YOU KNOW where these election stock markets would be particularly handy? The regional forecasts. There've been so many national polls, and the sample sizes are sufficiently large, that an ESM probably doesn't add a lot of useful information at the national level, at least when it comes to the popular vote. But the regional breakouts, so crucial to projecting seat counts, have such large margins of error that it's very difficult to know what to make of them at any one time (though the trendlines are pretty clear). For example, the latest Ekos poll (38-28 Tory) has the "surging" Liberals ahead in British Columbia, while Ipsos (39-29 Tory) claims the Conservatives have a 42-26 lead in Atlantic Canada. Both strike me as dubious. This is the sort of chaotic, information-starved situation where an ESM could really come into its own. For the skeptics: in the 2004 US presidential election, the Iowa Electronic Market called all fifty states correctly. Here's hoping the UBC folks add some regional "stocks" to their portfolio next time.