Us Election

[AJ]

Anyone got any thoughts on this ? It seems to me that the pricing is a off at the moment, with Bush being shorter than he should be at 1.57, and Kerry too long at 2.25. The latest polls all show a dead heat or a small Kerry lead. current predictions of the EC votes shows Kerry well ahead. Check out these studies www.econ.umn.edu/~amoro/R...probs.html www.electoral-vote.com/ All point to a Kerry win in the Ec. I'm thinking about having some money on Kerry and balancing it off with some money on Bush later to the date and creating an arb, when the prices converge as they must do. Any thoughts ?

[edtkh]

Re: Us Election Couldn't agree more. A year ago, I backed the Democrats to win this election at 2.50(Bush was 1.50 then) - at a time when their candidate was not known yet. Personally, I regard Bush as the most incompetent American President since WWII and has presided over one of the most depressing era in living memory. While 911, Iraq(although I reckon he brought this upon himself) and the recession would mean he's actually had the misfortune of encountering one of the greatest challenges to have confronted any US President, the way he has handled affairs make him come across as totally amateurish. He now seems to argue that "the world being a safer place in Saddam's absence" is now sufficient justification for his now-defunct WMD reasoning that the invasion of Iraq was merited. Similarly, I don't see how any rational American would want a President who has the following unhonourable records to boot : firstly, the budget deficit he has chalked up over his 4-year-reign currently stands in excess of USD400 billion - a far cry from what was then a budget surplus in excess of USD300 billion when Clinton left office(the deficit he has chalked up is actually greater than the total chalked up from the period covering George Washington all through to Ronald Reagan) and secondly, 800000 jobs(Kerry's figure of 1.6million looks a tad exagerrated based on official figures available) have been lost under his charge with the average wage having decreased for 3 consecutive years(as Kerry pointed out, the first President to do so in 72 years). To add to that, Bush has vowed to cut the deficit in half by the end of the second term(provided he gets re-elected of course! :lol ) yet his grandest plan in mind to help achieve that aim is to introduce tax cuts(only God knows where this gnome thinks he's going to find the excess cash from). All that simply points to the plain and simple fact that Bush actually hardly knows what he is doing and when you add on the misery the Americans have suffered under Bush over the last 4 years(as opposed to the relatively trouble-free and prosperous 8 years preceding Bush under Clinton where talks centred more around the 'American Dream' than budget deficits) and the fact he only scraped through in the 2000 elections, it's not hard to understand why so many Americans are fed-up with Bush. I don't think I've seen as many Americans deciding to vote on an "anyone but Bush" mandate for a long while. I'm not so much pro-Kerry here as I'm anti-Bush although I could identify more with the Democrats than the Republicans as I feel they better represent the interests of the middle-class. Moreover, I don't think Bush did himself any favours over the 3 live Presidential debates and if anything, he has only shot himself in the foot. Kerry certainly looks value for the forthcoming elections at 2.37(Ladbrokes). In fact, I'm also planning on backing Kerry to win Florida(2.20 at Ladbrokes) - I think the bubble surrounding Bush's triumph back in 2000 has well and truly burst. :cheers