The two Democratic presidential candidates are essentially tied for the nomination, and people are looking for any way to determine who will eventually take the lead and the nomination. Now, some people are swearing by a Web site to follow the race.

The Web site, Intrade.com, is a platform that acts as a futures trading market. People are able, with a valid bank account, to buy futures stock in the candidate they believe will win the nomination, the presidency or any number of other outcomes.

“This has really never before been done in the political market,” said Steffen Schmidt, university professor of political science. “We’ve been following this Web site since 2004.”

Schmidt often directs his students to the Web site and believes that it has a higher degree of accuracy than people think.

“Because people are able to put their own money into which candidate will win, they will want to spend a little time doing some research,” he said. “With polls, on the other hand, people can anonymously say who they want to win – which sometimes isn’t very reliable.”

Joseph McPhail, graduate assistant in economics, has been following Intrade closely since the Iowa caucuses.

“These markets are amazingly superior at predicting results and are much better than polls,” he said.

As mentioned, this Web site has many more markets than just political ones.

“There was at one point a market for which city would be attacked by a terrorist,” he said. “These kind of things reduce the reliability of the Web site a little, but not by much.”

A similar operation is being run at the University of Iowa. They have a market similar to Intrade that deals with the political race. A visit to their Web site, http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/, shows a ticker along the top with recent changes in each candidates’ price.

One possible caveat to using these markets as poll replacements is that they are not proven to be immune to outside influence.

“We really haven’t looked too much into whether or not candidates’ headquarters are funneling money into these markets to boost their rates,” Schmidt said. “We don’t know right now.”

McPhail, however, has looked into it a bit more.

“I’ve been noticing recently that whenever Hillary’s prediction to win the nomination goes up, McCain’s prediction to win the presidency goes up,” he said.

McPhail attributes this to Republican voters putting stock in Hillary’s market and voting for her in primaries because they believe McCain has a better chance of beating her than Obama.

“This is a big deal,” McPhail said. “What is at stake is, ultimately, the leadership of the free world. That shouldn’t be dictated by a flaw in the voting mechanism.”

If this comes true, however, it would show these markets are even more reliable predictors of events happening.