Prediction markets, also known as betting markets, information markets, decision markets, idea futures or event derivatives, are open markets that enable the prediction of specific outcomes using financial incentives. They are exchange-traded markets established for trading bets in the outcome of various events. The market prices can indicate what the crowd thinks the probability of the event is. A typical prediction market contract is set up to trade between 0 and 100%. The most common form of a prediction market is a binary option market, which will expire at the price of 0 or 100%. Prediction markets can be thought of as belonging to the more general concept of crowdsourcing which is specially designed to aggregate information on particular topics of interest. The main purposes of prediction markets are eliciting aggregating beliefs over an unknown future outcome. Traders with different beliefs trade on contracts whose payoffs are related to the unknown future outcome and the market prices of the contracts are considered as the aggregated belief.
Larry Joseph Sabato is an American political scientist and political analyst. He is the Robert Kent Gooch Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, where he is also the founder and director of the Center for Politics, which works to promote civic engagement and participation. The Center for Politics is also responsible for the publication of Sabato's Crystal Ball, an online newsletter and website that provides free political analysis and electoral projections.
Nathaniel Read Silver is an American statistician, writer, and poker player who analyzes baseball, basketball, and elections. He is the founder of FiveThirtyEight, and held the position of editor-in-chief there, along with being a special correspondent for ABC News, until May 2023.
538, originally rendered as FiveThirtyEight, is an American website that focuses on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging in the United States. The website, which takes its name from the number of electors in the United States electoral college, was founded on March 7, 2008, as a polling aggregation website with a blog created by analyst Nate Silver. In August 2010, the blog became a licensed feature of The New York Times online and was renamed FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus.
The Keys to the White House is a prediction system for determining the outcome of presidential elections in the United States. It was developed by American historian Allan Lichtman and Russian mathematical geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok in 1981, adapting prediction methods that Keilis-Borok designed for earthquake prediction. The system is a thirteen-point checklist that assesses the situation of the country and political system ahead of a presidential election. When five or fewer items on the checklist are false, the incumbent party nominee is predicted to win the election. Some of the items on the checklist involve qualitative judgment, and therefore the reliability of this system relies heavily on the knowledge and analytical skill of whoever attempts to apply it. Using the system, Lichtman correctly predicted the outcomes of nine presidential elections from 1984 to 2020, with the sole exception of the 2000 election.
Political forecasting aims at forecasting the outcomes of political events. Political events can be a number of events such as diplomatic decisions, actions by political leaders and other areas relating to politicians and political institutions. The area of political forecasting concerning elections is highly popular, especially amongst mass market audiences. Political forecasting methodology makes frequent use of mathematics, statistics and data science. Political forecasting as it pertains to elections is related to psephology.
The University of Virginia Center for Politics (CfP) is a nonpartisan institute at the University of Virginia. Based in Charlottesville, Virginia, the institute promotes the value of politics and the importance of civic engagement. It operates on the principle that 'government works better when politics works better, and politics works better when citizens are informed and involved participants'.
United States gubernatorial elections were held on November 5, 2013 in New Jersey and Virginia. These elections formed part of the 2013 United States elections. Before the elections, both seats were held by Republicans. Republican incumbent Chris Christie won reelection in New Jersey, while in Virginia, Democrat Terry McAuliffe won the open seat held by term-limited Republican Bob McDonnell.
Ken Ring is a writer from Auckland, New Zealand, who asserts that he can use lunar cycles to predict weather and earthquakes. He terms his predictions "alternative weather" and has authored books about the weather and climate. Ring publishes almanacs each year for New Zealand, Australia and Ireland in which he provides weather predictions for the entire year. His New Zealand almanac covers 64 towns. Ring's methods have been shown to be unscientific and have been widely confirmed as fake and pseudoscience by many real scientists in the fields of meteorology and geology.
Samuel "Sam" Sheng-Hung Wang is a Taiwanese-American professor, neuroscientist, psephologist and author. He is known as the co-author of the books Welcome to Your Brain and Welcome to Your Child's Brain, as well as the Princeton Election Consortium psephology website. Wang also gives talks about child brain development, autism, politics, and gerrymandering on television and radio, to academic audiences and for the general public.
Electoral Calculus is a political forecasting web site that attempts to predict future United Kingdom general election results. It considers national factors and local demographics.
Virginia's 1st Senate district is one of 40 districts in the Senate of Virginia.
PoliticIt operates a website that features podcast covering gubernatorial, senatorial, and congressional candidates in all 50 U.S. states. PoliticIt has been headquartered in Logan, Utah since the company was first established. Some PoliticIt employees are remote workers.
Virginia's 13th Senate district is one of 40 districts in the Senate of Virginia. It has been represented by Democrat John Bell since 2020, succeeding retiring Republican Dick Black.
United States gubernatorial elections were held on November 7, 2017, in two states: Virginia and New Jersey. These elections formed part of the 2017 United States elections. The last regular gubernatorial elections for these two states were in 2013. Both incumbents were term-limited, so both seats were open. Democrats held the governorship in Virginia and picked up the governorship of New Jersey.
PredictIt is a New Zealand-based online prediction market that offers exchanges on political and financial events. PredictIt is owned and operated by Victoria University of Wellington with support from Aristotle, Inc. The company's office is located in Washington, D.C.
The 2024 United States Senate election in Virginia will be held on November 5, 2024, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the state of Virginia. Incumbent Democratic Senator Tim Kaine is running for re-election to a third term in office. Kaine was re-elected with 57.0% of the vote in 2018. Primary election will take place on June 18, 2024.
The 2022 Nebraska State Legislature elections took place as part of the biennial United States elections. Nebraska voters elected state senators in the 24 even-numbered seats of the 49 legislative districts in the Nebraska Unicameral as well as in a special election for the 31st District. State senators serve four-year terms in the unicameral Nebraska Legislature.
The 2022 Minnesota Senate election was held in the U.S. state of Minnesota on November 8, 2022, to elect members of the Senate of the 93rd Minnesota Legislature. A primary election was held in several districts on August 9, 2022. The election coincided with the election of the other house of the Legislature, the Minnesota House of Representatives, and all other statewide elections.
The 2023 Virginia Senate election was held on Tuesday, November 7, 2023, concurrently with elections for the Virginia House of Delegates, to elect senators to all 40 seats in the Senate of Virginia for the 163rd and 164th Virginia Assembly. Nomination primaries held through the Department of Elections were held June 20, 2023. These were the first elections held following redistricting as a result of the 2020 census.
