Last October, I wrote about the electronic political markets at the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa.

I noted then that the market had been eerily prescient in the 2000 election, predicting Al Gore would get the most votes, but George Bush would win the election.

As the poet said, “Noting gold can stay,” and this year’s charts, for both the Republican and Democratic primaries, reflect not prescience, but something akin to a kitten chasing a piece of string.

On the GOP side, Rudy Giuliani’s numbers were high for most of 2007, while John McCain fed from the bottom, now that we know the situation is reversed, so is the graph, but who cares? On the Democratic side, see the wild swings Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama experienced in the Iowa-New Hampshire weeks.

I can only guess this market was a victim of its own popularity. Word got out about the market and it was invaded by people aligned with each campaign, trying to game the oracle while simultaneously flooded by barroom prognosticators, the same ones that lose money every week on the NFL and NCAA.