What was the “other” October surprise?

Clearly the “market” expected a “No October Surprise” result, since that price was bid up to the mid-$90s, while “Other” was bid down to $0.91. Resolving this market as an “Other” constitutes a November surprise!

The end-of-market email announcement cites “Mark Foley Scandal”, but that event clearly fails to qualify as an “October Surprise.”

-The Mark Foley “story” hit the news in September, a little early for a true “October surprise.”
-The blogger whose postings broke the story into the news asserts that his desire was to protect Congressional pages from Foley’s attempted predation, not to influence the election. We can discount these claims as a mere cover story, but I think it is hard to connect the dots here to some DC-based political conspiracy to influence the election.
-The scandal was unlikely to be the result an Administration effort to manipulate the election, and certainly wasn’t the “GOP’s salvation.”
-Conventionally, an October Surprise refers to military/foreign affairs revelation (though not exclusively).

Admittedly, the term “October surprise” does not have an exclusive boundary. It has been used in lots of ways by lots of people, and in fact every U.S. election see multiple claims that the “other” party is preparing to unleash some manipulative October Surprise. However, in the context of this market the usage suggests a very traditional interpretation of the term.

Every specified share addresses Iran, Iraq, or Al Qaeda related surprises that suggest the traditional October Surprise case of the Administration manipulating foreign events to produce a late political effect in favor of the Administration’s party, typically in the last week or two before the election.

The September actions of an activist-blogger exposing a Congressman’s frank sexual language in emails and IMs to former Congressional pages doesn’t really fit the bill.

Mike,

Thank you for your comments. I agree that this market could have been more clearly constructed. At the urging of several traders I added the “other” to account for anything else that could swing the election. The Foley Scandal broke nationally in October on ABC’s “The Blotter” and caused national republican approval ratings to plummet. It was the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back”.

Technically speaking, October surprise is anything that breaks that is a product pushed to advance an agenda for the purpose of eliciting an emotional response by voters that will favor one party or another before an election.

According to Wikipedia:

“An October surprise is American political jargon describing a stunning news event with the potential to influence the outcome of an election, particularly one for the presidency. It is so called because Election Day in the U.S. is the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and events shortly before the election have greater potential to swing votes. Most of the time, the term is used to label actions of a sitting president, especially with regard to military or foreign policy matters, but it can also apply to news stories unfavorable to the incumbent administration. “

While the market shares almost all reflected possible military outcomes, the other category was a catch all for military outcomes not conceived of as well as all possible non- military outcomes.

In retrospect, flushing out the other category into as many trading stocks as possible would have been the best, and most clear option for a market like this.

This is the first time I have ever put a market together and definitely think that with future markets I can and will do a better job of removing possibilities for confusion.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you; appreciate your willingness to participate; and hope we can work together in the future to create markets that are clear, concise, publicly beneficial and an overall pleasurable learning experience.

Thank you again for taking the time to share your thoughts on this with me.

Yes, I also checked out the Wikipedia entry, and saw that it gave only limited support for my view. I still don’t think that the Foley events constitute an October Surprise, but I agree that the scandal is talked about in those terms in some election commentary, so I guess it falls into a kind of gray area.

In retrospect it is easy to see when a market is ill defined, especially since events don’t always figure neatly into the categories we expect. In my first market (“Will Rep. Dennis Hastert be Speaker of the House for the 110th Congress?” which coincidently also touches on the Mark Foley scandal), I tried hard to specify all of the various possible outcomes and still forgot to mention the simple case of the GOP losing control as a situation in which the market would close early before the formal election of the next Speaker in January. It can be hard to set up a market, especially in these sorts of interesting “gray areas,” and you did better than some people have on Inkling in setting up your first.

I think, toward the end of making better markets in the future, in cases like this market where the outcome is subject to some interpretation, the market manager should provide (and the Inkling investors should demand before investing!) an explanation of what resources will be used to arrive at a conclusion. So in this case, for example, you could have said you would use the Wikipedia definition of “October Surprise” to govern your conclusions and possible also identified sources that you might rely upon in reaching a judgment. For example, you could say you would rely upon the post-election commentary published in the New York Times or some other publicly available resource in coming to your conclusion.

Wikipedia actually may not be a good resource since it is changeable and subject to manipulation. However, you can link to a historical version of a page you could just like to a definition as of a particular date (before the market is launched), and that may be good enough.