The Institute of 2012 GOP nomination Intrade rankings

[Middle-aged Europe]

Perry closing in on Romney. 33.0% to 27.8% now.

[Middle-aged Europe]

PERRY-HYPE-UM!

Perry takes the lead on Intrade (Perry 31.7%, Romney 30.3%).

[Middle-aged Europe]

Romney + Huntsman + Bachmann paying between 1:1 and 3:2?  sounds like a "buying opportunity", until I start thinking about it just a bit more.

I do not like this threeway

Stop giving Hustler any ideas, please.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Wait... People think Palin has a 6.0% chance of running but a 6.1% chance of winning the nomination?
In other words, if she runs, she has a 102% chance of winning the nomination?
WTF?

No, people think there's a 6.1% chance of winning the nomination and a 6.0% chance of being picked as VP by the actual nominee.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Perhaps most interesting, Obama just fell below 50% on InTrade for winning the 2012 election (Currently trading at 49.9%). I believe this is the first time this has ever happened?

No, has already happened a couple of times in August.

[Middle-aged Europe]

If Romney is elected president, I'm going to email Dave and ask him to make Winfield mod of US General Discussion.

And I'm going to email Dave Winfield and tell him about this board.  (How hard can it be to get Dave Winfield's email if one really wanted it?)

Sounds like a plan.  The other advantage of Romney being elected is that it would cut down on Bachmann's confusion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLBtlMI2yg4

Or maybe she was confusing Romney with Obama?

After all, they're both non-Christian, pro-choice, pro-death panels, pro-Darwin candidates.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Dr. Paul overtakes the Godfather, Newt closes in on "Prof." Perry.

Romney 67.1%
Perry 9.0%
Gingrich 8.4%
Paul 5.1%
Cain 4.8%
Huntsman 3.8%
Who cares about the rest...?

[Middle-aged Europe]

Paul still third, Huntsman now fourth.*lol*

Romney 71.0%
Gingrich 13.0%
Paul 4.8%
Huntsman 4.5%
Cain 4.0%
Perry 3.0%
Bachmann 1.1%

[Middle-aged Europe]

Here are some pretty funny Intrade numbers.


Mitt Romney to win Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and Nevada primaries/cacuses in 2012: 24.8%

Newt Gingrich to win one (or more) Republican primary/caucus in 2012: 36.5%

Ron Paul to win one (or more) Republican primary/caucus in 2012: 24.0%

Herman Cain to win one (or more) Republican primary/caucus in 2012: 22.0%

Rick Perry to win one (or more) Republican primary/caucus in 2012: 11.0%


ERROR. DOES NOT COMPUTE.


Also, Mitt Romney currently leads both the "Iowa caucus winner" and the "Iowa caucus second place" market. Does not compute either.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Well, that's true. It wouldn't make much sense if Romney were currently above 50% in both markets though.

It's a bit odd though that Romney is currently not favored to win the first five primaries, while neither of the other "major" candidates are favored to win at least a single primary. So basically nobody is sure of anything. Maybe they should open up a "a person other than Mitt Romney to win one (or more) Republican primary/caucus in 2012" market.

I guess it shows both the unpredictability of the primaries and the limited usefulness of Intrade (or at least of those markets I quoted here). The actual results of Iowa are often pretty random. And the results of Iowa will pretty much determine who is gonna win further primaries in this race.

[Middle-aged Europe]

That's not strange at all.  Romney is favored in each of the first five primaries, but he's likely to lose at least one of them.  We just don't know which one.

Yeah, like I said, it shows that nobody is sure of much at this point. I knew that without Intrade.

And we don't know which of his opponents will beat him in one of those primaries, though Gingrich is the most likely.

Not precisely, because there's currently no "Jon Huntsman/Michele Bachmann/Rick Santorum to win one (or more) Republican primary/caucus in 2012" market which makes it a flawed prediction. In theory, such market, would it exist, could rate higher than the Gingrich market. Unless you're also deducing a certain probablity from the non-existence of such market.

[Middle-aged Europe]

I would be stunned if any of those three were beating Gingrich in a hypothetical "will win at least one primary/caucus" market.

Today, sure.

Then again, people would have said the same about Gingrich very recently.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Yes, I'm talking about today.

That's perhaps another problem. Intrade aims to tell us how likely a future event will occur. What it actually tells us (in this case) is how likely a hypothetical event would occur today. The thing is, the event doesn't occur today.

[Middle-aged Europe]

All right, but these are finally some weird Intrade numbers :


Newt Gingrich to win the 2012 Iowa Caucus 50.0%

Newt Gingrich to win the 2012 South Carolina Primary 44.9%

Newt Gingrich to win one (or more) Republican primary/caucus in 2012 40.0%

[Middle-aged Europe]

Santorum back to fourth place.

Romney 80.1%
Gingrich 5.0%
Huntsman 5.0%
Santorum 4.7%

Wow, how is it that his Iowa "win" has almost no effect whatsoever?

[Middle-aged Europe]

Mitch Daniels climbs to fifth place in Republican nomination market!

Romney 82.5%
Gingrich 9.1%
Paul 3.5%
Santorum 0.8%
Daniels 0.7%

Kind of sad for Santorum that he gets almost beaten by a guy who isn't even running.

[Middle-aged Europe]

VIRGINIA.ROMNEY was last traded at 85.0.  huge buying opportunity.

Is there any particular reason for the existence of the "Newt Gingrich to win the 2012 Virginia Primary" market? And is there also a reason why it is traded above 0.0% (currently 5.5%)?

Speculation that Newt is gonna win Virginia through a massive write-in campaign or something?

[Middle-aged Europe]

VIRGINIA.SANTORUM contract traded as high as 15 last night.

He would probably do fairly well in the "Rick Santorum to be elected President of France in 2012" market too.

[Middle-aged Europe]

Rick Santorum to be Republican Presidential Nominee in 2012: 1.5%

Hillary Clinton to be Democratic Presidential Nominee in 2012: 2.0%

*lol*