US 08: The Crikey Election Indicators return

In many ways what the government of the United States does matters far more to the life of individual Australians than anything done by Kevin Rudd and all those State Labor Premiers and Chief Ministers. We might pretend to be an independent and sovereign nation but we are far from immune from the influence of our great and powerful friend across the Pacific.

Crikey is therefore covering this year’s American election with the same thoroughness it brought to last year’s Australian campaign and that includes our exclusive Crikey Election Indicators which use the markets to assess the probabilities of victory by candidates in the multitude of primaries and caucus votes that make up the lengthy process.

For New Hampshire, based on prices at the Intrade prediction market, John McCain is the clear leader in the Republican race with Barack Obama well clear of Hillary Clinton for the Democrats.

Republican Primary

Democrat Primary

The Crikey Indicators continued to show their reliability as a guide to the outcome of political events during our holiday recess by correctly forecasting what happened at the Iowa caucuses.

For the Democrat contest the final Crikey Indicator showed Barack Obama as a 64% chance of winning with Hillary Clinton second pick at 21% and John Edwards at 15%. The final figures of the pollsters had Obama with a 1.6 percentage point lead over Clinton and five points over Edwards with Obama actually ending up around eight points higher than both of them.

For the Republicans in Iowa the Crikey Indicator figures were Gov. Mike Huckabee 64%, Gov. Mitt Romney 28%, Senator McCain 3% and all others 5%. The final figures of the pollsters had Huckabee three percentage points in front of Romney. And the result? Mike Huckabee 34%; Mitt Romney 26%; Fred Thompson 13%; John McCain 13%; Ron Paul 10%; Rudy Giuliani 3%; Duncan Hunter 0%; Tom Tancredo 0%.