Jim Lampley's OddsHere's one of the
lamest analyses I've ever read.
At 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on Election Day, I checked the sportsbook odds in Las Vegas and via the offshore bookmakers to see the odds as of that moment on the Presidential election. John Kerry was a two-to-one favorite. You can look it up.
People who have lived in the sports world as I have, bettors in particular, have a feel for what I am about to say about this: these people are extremely scientific in their assessments. These people understand which information to trust and which indicators to consult in determining where to place a dividing line to influence bets, and they are not in the business of being completely wrong. Oddsmakers consulted exit polling and knew what it meant and acknowledged in their oddsmaking at that moment that John Kerry was winning the election.
And he most certainly was, at least if the votes had been fairly and legally counted. What happened instead was the biggest crime in the history of the nation, and the collective media silence which has followed is the greatest fourth-estate failure ever on our soil.Now, it is probably true that the sports books had Kerry as the favorite at that point in time. But of course, like everybody else (including the gamblers), they were reacting to the exit polling which we know was flawed.
Even the people who did the polling admit that it was flawed.
What about all the polling prior to the election, which found Bush favored by 3-5 points? What about the fact that John Fraude Kerry had not led in the
Iowa Electronic Markets from September on?
Oh, and Jim, when you say, "You can look it up," it's customary in the blogging world to include a link.
