Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
For the first time in their 20-year history of political trading, the Iowa Electronic Markets are branching out beyond presidential politics.
The University of Iowa College of Business project, in which traders use real money to measure candidates’ chances, has had a strong predictive track record since it started in 1988.
The IEM has added three Congressional markets. In the first two, traders can buy and sell contracts that will predict whether the Democrats will gain seats in each of the Senate and House, maintain its current number of seats, or lose seats to the Republicans.
In the third market, traders can buy and sell contracts based on overall control of Congress: Democratic or Republican control of both houses or split control.
A fourth new market looks at Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and the Democratic challenger, comedian Al Franken.
The IEM has two presidential election markets: a winner-take-all market and a percentage market. The winner-take-all market predicts odds of victory. The vote share market predicts the margin of victory, and pays out based on that percentage; a 55 percent share yields 55 cents.
Recent trading in the winner-take-all market predicts an Obama victory is 60 percent likely. Trading has been very light in the vote share market, but the most recent trades indicate that the margin will be within two percent.
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