<span>I'm not necessarily for Obama politically. Here's the business though. I am laying anyone up to <strike>6:1</strike> on their money that Obama beats out McCain.</span> So if you feel strongly McCain is gonna win, post below and send me a PM. Cheers! Get out and vote then drink after polls close =P

Edit: This is just an offer, I will consider reasonable counteroffers if you're serious.
The offers are now starting at 8.5:1

count me in for 6:1 that obama wins. I will ship bankroll.

 

Originally Posted by brianyut

lol @ 6:1, should be like 50:1 minimum

Ouch, no faith in McCain huh lol. If it were 50:1 I'd put $20 on McCain!

 

Originally Posted by brianyut

It doesn't have anything to do with faith. It's just reality. Look at any independent aggregate state polling website. There's <1% chance that McCain wins by most estimations.

well known politicial scientists have said still 25% to win.

 

Originally Posted by brianyut

Who?

Every independent site I've been to is predicting around 1%.

McCain has about a snowballs chance in hell of winning PA, and without PA he's going to need some serious help from OH, FL, and VA. If he's getting blown out in PA it's a pretty darn good indciator of what's going to happen in OH, and VA is leaning strong obama.

Not only that, but just look at AZ, GA, and NC. If Obama is keeping it close (esp in NC) in *those* states, I find it unbelievable that anyone could think he has anything greater than the slightest chance of winning.

Never underestimate the power of diebold's voting machines. McCain has a good chance! But realistically, nobody would ever bet on mccain at 6:1, so the OP belongs under the epic retardation category.

<STRIKE>I'll take mccain 8:1 at $20 on ftp.

</STRIKE>offer expired. Exit polls being reported that are pro nobama so I call foul.

Mr Galt, You can back McCain to win at 16-1 here in the UK, if you want 8-1 I'll lay it :).

No date or data?

Just speculation from one person?

I think I'll trust all the other sources I've read so far.

<SPAN class=articletitle>Why the Polls Overstate Obama’s Lead</SPAN>
<SPAN class=articlesubtitle>His best and worst demographics are notoriously difficult to predict accurately.</SPAN>

<SPAN class=articlesubtitle>By Mark Stricherz</SPAN>

<SPAN class=drop>A</SPAN>ll the polls showed that Barack Obama would win. He was comfortably ahead of his chief rival. The RealClearPolitics average had him up by 8.3 percentage points. The result was foreordained. Only his margin of victory was in dispute.

Except that Obama didn’t win. He lost January’s New Hampshire primary by 2.6 percentage points.

Nobody should expect a repeat of that pollster’s fiasco tonight. Estimating turnout is more difficult in a primary than in a general election. Yet it is also true that even presidential polls are not oracles. Some polls get it wrong; and sometimes, polls get it really wrong.

Just scan the various surveys on RealClearPolitics or Pollster.com. Their results won’t all be correct. The ABC News/Washington Post daily tracking poll has Obama up by 11 percentage points. Rasmussen Reports has him up by six. Diageo/Hotline has him up by five.

By contrast, on the eve of Election Day four years ago, the pre-election polls’ findings were largely similar. CBS News had Bush ahead by 2. 1 percentage points; Harris had Bush up by 1; and Pew had Bush up by 3. Their results were also largely accurate. Bush ended up winning by 2.5 percentage points. (The exit polls, which consistently overstated Kerry’s support, were a different story.)

The polls will likely predict the winner this year, too. Obama is by all accounts the favorite. But, and this is essential to keep in mind, the polls might well be wrong. Steven Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College, told the Washington Post that he estimates that McCain has a 25-percent chance of winning. (That sounds about right to me).

If Obama loses, how could the polls have botched the job again? The answer will have nothing to do, as it did in January, with the small window of time (five days) that pollsters had to gauge voter sentiment. Rather, it will have to do with pollsters’ failure to survey two groups accurately.

The first group is working-class whites. Defined as those with less than a four-year college degree, this bloc represents the plurality of America’s voters.

Obama’s troubles with this group during the primary season were well publicized; he was blown out in the Kentucky and West Virginia primaries, two states with heavily blue-collar populations, and lost by significant margins in the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries. To be sure, Obama’s relationship with the group has improved; an economy on the verge of recession will do that for a Democratic nominee. Yet his level of support remains fairly weak. And it is almost certain to be weaker than polls indicate.

The reason: Joe Sixpack (or Joe the Plumber) is the voter least likely to appear in a pollster’s survey. He can’t be reached or doesn’t want to be reached. As Jon Cohen — the Washington Post’s polling director — has noted, poorer, less educated whites who tend to hold somewhat less positive views toward African Americans are also harder to get on the phone than those who have higher incomes and more formal education.

This phenomenon surely overstates Obama’s lead in the polls. Al Gore lost the non-college-educated white by 17 percentage points; John Kerry lost it by 23 percentage points. And arguably both Gore, he of the People against the Powerful slogan, and Kerry, the decorated Vietnam veteran, were better tribunes for the white-working class than the former law school professor.

The second group whose votes are likely to be misstated is young voters. For Obama, those who are 18 to 29 years old are the opposite of blue-collar whites: he has attracted a lot of their support, most famously in the Democratic primaries. According to Gallup, he enjoys a 60-to-37 lead with this group of voters.

Yet — and this point cannot be stressed enough — young people are the least reliable voters. Only 55 percent of this cohort voted in 1972, an election in which they were eligible for the draft. And that figure represented the high-water mark for young people since the 26th Amendment was ratified in 1971. The next highest figure was achieved in 1992, with 52 percent.

While the evidence is limited, many young people continue to be indifferent to fulfilling their civic duty. In the first nine days of the Nevada primary, only 14 percent of young people had voted; by contrast, turnout statewide was 25 percent. The trend appears to be national, as well. According to a Gallup survey from late October, the organization found little evidence of a surge in young voter turnout beyond what it was in 2004.

This phenomenon, too, will hurt Obama. Except for Gallup, most pollsters — including McCain’s chief pollster, Bill McInturff — expect youth turnout to be significantly higher this year. If it isn’t, Obama’s lead will have been overstated.

There is a larger point here. For all of the Obama campaign’s strengths, his coalition of ethnic minorities, young people, and upper-class whites is relatively small, certainly smaller than the New Deal coalition it replaced. It is no wonder that only one Democratic presidential nominee has been elected since this Social Change coalition — so named by the late party strategist Fred Dutton, its founder — was manufactured in the wake of the climactic 1968 race. If Obama loses tonight or ekes out a victory, you can expect pollsters to examine his numbers a lot more carefully.

<SPAN class=bioline>— Mark Stricherz is the author of </SPAN>Why the Democrats Are Blue: Secular Liberalism and the Decline of the People’s Party<SPAN class=bioline>. He blogs at </SPAN>www.newcatholicpolitics.com<SPAN class=bioline>.</SPAN>

Just checked message Mr. Galt. And sent PM back. Sry if I got back to you later than you wanted. Still doing business everyone, till things are absolute official.

Seems like King Monty might be one of the smarter ones out there. I've seen as low as 1:1 when Palin was first announced VP.

i wouldn't bet on mccant

 

Originally Posted by theslackman

I just bet on McCain but I got 23-1 and only put 5 on, I really believe that he wins >5% of the time, even if he is way behind right now.

Yea you booked a good one. GL GL. I think I may just close my shop up. Highest I'm gonna offer to anyone is 11:1 and I gotta leave in like an hour.