Intrade Betting Odds Now Say Ron Paul is Most Electable Republican

Posted by James Bowery on Thursday, 15 November 2007 20:17.

The gamblers of the world are putting their money where their mouths are, and their money is saying that Ron Paul is the most electable of the Republican field.

Dividing the Intrade odds of being elected President by the odds of getting the nomination for the Republican Party, Randall Burns at VDARE blogs that the most electable Republican candidate is Ron Paul.

The rank order of electability is as follows:

Candidate	Electabilty
Paul	43.2%
Thompson	41.9%
Huckabee	40.8%
Giuliani	40.3%
McCain	38.6%
Romney	36.2%

For those who don’t understand how this “conditional probability” calculation of “electability” works, just think of it like this:

Imagine we can run elections with a set of candidates the way we roll dice. Electability is the number of times a candidate gets elected to be President per the number of times the candidate is nominated by his party to run for President.

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Comments:

Posted by captainchaos on Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:50 | #

Thanks for droppin’ some knowledge on us James. This is the best WN site on the web. Just like a non-establishment race-conscious think tank it is. Anybody who gives a shit about the future of this country better vote for Ron Paul in the up coming primaries. So what if he doesn’t win, it’ll make a nice statement. Besides, its fun to watch Ron fuck with all the neocon pawns in the debates.

Posted by Markus on Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:48 | #

Flawed methodology. Electability would be the number from the second field only (Paul at 3.5%) as nomination there is a given, thus the strange outcome that Al Gore is 100% electable according to this “index.” There is no reason to divide two probabilities.

My chances of wearing a particular black shirt of all black shirts is 2%. Out of all my white shirts and black shirts, my chances of wearing the same black are 2%. My black wearibility index is therefore 100%.

Posted by Tommy G on Fri, 16 Nov 2007 01:02 | #

Ron Paul has about as much chance of acually getting elected President as Pat Paulson did when he ran.

When it comes to election time…you can bet your sweet bippy our choice will be between the vituperative termagant - Hillary “Rodhamus K. Bottomus” Clinton, or the Shabbos Goy - Rudolf Ghouliani.

I hope I’m wrong; I’d rather see Thompson or Romney gets elected even though my first choice would be Duncan Hunter.

If the Great Red Bolshevik, Hillary, gets elected, we can look forward to more Ruth “Buzzie” Ginsberg types becoming appointed to the Supreme Court.

Posted by nomoreh1b on Fri, 16 Nov 2007 02:01 | #

Markus: learn some math/Statistics. There is nothing wrong with the article’s methodology. Talk to any statistician about it.

Posted by James Bowery on Fri, 16 Nov 2007 02:50 | #

You know is it hard to over-state the implications of this finding. If there is any political pragmatism left in the Republican Party—let alone any rationality—they should be all over these numbers trying to figure out either why they are wrong or trying to figure out whether they should be calling all the donors who have defected to the Dems and asking them to please come back because Ron Paul can provide the coat-tails needed to salvage at least some of their bacon.

These numbers are the real measure of the outcome of this November 5th and all the hard work by Ron Paul supporters nation-wide.

Posted by nomoreh1b on Fri, 16 Nov 2007 20:01 | #

Tommy G:
you can make a good, risk free return at intrade.com if you really believe what you say.

Frankly, I don’t think you believe what you say enough to put your money where your mouth is.

Posted by Tommy G on Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:14 | #

“Frankly, I don’t think you believe what you say enough to put your money where your mouth is.”—nomoreh1b

Hah! Excluding any major unforeseen catastrophe, Hillary is going to be the next President.

Most inside the Beltway career bureaucrats and politicians fear earning the reputation as being antagonists of the Clintons—and for good reason.

Due to fear of retribution, just about everyone is already lining up to kiss her giant-jumbo-rodhambottom because they all know she’s the prohibitive favorite to win.

Let’s not forget the trail of human wreckage laid waste at the hands of her and Bubba? Also, remember, there are at least 500 raw FBI files of their political enemies that were in the possession of the Clinton machine. Those files are still mysteriously unaccounted for. Will they be used for blackmail? Think about that!

Posted by Markus on Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:58 | #

“Markus: learn some math/Statistics. There is nothing wrong with the article’s methodology. Talk to any statistician about it.”

I misunderstood the discussion on “electability” to be commentary on odds of winning in the election, and not relative ability of a particular party’s candidate to obtain votes across party lines as it were. I would still maintain that it is an unimportant index given the absolute probabilities and slim margins used - if Thompson’s odds in the general election increase 0.1%, or even less if masked by rounding, he is suddenly the Electability front-runner - same with a number of others.

Posted by Riley DeWiley on Mon, 19 Nov 2007 10:47 | #

So it sounds like they think *all* the Republicans are underdogs, or the top numbers would be over 50%, right?

Riley

Posted by Olumfemi on Tue, 12 Feb 2008 02:33 | #

Obama for president!

Posted by Michael on Sun, 19 Oct 2008 17:09 | #

Boy was this pole way off!

Michel

Posted by James Bowery on Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:14 | #

Actually, the poll was dead-on the money. Note the polls didn’t show he was the most likely to be nominated—they said that IF he were nominated he would be more likely to become President than any other GOP candidate.

Ron Paul was the only Republican who was predicting the current economic crisis and he is the most-interviewed of the former GOP candidates during the coverage of the crisis and he opposed the wildly-unpopular bail-out consistently—a position that could have won McCain the election if he had taken it.