That market has generally been more accurate than polls in a wide swath of executive, legislative, national and local elections. The Iowa market’s results have been striking. Formed by business professors at the University of Iowa in 1988 for students and teachers to wager on that year’s presidential election, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission licensed IEM to take bets from the public on subsequent elections because of its academic purpose-but the commission put a $500 limit on an individual’s “investments.” In the U.S., the Iowa Electronic Markets is the granddaddy of these exchanges.
