The Institute of 2012 GOP nomination Intrade rankings

[paul718]

Gingrich is way undervalued, IMO. 

[paul718]

I'm surprised Pawlenty is holding his value.

[paul718]

How do Intrade work?

The answer to your question was on the previous page. 

Can anyone explain what those numbers actually mean and how one bets on intrade?

Someone who's actually traded in the market can probably explain this better than I can.  But in brief, each share is a contract between two people.  If a share of "Romney to win the 2012 GOP presidential nomination" is traded at 27.0, it means that one person who's betting on Romney to win puts up $2.70.  That person is agreeing to a contract with another person, who puts up $7.30.  In three years, if Romney wins the nomination, the first guy gets all $10, while the second guy gets nothing.  Whereas if Romney *doesn't* win the nomination, then the second guy gets all $10, while the first guy gets nothing.

The numbers I've been posting are the price of the latest transaction on each candidate to win the nomination.  Latest numbers are:

Romney 25.2
Palin 23.0
Pawlenty 20.0
Huckabee 14.5
Thune 11.1
Gingrich 10.5
Jindal 7.6

(those are just the top 7 names at the moment.....there are a total of 28 names listed, including such uber-longshots as Fred Thompson and Gary Johnson)

So that means the last transaction on Romney was a share traded at $2.52, last transaction on Palin was at $2.30, etc.  If the market had more volume, and if there wasn't also the fact that these shares won't pay out for another three years, then these would translate into probabilities of the person in question winning the nomination, at least the probability as the market sees it.  But you'll notice that even these top seven add up to more than 100%.  There isn't enough volume yet.  Still, I think you can read the numbers as being correlated with how the market views their probability of winning.  Romney has been in the #1 slot for more than six months, so I think it's fair to say that the market thinks he's the frontrunner.

[paul718]

And Romney is back in the lead:

Romney 24.7
Palin 20.0
Pawlenty 11.0
Thune 9.8
Huckabee 8.9

Palin at 20.0 still worries me.  And I assume Newtie is right behind Huckabee? (too lazy to check inTrade, myself )

[paul718]

Palin is now up to 23.9. I guess someone else is buying other than myself.

How does her value go up after she embarrassed herself at the Tea Party thing?

[paul718]

I have no idea why any one would place a bet on Mitch Daniels- the man is not running!

I think the fact that he adamantly denied any interest, only to recently drop hints that he's "considering" it, is evident that he will run.

Romney 24.6
Palin 23.0
Thune 14.3
Pawlenty 9.9
Huckabee 6.0
Daniels 4.8

Where is the Thune interest coming from?  I understand he would make a decent candidate, and seems to be in primed position, but has there been any hints from his camp?

[paul718]

Daniels' drop could be a product of his recent C-SPAN interview, where he sounded only nominally interested in running.

[paul718]

Daniels' drop could be a product of his recent C-SPAN interview, where he sounded only nominally interested in running.

Yeah, I don't know that that C-SPAN interview got Super Bowl like ratings exactly.  I posted it on this board and you were the only person to respond.  Unless you were the buyer who'd been driving up Daniels's price in February...

I would think that the people who invest in inTrade paid attention to that interview.