The Institute of 2012 GOP nomination Intrade rankings

[ag]

Clinton ... too low here. 

As Obama dying in office is pretty much a necessary condition for Clinton winning the presidency in 2012, is it that you believe something has to happen to the President? Because, unless this is happening, the set of states in which Obama doesn't get the nomination is pretty much a subset of the set of states in which most Republicans would win in a landslide against any Democrat.

[ag]

As Obama dying in office is pretty much a necessary condition for Clinton winning the presidency in 2012, 

Not at all.  Most economists I've seen estimate a 1 in 3 chance of a new recession.  Assume for the sake of argument that's correct.  I'd say if it happened, there's maybe 1 in 3 is a reasonable estimate that the country's confidence in Obama ends up so battered that he faces insurmountable pressure to give up his re-election campaign.  So I'd call it 10% chance that Obama isn't the nominee in which case I think Hillary would very likely be. 
[/quote]

If all those eventualities were to come to pass, Clinton's (or, for that matter, any Democrats) probability of winning would be, rougly, equal, to the probability of the Republican candidate being found in bed with a dead underage boy during the weekend before the election. Not impossible, but very unlikely.

[ag]

Yeah, Romney seems to stay up

Romney 36.7
Perry 34.7
Huntsman 7.1
Palin 5.0
Bachmann 3.2
Paul 3.1
Gingrich 1.5
Christie 1.2
Giuliani 1.0
Cain 0.6
Johnson 0.6
J. Bush 0.3
Rubio 0.2
Santorum 0.2
Bolton 0.2
Ryan 0.2
Jindal 0.2

[ag]

Romney's going up. Has he ever been at 40? Perry slightly down, the others are starting to fall farther behind. Minor "revival" for Santorum )

Romney 40.0
Perry 34.9
Huntsman 5.9
Palin 5.0
Bachmann 3.2
Paul 3.2
Christie 1.8
Gingrich 1.4
Giuliani 1.3
Cain 0.7
Santorum 0.7
Johnson 0.6
J. Bush 0.3
Ryan 0.2
Bolton 0.2
Rubio 0.2

[ag]

tightening )

Romney 39.5
Perry 37.0
Palin 5.4
Huntsman 4.6
Christie 3.2
Paul 3.2
Bachmann 2.5
Gingrich 1.3
Giuliani 1.0
Johnson 0.5
Cain 0.5
J. Bush 0.2
Ryan 0.2
Santorum 0.2

[ag]

Honestly, it looks like the Republicans, once again, will have everything decided before the first primary. Romney it is, and Romney is likely to be the first non-Christian president of the United States.

[ag]

Seriously, though, you're right about excluding Unitarians as well as Mormons with really restrictive definitions of Christianity. It just gets annoying when people here like to casually refer to Mormons as "not Christian" (when convention says otherwise) without mentioning that they're using an unusual definition of Christian.

I thought a definition that is given by Churches to which most of the world's self-designated Christians adhere, would be usual, rather than unusual. Mormons are not Christian from the standpoint of most Trinitarian churches. Significantly, as far as I know, Mormon baptism is not recognized as a Christian sacrament by the Catholic Church (which, I believe recognizes almost any baptism ritual held in almost any Christian community otherwise).