Posted on 10/31/2007 1:17:10 PM PDT by Plutarch
Thompson might still be hanging in there in national polls , but those trading money on the probability of Thompson becoming the nominee are increasingly bearish on his chances.
At one point, the probability of Thompson winning the GOP nomination was trading at 35% at Intrade . Over the last month his position has deteriorated, and in the last several days crumbled.
At Intrade Thompson is trading at 8.4%. At Iowa Electronic Markets 7.1%,
The validity of future’s markets is sometimes questioned. No one was questioning them, however, when Fred was trading at 35% .
Oh, and probably most of the rest of the field is the new attention paid to Huckabee. At Intrade, Thompson is now within 1/2 a point of McCAin & Ron Paul, with Huckabee less than a point behind them.
Some previous market predictions. Sample from many.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1256068/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1266156/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1504649/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1246264/posts
If you are convinced that Fred will be the nominee, here's a chance to take a lot of people's money. Go long on Fred.
of course it can go up. There’s plenty of time. but the market is telling Fred he really needs to change
Well, I know a lot of folks who are business people. MOST of them are Conservative, but there are a few around here that simply can’t get liberalism out of their heads — of course, they aren’t “rich” they will tell you. LOL
In Demcember of 2003 Howard Dean was trading in the 70’s on the IEM market. http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/media/12_10_03.html His nearest competitors were Wesley Clark and Hillary Clinton (who had already ruled out a 2004 candidacy.) John Kerry who, as some of you may recall, was fated to win the 2004 nomination and narrowly lose to President Bush, wasn’t selling at any price.
An open nomination contest is highly predictable, but not if you take polls and expert opinion from the usual suspects seriously as most of the bettors apparently do. Whatever the polls say you’re not likely to lose money betting that voters will opt for the candidate who is best positioned to take their party’s case to the electorate in a general election.
For the Democrats in 2004 that was John Kerry. He was antiwar enough for the rabid Dem base but conventional enough and with enough medals to persuade some gullible moderates and swing voters that he could be trusted to protect the nation.
For Republicans next year it’s Fred Thompson. Neither Giuliani nor Romney has the right history or ideological orientation to argue the Republican case. Of the serious candidates, only Fred is selling what the GOP wants to buy. Whatever the markets may say, he is therefore very likely to be the Republican nominee.
Wait a couple of weeks to see if the price gets a bit better and then bet the house limit on Fred.
I don't know if Intrade was even running 8 years ago.
it was Dean’s to lose. He had what dems were looking for until he went crazy.
Rudy’s strategy is to split the pro-life vote. He’ll continue to do that as long as romney, huckabee and mccain are in the race. Fred has to stand out a lot and Hunter isn’t making much of a difference so just being solid on the issues isn’t the most important factor.
It won’t be in a couple of weeks, not Fred’s style.
We’ll be arguing this up to the last minute, with Fred in the “tank” according to all the “experts”, including the ones here. Then we will wake up and he has won by 20% because while we are all debating things, Fred will have gotten the votes that count, the ones that come from the voters...
The moment when Dean went very publicly crazy and issued the scream heard round the world came after his candidacy had imploded with a third-place finish in Iowa.
The lesson of the 2004 Democrat nomination contest is that implausible candidates (Dean, Clark) can look very strong but that they ultimately obey the law of gravity and come crashing to earth. When they do, plausible candidates can come from nowhere (let alone second place) to win.
Everybody in the Republican field this year is an implausible candidate, except Fred. Giuliani is an authoritarian statist. Mitt is a managerial statist. Hucksterbee is a religious statist. McCain has no ideological compass at all. None of them makes any sense for a conservative party.
On this basis alone Fred stands out more than enough to win. Starting in Iowa, voters will makes sense out of the chaos and they’ll do it with surprising speed.
so in other words, insider trading is essential for an efficient market...and the insiders were not for Dean.
how did Dole win the nomination in 96? couldn’t we compare phil graham to fred?
gramm
Exactly, and good point. Maybe buy time next week, if you are into such. I gamble on stocks though.
He needs to get elected first. Sheesh.
Exactly.
It's frustrating to me that the Hunter/Paul/Huckabee/Tancredo folks can't or won't see through that strategy. By splitting up the conservative vote among several conservative candidates they're handing over the nomination to the man who will be most liberal RINO who has ever ran on the GOP ticket. I realize that Fred isn't as conservative as Hunter or some of the other also-rans. But he's far more so than either Rudy or Mitt, and unlike Hunter and the rest of the field he can win both the nomination and the main event if all the conservatives would just get on board and stop Rudy from walking away with the nomination by a plurality win but without the support of a large segment of the GOP base in the general election. AFAIC that situation would guarantee a Hillary win and the worst of all possible outcomes for the next two presidential terms.
Rudy can't beat Hillary without the support of virtually all the 25 million social conservatives who voted in '04 according to exit polls, and I don't believe that level of support will be there from the evangelical and devout Catholic vote bloc if Rudy is the nominee. Mitt would no doubt do better in that demographic sector, but still not well enough to win IMHO.
I am torn because if you hid all polls from me for the last year, and asked me who I liked, I would gravitate towards Hunter and Thompson. Then when you give me the poll data I am left with Thompson. Am I supposed to ignore my own subjective opinions of these people and just say “If the poll says he’s down this week, I should give up”? We are not day trading stocks here. There is plenty of time for Thompson to turn his numbers around, and his fundraising has put him in the ballpark of what he needed for Q307. My next consideration would be watching the next debate (November 6th?). Beyond that, all of this talk about polls is just noise.
Dole won the nomination in 1996 much as Fred is likely to win it this year. He was the last man standing when all the implausibles (Steve Forbes, Lamar!, Pat Buchanan)were eliminated. Dole had the added advantage of being the early favorite and therefore the default nominee absent the rise of a strong challenger. This year there really is no early favorite because the only legacy candidate, John McCain is a nonstarter.
Poor Phil Gramm was just the best-heeled implausible in 1996. He ran a dismal campaign which focused on his principal area of expertise and interest — economics, and failed to stake out any clear ground in other areas of importance to voters. He and Steve Forbes duked it out to see who would be Mr. Fiscal Conservative in the race. Forbes won. Gramm was gone after his fifth place finish in Iowa.
Fred’s hard-hitting clarity (consider his remarks yesterday about Hillary’s driver’s licenses for illegals gaff) makes him something of an Anti-Gramm. Unlike Gramm he is staking out clear, compelling positions on all the questions likely to drive voting behavior next year. More importantly, unlike Gramm he has no plausible competition.
Put your money on Fred. The long odds are gravy.
The buyers aren’t rational? They are putting money at risk for nothing?
Dole didn’t have to do anything except be the early favorite and just watch everyone else fight each other. That’s what Rudy is doing.
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