New Tradesports rankings

[Mr. Morden]

Yeah, Giuliani is dropping fast.  Down to 34.0 as of right now.

[Mr. Morden]

If Giuliani keeps dropping, Obama will soon surpass him on the "winning individual" odds.

[Mr. Morden]

Fred Thompson is now listed as the second most likely GOP VP nominee, after Pawlenty.

Also, winning individual odds:

Clinton 24.8
Giuliani 18.5
Obama 18.4
McCain 13.2

Obama on the verge of surpassing Giuliani.

[Mr. Morden]

Also, Tommy Thompson has now gotten a boost off the news that he's officially running, and is now up to 1.0, which puts him ahead of Huckabee.  That's quite a turnaround from where those two were not too long ago.

[Mr. Morden]

Yesterday, there was a sudden drop for Giuliani.  Today, just now, there was a sudden drop for Romney.  He's currently at 12.5, which is his lowest point in several months.

Not sure what caused the drop.  Was there something leaked about his first quarter fundraising numbers?  I know that the early speculation was that he'd beat the rest of the GOP field in fundraising this quarter.  Has something come out, showing that his fundraising didn't match expectations?  No idea if that's the case--I'm just speculating here.

[Mr. Morden]

Someone is buying Bloomberg, who is now ridiculously overvalued at 1.1.

I've seen more discussion of Bloomberg for president in recent weeks.  However, all of those rumors say that he would run as an independent rather than a Republican.  So it really doesn't make any sense that people would be betting on him as the GOP nominee.

[Mr. Morden]

OK, so it's unclear why Romney really dropped so much last night, only to recover shortly thereafter.  Maybe there were rumors about bad fundraising, but then today of course people found out that that was all bunk, and he actually did very well in the first quarter.

Anyway, McCain is now the one who seems to be crashing (and it just started, so this time it probably *is* the result of the bad fundraising news).  As I type this, he's dropped all the way to 18.0, the lowest he's been since the fall of 2005.  Fred Thompson is at 17.9, so Thompson could pass McCain soon.

[Mr. Morden]

Well, Fred Thompson has now surpassed McCain.  He's at 22.0 right now.  Incredible, considering that he wasn't even on anyone's radar screen a few weeks ago.

Also, Tommy Thompson is now 4th highest on the GOP side among declared candidates or candidates with exploratory committees.  At 1.0, he's ahead of Huckabee, Brownback, Gilmore, Hunter, etc.

[Mr. Morden]

On the Republican side, Flava' of the month surges into second place.

So he's been promoted from flavor of the week to flavor of the month? 

[Mr. Morden]

Intrade probability of each candidate winning the general election:

Clinton 28.0%
Obama 19.8%
Giuliani 19.0%
McCain 12.5%
Thompson 9.9%
Gore 8.0%
Romney 7.2%
Edwards 5.0%

So yes, Obama has surpassed Giuliani.  Also, yes, that does add up to a greater than 100% probability for those eight candidates alone, but that'll probably be corrected out eventually.

[Mr. Morden]

Wow, the GOP side is so wide open it's unbelievable.  *Four* people with a >15% chance of winning the nomination.

[Mr. Morden]

No one has yet traded on Thompson, presumably waiting to be certain that he's running.

No, there actually was a trade on Thompson before, but then they reset the prices.  Notice how the volume on Thompson is 1 rather than 0.

[Mr. Morden]

Holy !@#$, Thompson has now plummeted all the way down to 6.0 off of this lymphoba news.  That's a drop of more than 65% from where he was just minutes ago.

[Mr. Morden]

Guys, I think you're overreacting to the lymphoma news, and the associated drop at Intrade.  To repost what I wrote in the other thread:

---
I think people are blowing it out of proportion.  This is not like the Elizabeth Edwards situation, where she just found out about the return of cancer weeks ago.  The article says that Thompson has known about this for years, and thus was already thinking about running for president despite the lymphoba.  He also says "I have had no illness from it, or even any symptoms. My life expectancy should not be affected. I am in remission, and it is very treatable with drugs if treatment is needed in the future — and with no debilitating side effects."

Thus, I don't think it's any less likely that Thompson will run than it was yesterday.  Granted, there may be some people who will be less likely to vote for someone with health problems, but I doubt that'll be that much of a factor.

One should also note that, according to this article, it's Thompson himself who announced this news.  This actually makes me think it's *more* likely that he'll run.  Why would he keep this a secret for two years, and then talk about it now?  Because he wants to get everything out there early in advance of a presidential campaign.
---

And it looks like people at Intrade are now starting to realize that this may not be as bad as it first sounded.  Thompson shares have rebounded to 14.0.  Still well below the 19.2 he was at a few hours ago, but much better than right after the news broke.

[Mr. Morden]

After bashing Edwards for not dropping out when his wife found out she had cancer, Thompson supporters have a problem.

Were there really that many Thompson supporters who were doing that?  I don't remember that much "bashing" of Edwards at the time.

[Mr. Morden]

Thompson has now recovered all the way to 18.0 (tied with Romney, and just a bit behind McCain), which is almost as high as his price was two days ago, before the lymphoma news came out.  Edwards is also almost back to where he was before the Elizabeth cancer news came out.

[Mr. Morden]

McCain and Romney are getting pretty close.  So far, McCain has always been ahead of Romney, but the gap is narrowing.  As I type this, McCain is only 0.6 ahead of Romney.  F. Thompson, on the other hand, tends to oscillate quite a bit more.  Sometimes he's in second place, ahead of both McCain and Romney.  Other times he's in fourth place, behind both of them.

Oh, and on the Dem. side, Edwards has recovered completely from where he was before the Elizabeth cancer announcement.  Before the rumors of that broke, he was at 8.8, and that's where he is right now as well.

[Mr. Morden]

Not sure if this will last, but Romney has now tied McCain for the first time ever.  They're both tied for 3rd place at 17.4.  McCain is still well ahead of Romney in the "winning individual" odds though, so I guess the market still thinks that McCain would be a better general election candidate than Romney.

[Mr. Morden]

She still believes going to war was a good idea though. So she still gets a pro-war label and deserves nothing less.

Uh, no she doesn't. Let's use some of those inference skills, shall we? If one supports rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, one has most likely concluded that the war effort is futile or has failed. Therefore, logically, one would not support going to war in the first place. Unless you are suggesting that she is a complete idiot, which is, of course, a different discussion.

What?  That doesn't make any sense.  Of course it's possible to think that the initial invasion was justifiable, but that it's now time to withdraw.  One could think, for example, that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous threat who had to be dealt with and it's a good thing to have gotten rid of him, but that there's now little that the US can do to help the Iraqis along from here.  (This is not *my* position.  I'm just saying, this would be a logically consistent position.)

In fact, I believe HRC's stated position on the war is that she thinks that, knowing what we know today, the decision to invade was a bad idea.  But given the information that was known at the time of the invasion, it was a good idea.  That's not good enough for some of the most ardent anti-war types, who say that preventive war is never justifiable.  From their perspective, HRC's position means that, in some future scenario where she's president, she could support military action in a circumstance where they're against it.

[Mr. Morden]

I believe Clinton once said that if she were President in 2002, we would not have gone to war. Of course, I don't quite see how that makes any sense. So she authorizes the war as the Junior Senator from New York, but would not have authorized it if she were President?

I think I've heard her say that too, and it doesn't make any sense.  It's an "I want it both ways" answer.  It's like saying that the decision to invade was a mistake, but she didn't make a mistake by agreeing with it.  That seems a bit ridiculous.

[Mr. Morden]

Well OK, I could buy it in that case.  But then the question becomes, did HRC think the war was a mistake at the time Bush launched it, several months after the Congressional authorization?  If not, then why didn't she complain about it at the time?  If I had voted for congressional authorization for war, but then didn't agree with the president when he decided to use that authorization to go to war, I think I'd be pretty vocal about it.  But since she didn't complain about it (and in fact, I believe she made several statements in 2003, when things looked much better in Iraq, trying to take credit for the war....at least, I think she made some kind of statements along those lines at the time Saddam Hussein was captured), I would think that she agreed with the decision at the time, and only later changed her mind.  If that's the case, then it's not true that we wouldn't have gone to war if she'd been president, and she needs to come up with some explanation for why she won't get it wrong next time.

Of course, the other possibility is that she was against the war from the begining, but only supported it for political purposes.  In which case, there's a good chance that there wouldn't have been a war if she were president.  But that scenario also doesn't speak well of her character.

This kind of reminds me of Kerry's convoluted Iraq War explanation in 2004.  He said that he didn't regret his vote for authorization, but that we could have avoided war if he'd been president, and at one point said something to the effect that he could have rallied international pressure to bring down Saddam's regime even without war(!).  Talk about having your cake and eating it too!

[Mr. Morden]

Clinton and Biden had been drifting downward, but they seem to have regained some ground due to the debate (though Biden is of course still below 1%, so he shouldn't get too excited!).  On the flip side, it looks like Richardson lost some ground from the debate.

And Fred Thompson now seems to be tanking.  Any guesses as to why that is?  Are people starting to wonder if he'll actually get in the race?

[Mr. Morden]

McCain has now jumped all the way up to 25.0, which is the highest level he's been at in something like two months.  And Gore has now jumped all the way to 11.0 in the "winning individual" category, which means that he's now rated as having a better chance of winning the presidency than winning the Dem. nomination ().

[Mr. Morden]

McCain is surging like mad, while Giuliani tumbles.  Current numbers:

Giuliani 28.3
McCain 27.4

Odds to go all the way and win the general election:

Clinton 26.6
Obama 21.3
Giuliani 16.5
McCain 16.0

[Mr. Morden]

And McCain has now reached 31.0, putting him ahead of Giuliani for the first time in many many months.  What is going on?  Did people suddenly discover McCain's early primary state poll numbers and realize that the national polls aren't everything?  Or were Giuliani's donations to Planned Parenthood the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of people's expectations re: Giuliani's ability to satisfy the conservative base of the party?