a poll), but the outlook of course could [and I think will] change dramatically as September 4 approaches.
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There is an article in today’s Glob about money raised in this race. These are evidently self-reported numbers, and it will be interesting to see the FEC reports, which I believe were due to be filed yesterday (anybody here have access to those data?).
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Excluding Donaghue’s self-loan, the numbers reported are: Tsongas $1,000,000+, Finegold $725,000 (no mention if any of this was a self-loan), and Donaghue $247,000. Miceli, according to the article, did not return their call, but no mention at all was made of Eldridge. Last I looked, he had raised about 85% as much as Tsongas on ActBlue, so it’ll be interesting to see how he did in the “real” world!