Intrade: Politics Meets the Market

On Feb. 15, Mitt Romneyâ??s campaign held a conference call with political reporters to discuss the candidateâ??s prospects in the upcoming Michigan primary. Rick Santorum, who had just won contests in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri, was leading by as much as 15 percent in state polls. So how did Romneyâ??s advisers reassure the media he was still the GOP candidate to beat? By pointing to Intrade, an online exchange where investors buy shares in a market that bets on political outcomes. The exchange predicted that Romney had a 73.8 percent chance of winning the Republican nomination.