I really, really miss InTrade. Looks like they are going to start up again, but after the last debacle, I don’t see how they can ever establish a level of trust that will get them really going again. I think that eventually internet gambling and the sure flow of revenue will get the best of all of the states (except perhaps Utah and maybe one or two others) and we will be able to place wagers from the comfort of our offices and homes. But that is certainly grist for another post.
For now, we only have the British bookies to lean on, and we don’t have futures markets; instead, we have straight up odds. Here is a look a the odds as of today for the next President:
Hillary Clinton – 7-4
Marco Rubio – 9-1
Chris Christie – 10-1
Jeb Bush – 14-1
Paul Ryan – 16-1
Andrew Cuomo – 20-1
Elizabeth Warren – 20-1
Rand Paul – 20-1
Martin O’Malley – 25-1
Rob Portman – 25-1
Bob McDonnell – 33-1
Condoleeza Rice – 33-1
Deval Patrick – 33-1
Joe Biden – 33-1
Mark Warner – 33-1
Rahm Emmanuel – 33-1
Susana Martinez – 33-1
Bobby Jindal – 40-1
Michael Bloomberg – 40-1
Scott Walker – 40-1
Amy Klobuchar – 50-1
Cory Booker – 50-1
David Petraeus – 50-1
Jon Huntsman – 50-1
Mike Huckabee – 50-1
Mitt Romney – 50-1
Rick Santorum – 50-1
Sam Graves – 50-1
Sarah Palin – 50-1
Tim Kaine – 50-1
Eric Cantor – 66-1
Evan Bayh – 66-1
Mike Pence – 66-1
Dennis Kucinich – 100-1
Herman Cain – 100-1
John Kasich – 100-1
John Thune – 100-1
Julian Castro – 100-1
Kathleen Sebelius – 100-1
Kay Hagan – 100-1
Mia Love – 100-1
Michelle Obama – 100-1
Newt Gingrich – 100-1
Rick Perry – 100-1
So, a few thoughts. I don’t live in a cave, but I am not a political junkie either. I listen to probably 45 minutes or so of financial news on Bloomberg every day on my drive to and from work, and they sprinkle in a news cast twice an hour. I also quickly scan a news website or two per day. So I don’t know if I am above or below average as far as my media/news consumption goes. With that disclosure, I have never heard of:
Martin O Malley
Deval Patrick
Susanna Martinez
Amy Klobuchar
Sam Graves
Tim Kaine
Mike Pence
Julian Castro
Kay Hagan
Mia Love (sounds like a prON actress)
Your mileage will vary depending on where you live, but I would guess that most folks in the US have never even heard of at least a third of these candidates.
Rahm Emmanuel is on there? Michelle Obama? No way.
The Hillary! odds are daunting. She is the obvious front runner, but it is a LONG time from November 2016 and she can for sure do very poorly in any debate. Looking forward to the Benghazi hazing when the time comes.
I know who I would vote for in a heartbeat and most regular readers of this blog can probably make an educated guess as to who that would be, but I don’t want to taint the conversation with my pick. Let’s hear your thoughts on this list of odds.
Cross posted at LITGM.
Thin markets, very early. Not very useful yet.
Walker at 40 to 1 is a buying opportunity.
I also really, really miss Intrade. It was accurate in 2012 — Romney never even got close to even odds.
InTrade also called both the Walker election and failed recall perfectly.
Hillary is only front runner because we don’t know who else will be running, though it sounds like Rand Paul is. Give it another couple of years. And of course: events.
Deval Patrick is the governor of Massachusetts. He was first elected in 2006, in a campaign run by David Axelrod, a campaign that turned out to be a test run for Obama’s presidential campaign. (Axelrod even recycled at least one of the speeches.) As far as I can tell, Patrick is a little more competent than Obama, which is not saying very much.
Mia Love will probably be the next congresswoman from Utah’s 4th district. She almost defeated six-term Democratic incumbent Jim Matheson in 2012, losing by just 768 votes. (If there hadn’t been a Libertarian in the race, I think she would have won.) He’s retiring, so she is now the heavy favorite to win the race this November.
She’s a member of the LDS church, which is no surprise; she is also the daughter of immigrants from Haiti, which may be.
(On their first date, her husband, Jason Love, took her to a shooting range.)
Awesome first date.
Martin O’Malley is Governor of Maryland. Guess which party.
I think Susanna Martinez is the Republican governor of New Mexico.
Mike Pence is a former Republican congressman from Minnesota.
Kay Hagan is the Democratic governor of North Carolina.
I propose a ban on discussions of the 2016 election until the year after next.
Interesting that Fauxcahontas is in there at the same odds as Rand Paul. She is the far left candidate but probably not a threat to Hillary unless Hillary stumbles badly or gets sick.
From a value perspective Rick Perry at 100-1 looks like a decent speculation.
I’d too take some action on Rick Perry at a hundred to one. Rand Paul is another bargain at twenty to one.
“… a ban on discussions of the 2016 election until the year after next.”
Fat chance, around here.
I would love to have some action on Walker at 40-1.
Lex. It is worth a shot. 2 years is a heck of a long time, especially when you have to listen to Hussein’s inane blather.
Mike Pence is now the governor of Indiana — and a pretty good one, fro what I can tell.
Tim Kaine is a former governor of Virginia and the current junior senator from that state.
Amy Klobuchar is the senior senator from Minnesota. Her colleague is Al Franken.
Sam Graves is a Republican congressman from Missouri. Julian Castro is the Democratic mayor of San Antonio.
(When Castro was re-elected in 2011, the total turnout was “around seven percent”, according to Wikipedia. That’s pretty miserable.)
wuddu i know, but Perry @ 100:1 seems pretty good. Like to hear what Sgt. Mom and other Texans think.
Would short the Rand Paul bet.
Rubio for me.
Watch out for Castro and his brother. No joke -not kidding. They are red diaper “inninos” from a Texas political family. Both have inspirations for the White House and beyond (as we say of the politically ambitious).
I think Perry would be great – but he is so “Texas” that the coastal elites would eat him alive.
I’d take Scott Walker.
Who represents the Gadsen Flag on that list?
Who represents Americans on that List?
Who are you expecting? What do you expect of them? Different policies actually enacted?
Democracy has Failed to control Government, and Government has become Predatory. This tale is ancient, it’s just new to America.
We have no representation and we shan’t get it. Face it: Democracy Failed.
They all represent Americans. A lot of Americans disagree with you or are willing to be bought. It’s always been this way to some degree. It’s gotten worse in recent decades. We all see it. However, it’s a leap to assert that because the situation has gotten worse that, therefore, representative govt has failed. Nobody knows what’s going to happen or what can happen. Nothing is foreordained. Fires can be put out. Voters are not robots, they can change their minds or be persuaded.
Our choices aren’t optimal but surely a Scott Walker or Rand Paul is better than a Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren. The fact that someone with Paul’s views is running at all and may be competitive is progress.
The political process still works. Do you want to participate or carp from the sidelines?
Get to know Susanna Martinez. I think she has a bigger lock on the GOP VP nomination than Hillary has on the DEM P.
In 1995, Martinez changed her membership from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. On August 29, 2012, Martinez gave a speech to the Republican National Convention where she spoke right before Paul Ryan and described her decision to switch parties. She told the story that she was taken to lunch by Republican friends who wanted her to switch parties. She stated that she was going just to be polite, but when she left the luncheon with her husband, she had changed her mind. She told the convention, “When we left that lunch, we got in the car and I looked over at Chuck and said, ‘I’ll be damned – we’re Republicans.”
Martinez supports a balanced budget and lower government spending. She favors putting taxpayer money into a rainy day fund, and refunding taxpayers to attempt to stimulate growth. Martinez is pro-life and is opposed to elective abortion. Martinez is opposed to same-sex marriage, but has no record on civil unions. Martinez opposes New Mexico’s medical marijuana program, but has indicated that repealing New Mexico’s existing law is not a priority.
Also Mike Pence. Pence served for a time as the chairman of the Republican Study Committee. His Committee assignments in the U.S. House included: Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Middle East and South Asia (Vice Chair), Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution (Vice Chair), and Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet. While in Congress he belonged to the Congressional Internet Caucus, International Conservation Caucus, Sportsmen’s Caucus, and the Tea Party Caucus. He has done an excellent job in Indiana and would be an excellent alternative to Walker if one is needed.
Martinez is opposed to same-sex marriage, but has no record on civil unions. Martinez opposes New Mexico’s medical marijuana program, but has indicated that repealing New Mexico’s existing law is not a priority.
I have no problem with same sex marriage or gay rights and I support the legalization of marijuana. But I’m much more of a Libertarian than a Conservative. From my perspective, whether two women on the next block or two guys around the corner are married or living together or having sex has no effect on anyone around them. I see no justification in the government inserting itself into that arrangement or legislating on its legality. It’s no one’s business but theirs. I do have a problem when they insist on forcing the Catholic church to recognize their union, for example. As for marijuana, I cannot and never could understand why we put people in jail for smoking it. You don’t have to approve of it or have any interest in it – I don’t – to not see it as a crime.
“The fact that someone with Paul’s views is running at all and may be competitive is progress.” Ain’t that the truth.
A minor correction – Kay Hagan is a Democrat Senator from NC, not Governor. She’s up for re-election this year, having ridden into office on Obama’s coattails in 2008.
Obama’s coattails are not exactly popular in NC right now, so she stands a good chance of losing her seat come November. IIRC, she’s pretty high on the GOP’s target list.
Mia Love as the GOP nominee would be great, even if she doesn’t have much experience (not that the current occupant of public housing at 1600 Penn Ave did), if only because having a black female, daughter of immigrants as the GOP candidate would tie the media in knots. (And yes, I’m going to say black, because her parents are Haitian, not from Africa.)
Now they’ve added Joe Scarborough to the list. OMG
The list may be progress, but in what kind of a world would Elizabeth Warren be a possibility out of the fringe parties that listen to Chomsky. Perhaps the list also tells us this may be a deciding election in the very very long term – for us and a lot of other people in a lot of other countries.
“I have no problem with same sex marriage or gay rights and I support the legalization of marijuana. But I’m much more of a Libertarian than a Conservative. ”
I’m the same way and had an interesting exchange over at Ricochet the other day. I joined a few months ago as it seemed a congenial group on the right. I have discovered a very aggressive group of creationists and was able to get crossways with them by commenting that I would not write a letter of recommendation for a student to medical school if he/she did not believe in evolution.
It became an interesting sidelight on the social conservative matter and helped me to decide that I am a libertarian, not a conservative, at least of that variety. I don’t care what people believe as religious faith but I wonder how the GOP will handle the growing (it seems to me) conflict of social cons with the libertarian wing.
Elizabeth Warren is a phenomenon of the 21st century when accomplishments mean less than credentials, even fake ones.