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Electability of 2016 Presidential Candidates as Implied by Betting Markets
- vixen99 11y agoHow depressing that a country of 300+ million individuals has candidates from the same families again and again.
- jahnu 11y agoWell, with democracy at least it doesn't take a war to change them.... ... um....
- uptown 11y agoQuora: "Are all the U.S. Presidents related to each other?" https://www.quora.com/Are-all-the-U-S-Presidents-related-to-each-other https://www.quora.com/Are-all-the-U-S-Presidents-related-to-...
- jerf 11y agoFollowed link, turns out all but one President can be traced to... King John, the one in the Robin Hood story, born December 24, 1166. Which in practical terms translates to "no", they are not related.
- pcl 11y agoPer the link, the exception is Martin Van Buren.
- CyberDildonics 11y agoI would have guessed Obama
- matwood 11y agoActually the rise of Trump, Carson, and to a lesser extend Fiorina shows that people are tired of the professional politician. Even if Bush or Clinton were the best candidates (I don't think they are), they look to be facing a huge headwind of people tired of the Bushs and Clintons.
- ck2 11y agoThe rise of Trump and the others simply means people want entertainment, that's all, the usa is turning into idiocracy.
- jgrowl 11y agoI think it could be both. The smart are getting smarter and the dumb are getting dumber.
- marincounty 11y agoI don't know why this comment is being downvotes? I sometimes feel the average voter actually thinks the president has all the power? He/she is just the spoke, maybe a few bearings of the hub, on a big wheel? It kills me when I hear, "Obama hasn't done anything?". Yea, the legislature put on the brakes on everything? (Sorry about the mechanical metaphors--spent the weekend under a truck.) A few years ago someone/group did a study, and concluded most voters literally don't know who's the best candidate? (Basically saying, the average voter is to--simple--to vote for the best person.) I think about that study often? I'll admit, I don't know who's the best candidate for this country. It's basically a craps shoot? What I really take seriously is, "What kind of judges will this presidential candidate put in office, if elected?" And I know, history has shown that liberal/conservative candidates can go in opposite directions once they get into office. I just hope for the best?
- matwood 11y agoHow can a study say voters do not know who the best candidate is when best is subjective? The problem is politics is a lot like religion where logic leaves the room in favor of polarizing opinions. You mention that Obama does not have all the power so it is not his fault that some things were not done, yet there are people still blaming Bush for everything under the sun 7-8 years later. The difference I have from who you replied to is that I think yes people are smarter and tired of career politicians. They know DC is screwed up and that no side is any better than the other (anyone who thinks Bush/Cheney had all sorts of back door dealings for their friends can in no way support Hillary). They all just want to consolidate power and help our their friends. That is where someone like Trump comes in. He's out there, but he's not them.
- happyscrappy 11y agoI hope it is Bernie Sanders vs. Donald Trump. Not because I like Trump but because it would make Sanders more likely to win.
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoAh, but the pool isn't really 300+ million. It takes a person with the qualities of a lawyer, used car salesperson, con artist and book maker to even consider running. I guess this is why many (even intelligent) people think that their favorite candidate is honest.
- ck2 11y agoRight because two sons of a president being a president is exactly the same as a non-blood relation of a president becoming president. The entire Bush family (and it's rather big) is in politics, except the women. How many Clintons are in politics?
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoPretty close when you compare the odds and consider the total pool of who could be president. As in 'so close without a microscope I would call them identical'.
- zxcvcxz 11y agoThat's why I think we should elect officials on a local level, then send the winner to state to compete against the other local winners in the state, then on to the national level. After the local level everything is funded by taxes and highly regulated to attempt to give everyone a fair chance. I think it would highly diversify the elections and give the people more of a sense of power. A local election is a lot easier to run than a national one.
- protomyth 11y agoIts not exactly a new thing. The 2nd and 6th US Presidents were a father-son combo. The 23rd President was the grandson of the 9th. Multiple Presidents were cousins of other Presidents. But for assassination, a tragic accident, and the moral judgement of a hyena[1], there might have been three President Kennedy brothers and one son. 1) leaving a girl to suffocate in a car underwater didn't end his political career but probably cost him the Presidency - that is what's sad in American politics
- kittenfluff 11y agoInterestingly, with Joe Biden in the range (10%, 13.5%) to win the nomination, and (7.7%, 8.3%) to win the Presidency, the lowest his electability could be is 7.7% / 13.5% = 57% and the highest it could be is 8.3% / 10.0% = 83% so the market seems to be pricing a probability in the range of (57%, 83%) for Biden to be elected president if he won the nomination - compared to Hillary Clinton's range of (56.9%, 57.7%) I can think of a few explanations - 1. Biden really is a lot more electable than Hillary Clinton 2. Both candidates have electability at the low end of their range (around 57%). 3. The market is wrong, i.e. they are systematically underrating Biden's chance of winning the nomination (and overrating Clinton's) or overrating Biden's chance of winning the election (and underrating Clinton's) or both. There is no arbitrage, but if you believe 3, there might be a good profit to be made in expectation by backing Biden to win the election, but Clinton to win the presidency (you wouldn't hold it through to 2016, but take off the bet as soon as the odds come back to something that looks more plausible). I haven't done the analysis to see if it's still worth it after trading costs, but maybe someone else wants to.
- matwood 11y agoThis makes a lot of sense. I see Biden as much more electable than Clinton mainly because Clinton will draw out the 'hate Clinton' crowd to vote against her. I think the DNC is also realizing this, hence all the talk of Biden jumping in to begin with.
- matthewbauer 11y agoA 4th option could be: If Biden defeats the established nominee, he must have an exceptionally well run campaign making him more electable. That is by winning the nomination Clinton has just met expectations but Biden exceeds most expectations.
- ovet 11y agoI think it could also be that Vice Presidents have generally done well in presidential elections when running after their VP term. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-hobratsch/when-vice-presidents-run_b_4922047.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-hobratsch/when-vice-p...
- saturdaysaint 11y agoI don't know if this has any special significance, but I think the number of FB/Twitter followers for the current frontrunners are interesting. I'll use Facebook numbers. Hillary Clinton - 1.3 million Jeb Bush - .26 million Donald Trump - 3.7 million Joe Biden - .85 million Bernie Sanders - 1.4 million Marco Rubio - .99 million John Kasich - .14 million Scott Walker - .36 million Ben Carson - 2.88 million No, I don't think that Donald Trump is the runaway favorite for president. On the other hand, a look at these would make Walker's collapse and Bush's struggles (despite a goliath $100 million warchest) less of a surprise than the political press has portrayed. Likewise, Sanders' challenge to Clinton would be less surprising. Bush is the real surprise to me. Endorsements and dollars show that he's the establishment's pick, but people just aren't interested in the guy. It would be kind of amazing if someone went from having a D-list celebrity following to sitting in the oval office in a little over a year.
- uptown 11y agoIf that's your metric, it's probably worth running them through a few filters to detect authenticity of their followers: https://www.twitteraudit.com/ https://www.twitteraudit.com/
- vonmoltke 11y agoThat site thinks I'm a fake, so I question the accuracy of its metrics.
- uptown 11y agoI usually use SocialBakers, but it's down right now. http://www.socialbakers.com/twitter/fakefollowercheck/ http://www.socialbakers.com/twitter/fakefollowercheck/
- saturdaysaint 11y ago(OP) Good idea - FWIW the numbers look proportionately the same if filtered through that. Interestingly, Hillary actually towers over Sanders in terms of authentic Twitter follows.
- impostervt 11y agoI'd be curious to see Electability numbers given scenarious of one candidate v another. For instance, 'Clinton v Bush', 'Sanders v Trump'.
- clarkmoody 11y agoA color-coded matrix of candidate pairs would be a nice addition to this discussion.
- ck2 11y agoI don't think people understand how close presidential elections are in the US (even after the nightmare in Florida with the supreme court picking Bush as the winner). The idea of Trump picking the next few supreme court judges is nauseating.
- malloryerik 11y agoI'd like to see a history of betting markets in elections. How accurate have they been in the past?
- dragonwriter 11y ago> I'd like to see a history of betting markets in elections. How accurate have they been in the past? IIRC, like polls, they are fairly accurate -- if you look at the state of the market at the last point before the election. Earlier than that, not so much.
- mabbo 11y agoThis same math can be applied to the MLB World Series. (I'm in Toronto, which means for the first time since the early 90s, baseball is interesting!) Instead of primaries, there's Pennants. Instead of general elections, there's the World Series. http://www.vegasinsider.com/mlb/odds/futures/ http://www.vegasinsider.com/mlb/odds/futures/ Right now, the Jays are the second most likely team to win their Pennant (2/1 vs 9/5 for the Royals). But at the same time, they are the most likely to win the World Series (17/4 vs 9/2 for the Royals). In terms of the original article, the Jays are more 'electable' than the Royals. I have no idea how this should affect betting strategies, but it sure is interesting from a statistics point of view.
- secfirstmd 11y agoI worked for a summer at Intrade.com during 2008. It was a very flawed company (and CEO) but it's a pity it's not around during this election. US Presidential elections were one of the few things were it had enough data and people putting money on it's markets that it's predictions were excellent. (Though I think in hindsight I got the job by telling John Delaney the immediate market highs for the Republican's post-Palin entry was a temporary bounce and Obama would win because the economy was the main issue, the Democrats were polling far far higher on it - guess a political degree can sometimes trump market sentiment :) In fact, I think it's a pity (with the exception of how badly the company was run) in general that something like Intrade is not around. If I am legally allowed to speculate/gamble on oil futures, I really don't understand why I can't be allowed to speculate/gamble/hedge on geopolitical events.
- endianswap 11y agoIsn't predictit.com sufficient for what you want?
- secfirstmd 11y agoHmm, hadn't come across it before. They seem to be offering to customers in the USA which is interesting. It was the regulatory issues in the US which was one of the biggest problems with Intrade's business.
- throwaway1967 11y ago> I really don't understand why I can't be allowed to speculate/gamble on geopolitical events. That would get people interested in geopolitical events. At least, more interested than the establishment would like them to be. There'd be books on geopolitical spread betting, how to become informed, how reading unpopular economics blogs can actually help your understanding, and so on. Lots of truth would come out if this were allowed. I'm just hypothesizing, feel free to disagree!
- GregBuchholz 11y agoWhat do you think of the Iowa Electronic market: http://tippie.uiowa.edu/iem/markets/pres16.html http://tippie.uiowa.edu/iem/markets/pres16.html ...and their "U.S. Presidential Election Market"?
- imaginenore 11y agoWhy in the world would they bet on Jeb Bush over Trump or Carson? Look at the actual polls, Bush is doing worse and worse, while Trump and Carson are rising: http://i.imgur.com/naxgnhi.png http://i.imgur.com/naxgnhi.png http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/rise-of-the-anti-establishment-presidential-candidates/1822/ http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/rise-of-the-a... (yesterday's numbers)
- WildUtah 11y agoRepublican Party insiders like organizers, lobbyists, congressmen, senators, governors, media personalities, and fund raisers despise Trump and adore Bush. Republican insiders make bank working for defense contractors and Trump was against their Iraq profit center. The donor class is focused like a laser on driving down wages with unauthorized immigration and H1-B that Trump wants to limit. The Republican leadership sees Latin Americans as a voting demographic they can capture 40% of but only by opening the border to unlimited immigration to prove they really love Latinos and Trump threatens both of those hopes. (How Republicans will benefit by increasing the number of people who will vote 60% against them is a mystery to me, but I'm not a Republican.) As the election approaches, the influence of insiders rises and Republicans especially are very obedient to authority figures. Historically, the candidate next in line according to Republican insiders always and without exception wins the nomination, even when he's very unpopular with the base. Therefore, analysts find Trump a very long shot.
- Grue3 11y agoDoes nobody remember Newt Gingrich anymore? Or Herman Cain? Both of those were leading in primary polls at some point and ended up nowhere.
- VT_Drew 11y agoYou put in Ben Carson but not Rand Paul?
- protomyth 11y agoMissed Cruz also who has a pretty big warchest at this point.
- njharman 11y agoI wonder when if ever it will be cost effective for a candidate to put many bets in order to manipulate the odds. Idea being when you have reported 75% winning lots of people who would vote against you stay home "cause it's pointless".