Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) holds a lead over President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in terms of share of the vote and the possibility of winning the election, according to xfuture.org, a Web site with a platform similar to the stock market that allows users to predict the results of future events.
As of Friday, the exchange predicted that Tsai would receive 51.7 percent of the vote, Ma would get 41.4 percent and People First Party Chairman James Soong (宋楚瑜) would get 9.1 percent.
On the possibility of being elected, the exchange gave Tsai a 69.1 percent chance, Ma 28.6 percent and Soong 4.1 percent.
On Dec. 8, the exchange predicted Tsai would receive 50.2 percent of the vote, Ma 41.9 percent and Soong 10.5 percent. As for the possibility of being elected, the exchange then gave Tsai a 51.9 percent chance, Ma 37.3 percent and Soong 11.3 percent.
Tsai’s rise since Dec. 8, both in terms of her share of the votes and the possibility of her being elected suggests that the recent controversy surrounding Yu Chang Biologics has had an impact on the exchange, the Web site said.
In this controversial case, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers and Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) Minister Christina Liu (劉憶如) accused Tsai of improperly endorsing a government investment in a biotechnology joint venture in 2007 at a time when she was vice premier.
On Monday, Liu displayed a document that she said was distributed by TaiMed Group, from which Yu Chang Biologics was later formed, at an investors’ conference on March 31, 2007. The document listed Tsai as one of the principal leaders of the start-up, though she was vice premier. Citing the declassified files, the KMT accused Tsai of having profiteered from the National Development Fund’s (NDF) investment in TaiMed.
However, the document was later found to be a TaiMed Group presentation from Aug. 19, 2007 — three months after Tsai left office, the DPP said on Tuesday. The DPP accused the KMT of inserting additional information to the copies of the document provided to the media to suggest it came from the March investors’ conference.
According to National Chengchi University’s Prediction Markets Center, prediction markets efficiently collect effective information through a futures or stock-trading mechanism that relies on the wisdom of the public, who buy and sell contracts of future events on the market.
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