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Prediction markets are speculative markets in which investors put money into ideas that are tied to a future event -- such as "Will the Lakers cover the spread?" The idea is that the more people who buy into an idea, the more likely it is to occur. This is an application of crowd wisdom. One such prediction market, Intrade, which has been in operation since 2001 and has 73,000 traders, is running a number of prediction contracts on the 2008 US presidential election. Are their predictions more or less accurate then good old fashioned phone surveys?