Lewis Sheperd (the Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft’s Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments):
Indeed, it appears to me that [prediction markets] are growing not from corporate or government use, but mostly organically from within academia, stock-futures circles and political-junkie communities. I’-m reading the interesting variety of writers and prediction-marketeers at Midas Oracle, which brings together widely ranging posts from faculty members at Harvard and other universities, daytraders, and even a few “amateurs.”
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Lewis Sheperd notes in his post that a number of for-profit companies (like Google and General Electric) are using private prediction markets (a.k.a. enterprise prediction markets). Non-for-profit organizations (like governmental agencies) would do great, too, using the same forecasting tool —-an “-information aggregation mechanism”- (IAM), more exactly.
Robin Hanson, instead of boring us with philosophy, go evangelizing that newbie.
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UPDATE: Yes, he is willing to learn. 
See his comment.
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Always happy to meet & talk with those who know more about a subject than I – which in this case is a big pool of people, yourself included. When I was recently in a government position, we actually had a small PM for research purposes, running on a classified network. My point in my article on slow governmet adoption was about the “operational” use of prediction and information markets; there is need for better understanding and lessons from non-governmental research and practice of the sort which youo and your colleaues are best suited for. But the field is interesting and I’ll continue to read your site, a valuable compendium. Thanks – “Newbie” Shepherd
Fact: According to the latest Rasmussen poll released Saturday July 12, and promptly headlined by the Drudge Report, “The race for the White House is tied. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows Barack Obama and John McCain each attract 43% of the vote.”
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Funny. According to the market on betfair Obama has a 69% of winning. McCain 28%.
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Chris, a question. You’ve been focusing on the availability of information, which traders can then rely on / use as a starting point. With such a big difference (see above), what are they trading on ? What information ? Or does your supposition still hold true and have the markets simply evolved ?
I prefer to think these predictions markets have “a life of their own”. Well, when there’s money to be made.
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As far as the reliability of both sets of figures is concerned
28% could actually in reality be a bit overdone because of the influence of the (inferior) information we get from the polls. Just a thought.