Prediction Markets, Electoral Maps

I was fooling around on Wikipedia and discovered the Intrade Prediction Market. This idea is so cool, it blew my mind. I had assumed stuff like this existed but never realized how detailed it was. For instance, you can buy or sell the event "The US or Israelis will launch an overt air strike against Iran." This reminds me of that CSI:Miami episode that discusses death pools, where bettors wager on which celebrity will die next (which as I understand it, really do exist legally outside the US).

Anyway, apparently some folks used Intrade's data to predict the General Election's outcome state-by-state and came up with the following electoral map.

I'll let them describe it for me:

The electoral map below is a forecast for the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election in which the presumptive nominees are Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama. The electoral vote value for each state is shown, and the states are shaded according to the probability of a win.
The data for this map come from the Intrade prediction market where there are real-money contracts for each individual state based on how it will award its 2008 electoral votes. Traders who predict the outcome correctly are rewarded with the money of those who don't. For more information visit Intrade.com. This map is updated at least weekly.