Michael Brendan Dougherty has a superb article in the current (June 2) issue of TAC on the forecasting acumen of political futures markets like Intrade. They have a better record than the pollsters, which is bad news for John McCain, since the smart money is on Obama beating him. Reuters reports:

Traders on the Dublin-based Intrade prediction market gave Obama a 61 percent chance of winning the November 4 election, versus a 35 percent chance for McCain. Traders on the Iowa Electronic Markets gave the Democrat an almost 62 percent chance of winning, versus a 39 percent chance for the Republican.

Of course, that would translate into a pretty payday for those betting on McCain should the Republican in fact win. The futures markets also peg Hillary Clinton as Obama’s most probably VP pick (22 percent chance), followed closely by Jim Webb (19 percent).