In recent days, polls have showed that Barack Obama has drawn even with Hillary Clinton in Iowa and has cut modestly into her lead in New Hampshire. It’s important news, to be sure, but his futures prices on
the Intrade prediction market have gone up way more than I would have expected.

Here’s the lifetime history of the market price for the Democratic nomination contract on Obama (its value can be interpreted as the percent likelihood of him winning):

And here’s the price of the contract over the last week:

Have the odds of Obama winning the race actually increased by nine percentage points in the last seven days? It seems disproportionate to the gains that he’s made.

Update 12/12 10:13 AM: Maybe I spoke too soon — the latest New Hampshire poll has Obama and Clinton tied. Wow.