At first glance you might think this was a graph of the last week or so of the DJIA or perhaps the ups and downs of the housing bubble. In fact it’s the McCain-president contract at Intrade over the course of the last month. For most of the summer, there was roughly a twenty point — or a few point lower — spread between McCain and Obama, with the former hovering at or just over 40 and the latter around 60 or just under.
Then with the updraft of the Republican convention McCain started gaining ground on Obama until around September 11th when he moved ahead of Obama and stayed there for a bit more than a week. Since then it’s been a run of staggered free falls. Over the course of roughly the last ten days McCain has gone from a few point lead over Obama to a 25 point deficit.
Late Update: Henry Blodget has a bit more of the tick-tock of how it happened. There will probably never be any uncertainty. Trends in public opinion are too over-determined. But I remain convinced that McCain’s bizarre and transparently reckless actions over the course of the last week are at least as responsible for the strong across-the-board move in the polls toward Obama as the economic crisis itself.
