The Institute of 2012 GOP nomination Intrade rankings

[Mr. Morden]

Anyone who buys Huckabee now, if he runs, they'll rake it in whether he wins or not.  But you can't specifically bet against a primary candidate as far as I know.  So, if you had insider info that Huckabee wasn't running, you couldn't bet "Huck does not win in 2012".  As far as I know.

Yes you can.  Read the explanation I just posted.  Every single share traded is a contract between two people.  One person is betting on that candidate, and the other is betting against that candidate.  A Huckabee share traded at 6.0 means one person is betting $0.60 that he'll win, and the other person is betting $9.40 that he won't, with the winner getting all $10 in the end.  Intrade itself isn't putting up any of the money.  It's just facilitating these contracts being made between the two people, and making its profit off of user fees.

[Bull Moose Base]

Oh, you can sell without buying.  I didn't know.

[Phony Moderate]

Trump overtakes Palin and Huckabee.

http://intrade.com/v4/markets/?eventClassId=19

[Mr. Morden]

Bachmann now solidly in 4th.  Will she eventually move up to 3rd?:

Up: Romney, Trump
Down: Pawlenty, Huckabee

Romney 26.2
Pawlenty 16.7
Daniels 9.0
Bachmann 7.1
Barbour 5.5
Palin 5.1
Trump 5.1
Huckabee 5.0
Huntsman 4.5
Gingrich 4.0
Christie 2.4
Paul 2.0
Ryan 1.3
Giuliani 1.0
Johnson 1.0

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

Intrade is very unreliable for the time being since no campaigns are being mounted, no one is announcing, and everyone is waiting for the first shot to go off. Most of the buying and selling now is almost certainly short, not long (if Romney, Pawlenty, and Bachmann are the frontrunners, I will eat my own shoes).

[Mr. Morden]

Trump up to 5th place.  Palin down to 9th place, and an all time low for her.

GOP Nominee:

Romney 26.9
Pawlenty 16.0
Daniels 8.7
Bachmann 7.8
Trump 5.5
Huckabee 5.0
Huntsman 5.0
Barbour 4.7
Palin 4.6
Gingrich 3.9
Christie 2.3
Paul 1.7
Johnson 1.5
Ryan 1.3
Giuliani 1.0

Winning Individual:

Obama 59.1
Romney 12.6
Pawlenty 6.2
Daniels 3.3
Trump 2.8
Palin 2.6
Paul 2.6
Gingrich 2.2
Huckabee 2.1
Biden 1.2
Clinton 1.0
(Bachmann, Huntsman, and Barbour aren't listed.)

[Likely Voter]

What justifies the Daniels pricing? He is no more likely to run than Huckabee and Palin and would be far behind either of them in likelyhood of winning if they jumped in.

Kind of funny that Bachmann has jumped up to an 8% chance to win nomination, but not even priced to win it all.  People are willing to bet on that, but there seems no price worth betting on a President Bachmann.

[Mr. Morden]

Kind of funny that Bachmann has jumped up to an 8% chance to win nomination, but not even priced to win it all.  People are willing to bet on that, but there seems no price worth betting on a President Bachmann.

No, it's just that Intrade hasn't added a market for Bachmann to win the presidency yet.  They're just slow in adding people to that market.  If shares on Bachmann to win the presidency were available, I'm sure *someone* would be betting on it.

[Mr. Morden]

Romney announces an exploratory committee that everyone was already expecting, and only goes up by 0.1.  Other candidates drop however:

GOP nominee:

Romney 27.0
Pawlenty 15.0
Daniels 8.5
Bachmann 7.3
Huckabee 5.4
Trump 5.4
Huntsman 5.0
Palin 4.9
Barbour 4.2
Gingrich 3.5
Paul 2.2
Christie 1.9
Johnson 1.5
Ryan 1.2
Giuliani 1.1

Dem. nominee:

Obama 92.9
Clinton 4.6
Biden 3.2

Dem. VP nominee:

Biden 80.0
Clinton 7.5

[Bull Moose Base]

Look at Gingrich.  That's nuts.  He's the only candidate who is in who has topped a statewide poll besides Romney.  I mean, I think he's a trainwreck and wouldn't buy but if you're going by polls, he should be higher.

[Yelnoc]

Even at this late point, I think everyone with or over 5.0 has a shot.  This is going to be one unusual primary season.

[Dancing with Myself]

Even at this late point, I think everyone with or over 5.0 has a shot.  This is going to be one unusual primary season.

There's nothing wrong with that, I like interesting primaries

[Bull Moose Base]

Don't think there's much correlation between intrade value and chance to win.  Christie is under 2 but if he got in he'd have a good chance.  Huckabee was I assume way back in April 07 (<5). But he had a shot  well into January 08.  Gingrich or Barbour could win South Carolina- not my bet personally but it's conceivable.  At which point they'd probably be 1 of 2 or 3 people with a chance.

[Mr. Morden]

Christie is under 2 but if he got in he'd have a good chance.

Right.  But obviously he's unlikely to run, and so that's why he's so low on Intrade.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Of course.  Intrade has no special insight into the future.  It's merely a conventional wisdom aggregator.  It takes the collective conventional wisdom of people who are tuned into politics, and converts their hunches about what's going to happen into probabilities.  The conventional wisdom in April 2007 was that Huckabee was a serious longshot to win the nomination.  Then once he surged in the polls later in the year, he went up on Intrade.  Then when the primaries started and McCain surged ahead, Huckabee dropped again, eventually down to zero.

That's the way probabilities work.  It's just a snapshot based on the information you have at the time.  It doesn't really mean that the earlier probabilities were "wrong".  The true test of whether your probabilities at any given time are right or wrong is whether events that you predict are 5% likely happen 5% of the time, events that you think are 50% likely happen 50% of the time, 80% likely happen 80% of the time, etc.  That kind of mathematical test has been done on futures markets like Intrade, and their predictive power turned out to be OK, over the long haul, measured over many races.  Though there are a few problems, like they tend to overestimate the chances of the biggest longshots.

[Mr. Morden]

Trump surges into a tie for 3rd, while Santorum's completely expected exploratory announcement moves him up from 0.6 to 0.7:

GOP nominee
Up: Trump, Huckabee
Down: Romney

Romney 25.5
Pawlenty 15.7
Daniels 8.8
Trump 8.8
Bachmann 7.0
Huckabee 6.7
Palin 4.3
Huntsman 4.2
Barbour 3.7
Gingrich 3.1
Christie 2.5
Paul 2.2
Johnson 1.2
Ryan 1.1
Giuliani 0.9
J. Bush 0.7
Santorum 0.7

Will the following people run for president?

Bachmann 85.0
Johnson 80.0
Barbour 70.0
Trump 65.0
Huntsman 59.0
Huckabee 40.0
Daniels 37.0
Palin 27.9
Giuliani 15.0
Rand Paul 15.0
Christie 13.9
Pataki 12.6
Perry 11.0
Bolton 10.0
J. Bush 7.2
Bloomberg 4.0
Thune 2.5
Pence 2.0
Cheney 1.5

[Mr. Morden]

Johnson's announcement boosts his share price up to 1.7.  And Trump gives back some of last week's gains, while Huckabee moves back up to 4th place.

GOP nominee
Up: Huckabee, Palin
Down: Romney, Trump

Romney 24.4
Pawlenty 15.7
Daniels 8.5
Huckabee 8.4
Trump 7.0
Bachmann 6.7
Palin 5.6
Huntsman 5.1
Barbour 3.4
Gingrich 2.9
Paul 2.0
Ryan 2.0
Johnson 1.7
Christie 1.2

Winning Party

Dems 59.5
GOP 36.7
other 3.5

[Yelnoc]

I wonder what caused Palin and Huckabee to rise?

[Mr. Morden]

I wonder what caused Palin and Huckabee to rise?

After months in which everyone was convinced they wouldn't run, there actually now seems to be a quiet "maybe there's a chance that they'll run after all" meme building for both Huck and Palin.  Maybe it's all smoke and mirrors, an effort from their partisans to keep them in the spotlight, I don't know.

Here's an example of what I mean on the Huckabee side, from ~a week ago:

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-huckabee-mulling-bid-20110412,0,1410810.story?track=rss

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

I like to back bench and look in the other party's primary to see who would be the strongest and the one who is the real conservative will win and I think it is Mike Huckabee or Sarah Palin.

[Mr. Morden]

Oh yeah, and Intrade gets a mention on Bloggingheads:

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/35613?in=09:25&out=09:48

[Mr. Morden]

Romney and Pawlenty gain ground on Barbour's announcement.

GOP presidential nominee
Up: Romney, Pawlenty
Down: Barbour (drops all the way to 0.1)

Romney 25.7
Pawlenty 16.9
Daniels 8.5
Huckabee 8.4
Trump 7.3
Bachmann 6.4
Huntsman 5.4
Palin 5.3
Gingrich 2.8
Paul 2.0
Johnson 1.7
Christie 1.4
Ryan 1.1
Giuliani 0.7
Santorum 0.6

GOP VP nominee (only listing those with at least 25 shares traded)

Rubio 22.0
Thune 10.0
Huckabee 8.5
McDonnell 5.5
Christie 5.0
Jindal 4.5
Daniels 3.5
Barbour 2.9
Portman 2.2
Kasich 2.1
DeMint 2.0
Bachmann 1.6
Palin 1.5

[Bull Moose Base]

That 2.8 for Gingrich is pretty amazing.  About half of Huntsman.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

now do yall see y Pence would have been a strong contender?

[Yelnoc]

That 2.8 for Gingrich is pretty amazing.  About half of Huntsman.

Yeah, Gingrich's numbers are pathetic.

now do yall see y Pence would have been a strong contender?

Anybody that acts like an adult would be competitive.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

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