Sauder School of Business

Prediction Markets

Canadian Federal Election 2019

Election Date: Monday, October 21, 2019

The election is over. Markets are closed.

Final Predictions, Election Day, October 21, 2019

Trading Statistics for the Final Day of Trading, October 20, 2019

Market Liquidation Information (updated Thursday, November 7, 2019)

It was announced today by Elections Canada that all three judicial recounts have been terminated. Thus the validated results published on the Elections Canada web site Election Results (CSV data file available here) were used today to liquidate the remaining popular vote share and seats share markets. The majority government and seats plurality markets had been liquidated previously.

Cash positions may be paid out upon request any time. Please initiate the payout through the web interface under the "Divest" tab. All disbursements are made by cheque to the mailing address that is on file in the trader profile. Please ensure that the address is correct and complete.

Official Election Information

Political Parties (currently represented in parliament)

Other Useful Information Sources About the Election

Tools

Other Sources

The PredictIt market in New Zealand, a project of Victoria University of Wellington, is another prediction market operated for academic purposes. They offer a market Who will be the prime minister of Canada following the 2019 election?. However, note that this market charges a 10% fee on profits made in the market. By comparison, the Sauder market is strictly not-for-profit and does not charge any fees. Please note that the contracts traded in their market are not directly comparable with those traded in the Sauder School of Business markets.

How did we do?

The traders on the prediction market correctly predicted a Liberal minority government, with an implied probability of a minority of 85% and an implied probability of a Liberal plurality of 74%. The seats plurality prediction was more accurate than other predictions, and the majority government prediciotn was very close to the CBC prediction (but slightly accurate). As far as the popular vote and seats share is concerned, the prediction market performed roughly as well as the CBC, but Prof Forunier's 338Canada.com project provided the best seat projection by suggesting a wider gap betweeen Liberals and Conservatives than either the prediction markets or the CBC analysis.

Comparison of Seats Plurality Predictions LIB CPC NDP OTR Error1 Election Result 100 0 0 0 — Prediction Markets 74.1 24 0.2 1.7 51.8 338Canada / P.J. Fournier 59.2 40.2 0 0.6 81.6 CBC Analysis 48 37 0 15 104.0 Notes: 1 sum of absolute errors.

Comparison of Majority Government Predictions LIB CPC NDP OTR Error1 Election Result 0 0 0 100 — CBC Analysis 13 2 0 85 30.0 Prediction Markets 12.2 4.3 0 83.5 33.0 338Canada / P.J. Fournier 22.6 3.3 0 74.1 51.8 Notes: 1 sum of absolute errors.

Comparison of Popular Vote Share Predictions LIB CPC NDP BLQ GRP OTR Error1 Election Result 33.1 34.4 15.9 7.7 6.5 2.4 — 338Canada / P.J. Fournier 32.2 31.6 18 7 7.7 3.5 8.8 CBC Poll Tracker 32 31.6 18.4 7 7.5 3.4 9.1 Nanos-Globe-CTV 31.7 32.5 20.8 7.2 6 1.8 9.8 Prediction Markets 32.1 31.5 19 6.4 7.7 3.3 10.4 Notes: 1 sum of absolute errors.