Thinking about the German election outcome, it struck me that this would be an ideal test for betting markets. I’ve always thought that, if there’s a bias in such markets it would be towards the right, so the toughest test for them would be predicting a left-wing upset win like this one (I’m calling a win on the basis that left parties got a majority of the vote, not making a prediction about what goverment might emerge). A quick Google reveals that there is such a market, called Wahlstreet but my German isn’t good enough to deal with their site, which has lots of graphs bouncing around without an obvious control. Hopefully someone will be able to help me.

Anyway, if there’s a contract allowing a bet on the share of votes for the three left parties (SPD, Greens, Left party) and if, two weeks in advance, that market was predicting a vote share of more than 50 per cent (as actually happened), I’ll concede that the case for the superiority of betting markets over polls has been established, at least as a reasonable presumption. [I didn’t follow the polls closely but I had the impression that most of them were predicting a CDU/CSU win until the last days of the campaign].
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Wow.

There’s loads of confusion about this story, but it seems to be common ground that British forces used tanks to break down the walls of an Iraqi prison where two soldiers, arrested for firing on Iraqi police, were being held. It’s increasingly evident that the coalition forces have become one of the array of armed militias in Iraq, all pursuing their own overlapping agendas and all claiming not to be answerable to anyone else.

Update This story is, not surprisingly, front page news in Britain and Australia, but the NYT barely covers it. It never made the front page of the website and, on the International page, it appears as a subheading to a story about the murder of an NYT reporter, also in Basra.

The latest statements from the UK government say that the soldiers had been handed over by police to a Shia militia group, presumably one of the Sadrist factions. The provincial governor, who has condemned the British action strongly, is also a Sadrist, it appears, though most of the reports I’ve seen suggest that the police are predominantly associated with the Badr brigade (armed wing of SCIRI, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who are currently regarded as ‘good guys’, being part of the national government). There’s more on this in the comments thread.

There’s a lot of commentary on the German election results at Fistful of Euros. Mrs Tilton predicts the early demise of Christian Democrat leader Angela Merkel, and given that she was expected to win easily, this seems reasonable. More from saint, who takes the same view.

Strikingly, the only reason the CDU is even in the game is because of divisions on the left, with Social Democrat Schroeder refusing to contemplate a coalition with the Left party. This BBC report gives the combined left vote (SPD+Greens+Left Party) at 52 per cent, compared with 45 per cent for the right (CDU/CSU + FDP) yet quotes Merkel as claiming she has a mandate to govern. As elsewhere, the right relied heavily on the race card, in this case appeals to anti-Turkish prejudice.

I know that there are historical reasons for party nomenclature, but I still find it disturbing that we have an explicitly religious and now openly sectarian party contending for the government of a major European country.

The polls are just closing in the NZ election, for which the opinion polls have been all over the place. I’m surprised the result is even close. Helen Clark seems to have done a pretty good job, the Nationals were terrible when last in office, and while Don Brash seems like a nice enough guy in personal terms, he wasn’t much of a success as head of the Reserve Bank. The Monetary Conditions Index he introduced was a disaster and he zigged where the RBA zagged at the time of the Asian crisis, producing an unnecessary recession. However, we’ll know the result soon enough.

Update 6:30 pm Although I don’t have any knowledge of the details of the NZ system (such as which areas are counted first), the Nationals have a big lead with 20 per cent of the vote counted, and will presumably form the new government, either with an outright majority or with the support of NZ First.

Further update Sunday AM A premature concession last night! As in Australia, it appears that rural polling places finish counting first. It looks as though Labour may be returned, although the complex relationships between the various minor parties may complicate this. A sidelight of interest in relation to the debate over economic reform is that ACT (Association of Consumers and Taxpayers) was wiped out. It originally stood for uncompromising support of the free-market reforms of the Rogernomics era, but broadened its basis with law-and-order and anti-Maori rhetoric. The disappearance of ACT is not really good news, since the Nationals have adopted much of the same rhetoric on race issues, but it can reasonably be said to mark the end of the era of radical reform.

Yet Further update Sunday PM Wrong again! Rodney Hide of ACT got back in with an electorate seat, and MMP may give ACT one more. That’s what comes of trying to follow elections while in dialup mode, I guess.