Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Clinton's Win Enriches Bettors Facing 100-to-1 Odds

From Bloomberg:

Hillary Clinton isn't the only person who won big in New Hampshire last night.

Online traders who placed a $100 bet on Clinton, the 60- year-old Democratic senator from New York, were rewarded with payoffs of as much as $10,000 after her upset victory over Barack Obama in the New Hampshire presidential primary, trading on Intrade, a Dublin-based online prediction market, indicated.

Her chances of winning in New Hampshire plummeted to a record low of 1 percent yesterday after her defeat in last week's Iowa caucuses prompted online traders to shift almost all their bets to 46-year-old Illinois Senator Obama, Intrade data showed.

Obama's chances surged to as high as 99 percent yesterday after polls indicated that he was also poised to win in New Hampshire. Clinton, who won by 3 percentage points, trailed Obama by an average of 6.3 points, according to Pollster.com, a Web site that compiles U.S. poll results....MORE