RE: Hey - let's not forget the "other guy"

Depends on what you're looking for. Yes, it's true that Romney's coupons are selling for much higher than Paul's. But it's a winner-take-all scenario, and there are two candidates selling at much higher than Romney, so I'd say Romney still has no more real chance of winning than Paul does.

BTW - I pointed to IEM because it's been around for a long time (so we have some history on which to judge its accuracy) and it focuses on political markets. But it's not the only one out there. InTrade is a regulated futures market, where big money can be spent, that includes some similar coupons.

They have more detailed markets, too. They show Romney winning the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, but then getting pretty much slaughtered by Fred Thompson in the rest of them. They still show Giuliani as the front-runner for the Republican nomination, and they show the Dems way ahead in the overall race. They're specifically showing Clinton to beat Giuliani.

Futures markets are very cool things. Once they're in place, you can ask them a huge range of questions and get pretty good results. Studies show that (contrary to what economists predict) even play-money markets do a pretty good job at predicting things. There's a play-money market, Foresight Exchange, formerly Idea Futures, that's been running a long time. I first came across it in the early '90s. They allow any member to create new questions, so the range of questions is pretty huge. They've got questions on whether mathematicians will solve Goldbach's conjecture, whether the Catholic church will allow priests to marry, whether humans will achieve immortality, and the extent of US military deaths in Iraq.

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