political betting markets

I think it's safe to say that I've been following the betting markets (Slate keeps track of them here) for the presidential race more closely than most. That might not say very much, but I check them at least a couple of times a week and think they're very interesting. A couple of weeks ago, I talked about them with Vincent Hutchings, a professor here who studies electoral politics. He said that they're generally pretty accurate measures of how things are going for the candidates. If you go to the Slate page and click on "All Candidates," you'll see that John McCain has taken the lead, by a narrow margin, over Hillary and Obama. However, if you click on "Winning Presidential Party," the Dems are still big favorites. McCain is the prohibitive favorite now in the Republican race, and in the Democratic race, Obama has made up a ton of ground on Hillary.

The point is this: McCain would be a gigantic disaster. Hillary sucks. Obama also kind of sucks, but not as much as the other two. In other words, I'm pulling for Obama. If I were more important, I'd say I was endorsing him. As it is, I'm just (halfheartedly) rooting for him. Let's go, Great Logo.

Check out the Post's Super Tuesday coverage if you're bored enough by whatever else you're doing. And now, to the fishbowl to do some work, and then to the gym to do some working out (Navy Seals today, baby, WOO!) and then back home to eat dinner and watch CNN until I throw up all over Wolf Blitzer. I wish I were abroad, we'd at least get the BBC 24/7. Oh well.