Who's Winning The Presidential Election?

This morning TIME magazine's online poll shows 86% of the 20,227 people completing the survey think Barack Obama won the debate last Friday. This poll is skewed towards people who read the relatively unbiased current events coverage provided by Time magazine, and use computers to obtain news.

I don't put much credence in polls.

Markets may be a better predictor of future events, since they have the incentive of requiring people put their money where their mouth is.

Intrade Prediction Markets has Barack Obama up by more than 16 points (57.8 to 41) over John McCain.

I still believe this could be a very close election and it would be a mistake for Obama supporters to become complacent.

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Postscript 9/29/2009

To see the TIME poll you need to go to "past polls" now. The end result of 29,442 votes was that 85% say Barack Obama won the first presidential debate.

Intrade Prediction Markets has Barack Obama with a 23 point lead over John McCain at this time (Barack Obama 61.1 vs. McCain 38.1)