Using PredictIt better-market data, here is a look at the state of the Republican nomination race for 2024. I made a previous version of this kind of report in August 2022, and will here compare the May 2023 with the August 2022 data (derive from the PredictIt betting market), along with other relevant commentary and developments.
(1250 words)
–The first-tier candidates are: Trump and DeSantis.
— The second-tier candidates are: Tim Scott, ‘Nikki’ Haley, Mike Pence, and perhaps Glenn Youngkin and/or Kristi Noem.
— A small group of long-shot bettors put real money on the nominee being Tucker Carlson after his firing, an effect which still remained in mid-May 2023.
— There are no other candidates plausibly in the second-tier right now, and any “third-tier” is so distant, per this PredictIt data, as to practically not exist.
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The below are the implied percentage-chances for winning the 2024 Republican nomination for the main Republican candidates (excluding Vivek Ramaswamy), as of the second-half of May 2023, derived from trading-prices on PredictIt.
The trading-prices are products of actual people putting real money on candidates, buying and selling ‘stock’ in these candidates. As it works like a stock-market, in theory that means it is based on informed decisions and there is an across-the-board reduction of fluff, wishful thinking, bias, consensus-bias, and more. Some argue the betting markets are more accurate than polls for this reason.
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Here are the implied-chances-to-win the Republican nomination derived from PredictIt (mainly pegged to May 17-27, 2023), with comments:
The first-tier candidates
- 50% Trump — this is up from 32% in August 2022. As of early 2023, Trump had been in 35-40% range consistently. DeSantis has, to an extent, stolen Trump’s “thunder” in this period (see the Ben Garrison cartoon).
Trump’s trading-price then began to rise in mid-April 2023 and briefly hit 55% (May 6th, 7th and 8th). it then faded down a little to 50% after the May 10th, 2023, CNN debate. This all reflects, recall, people buying and selling Trump-to-win stock, with real money.
- 28% DeSantis — he is down from 34% in August 2022 and down from a high-point of 40%, hit some time in mid-2022, and also briefly at other times. The fade to <30% corroborates the general-sense among the pundits that he has lost ground, as marginal bettors leave him.
DeSantis came close to re-attaining the 40% (implied-chance-to-win) for much of March 2023. Then a sustained fall began, dating to a beginning on March 22-23, 2023.
(For a kind of personal-political biography of DeSantis, see “Son of Florida, grandson of industrial Ohio, great-grandson of Italy: the ancestry of Ron DeSantis.”)
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On the Trump-vs.-DeSantis head-to-head race:
Trump’s “trading price” on PredictIt has been higher than DeSantis’ every day since March 23, 2023. That is after the two men’s “prices” had previously been always close to each other, and they had traded places frequently in the top spot for months.
The DeSantis decline, in terms of his PredicIt trading-price, starts in late March 2023, and the downward-trend sustained for weeks. It reached its low-point on April 25, 2023, briefly hitting as low as 21% in implied-chance-to-win.
The DeSantis ‘slump’ of spring 2023 is chronologically associated with his anti-Ukraine War position, which he had then-recently made public. It is also associated with a ramp-up in the DeSantis state education policy, which seeks to dismantle anti-white and pro-LGBTQ education to young children and for which Regime-media is critical of him.
Why did DeSantis “steal Trump’s thunder” and emerge virtually from nowhere to be the most-plausible ‘alternative’ to Trump?
The three big answers:
(1.) reactions to the Corona-Panic of the early 2020s; and
(2.) attitudes towards and policy on Immigration-and-nationality policy (as proxies for demographic policy); and
(3.) the Wokeness Question — what to do about our harmful ruling-ideology.
On none of these things was DeSantis considered a leading U.S. political figure back, say, as of New Year’s Eve 2019. That was just before the Corona-Panic social-phenomenon began to gather steam, ahead of the civilizational coup d’etat the Pro-Panic coalition staged in March 2020. DeSantis became one of the heroes of the hour during that challenging period. Trump’s fans consider consider him the best at (2.) and (3.), even if highly imperfect. DeSantis seemed to show he had similar views but was more morally serious about it.
And now a look at the second-tier candidates, although perhaps none are likely to win (as things stand now), each may have some influence on the way things shape up. Also recall that second- or third-tier candidates are often really running for a cabinet position, except for cases of true ideological-insurgent candidates like Pat Buchanan in the 1990s or the Ron Paul campaigns of 2007-08 and 2011-12.
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The second-tier candidates
- 7% Tim Scott — He recently declared himself an official candidate. He is the only Black candidate (and one of two “candidates of color” if counting ‘Nikki’ Haley, of Hindu origin, as in that category).
Tim Scott had been trading in the 3%-to-5% range in implied-chance-to-win before the official announcement. As of now, I don’t expect the recent bump-up to 7% to sustain and make him a realistic candidate. On the other hand, in the 2011-12 Republican-nomination political season, for a time an unqualified Black candidate named Herman Cain was one of the “frontrunners,” and Tim Scott knows well that any Black candidate in the USA of our time will get a natural boost due to cultural-political conditions. He has been on the scene now for ten years.
(For Tim Scott’s own political origins and his place in U.S. politics, see: “Tim Scott: a ‘national leader’ in our Multicultacracy,” Hail To You, Dec. 2012; and May 2023 brief decade-later follow-up, “Tim Scott as ‘national leader’ (2012), Revisited in 2023“).
- 3.5% “Nikki” Haley — she is down from her previous trading-price in the 5-8% range. Nikki Haley had been consistent in that 5-8% range for months, which made her an important second-tier candidate behind Trump and DeSantis.
Haley’s trading-price fell in early May 2023, cutting her implied-chance-to-win in half. Her downward-momentum coincides chronologically with an upward-momentum of about the same magnitude to Tim Scott. This suggests that much of the Haley-betting money may have sold at a small loss in order to shift to Tim Scott in early May 2023; a portion may also have gone to DeSantis.
As to both Tim Scott and “Nikki” Haley, I note that Haley was governor of South Carolina in 2012 when she appointed Tim Scott to the Senate in 2012. Tim Scott was not not very qualified for the job, but Haley said it was justified because of the need for the empowerment of non-white people, like her. (See “Tim Scott: ‘National Leader’ in the Multicultacracy,” Hail To You, Dec. 2012.)
- 3.5% Mike Pence
- 2% Tucker Carlson
- 1%: Mitt Romney (see: “Mitt Romney’s Ancestry,” Hail To You, Jan. 2012; “Mitt Romney and the Hispanics, or, the Ghosts of 1912,” Hail To You, Oct. 2012; “Romney most popular in Kenya,” Hail To You, Oct. 2012).
- 1%: Kristi Noem (South Dakota governor)
- 1%: Glenn Youngkin (Virginia governor; see note below)
The third-tier candidates
circa 2.5% to 3% is the aggregate for all other specific candidates. There are at least some bettors for a further eight named candidates.
Note, there is no generic “Other” or “None of the Above” bet on PredictIt; a bettor on PredictIt must place money on a specific named person. This “aggregate, all others” category includes people trading at prices putting them at <1% in implied-chance-to-win the Republican nomination in 2024.
The names that are currently trading at this low level include:
— Mike Pompeo (see note below),
— Ted Cruz,
— Tom Cotton,
— Donald Trump Jr.,
— Marco Rubio,
— Josh Hawley,
— Rick Scott,
— Larry Hogan (ex-Governor of Maryland; moderate-Republican).
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Notes
— note, Pompeo had been in the 3-4% range, competitive as a second-tier candidate along with the likes of “Nikki” Haley and Tim Scott and maybe Youngkin, before Pompeo declaring definitely that he will not run. That was on April 14, 2023. On that day, Pompeo’s price fell to the basement-level. Only very few die-hards or longshot-bettors are still trading for him, and Pompeo has shown no signs of even reaching 1% in implied-chance-to-win since that April 14th declaration disavowing a presidential campaign.
— note, Youngkin is another candidate who had been a solid low-tier candidate in the PredictIt betting markets, generally trading in the 3%-to-6% range until a sharp fall on the date May 1, 2023. On that day, Youngkin said publicly that he will not run. In the next few weeks, he recovered enough to be at either 1%, 2%, or even 3% in implied-odds-to-win; as of May 17-18 and the main-line of this data, he is down to 1% again. As of May 27, the date of posting this, he is up to about 4% again. Youngkin’s sub-2% period lasted from May 1 to May 19. It seems enough long-shot bettors still think he might win to push him back up.
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Hail To You 
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Updates for the end of May 2023
We hear today that Mike Pence will officially announce his candidacy next week. That’s early June 2023, one week short of exactly eight years after Trump announced in June 2015 (the “Trump comes down the escalator” moment, which his personality-cult promoters made much ‘hay’ over).
The betting-markets have reacted by pushing Pence to near the top of the second-tier candidates. Pence is now hovering near or at 5% in implied-chance to win the R nomination, just behind Tim Scott.
Meanwhile, Tim Scott has receded to the 6%-to-7% range in implied-chance-to-win, down from his one-time peak of 8% (attained May 23rd) in implied-chance to win the R nomination. Was the market-consensus ever really that non-entity Tim Scott has that chance to win, or were many bettors trying to do a “pump-and-dump“?
Bettors are more confident in DeSantis now — between May 23rd and May 31st, DeSantis’ implied-chance-to-win, based on latest trading, has hovered near 30% most of the time. It did sink briefly as-low-as 26.5% the day of the campaign-launch announcement itself (May 24th), but soon recovered.
Glenn Youngkin is a leading contender for most-famous sweater-wearer in America (now that Mr. Rogers is dead), but struggled to stay in the second-tier of the presidential aspirants. When I made this original report (primarily tied to May 17-18), Youngkin was in the third-tier. A ‘rally’ in which bettors began buying Youngkin stock began on May 20th, and continued for the next ten days. Youngkin is now pressing up towards 4% in implied-chance to win; bettors have re-secured for Youngkin his wavering place in the second-tier of candidates.
Continuing to fade is Nikki Haley. Throughout the entire month of May, bettors have steadily dumped Haley’s “stock.” The sell-off has pushed Haley’s implied-chance to win down, from as-high-as 6% as May 2023 opened, to 3.5% at the time of the data behind this original entry, and now down to 2.5% as the month of May 2023 closed.
Recapitulation — implied-chance-to-win the R nomination — as of end of May 2023:
First tier
– Trump: 50%
– DeSantis: 29%
Second tier: 16% aggregate
– Tim Scott: 6.5%
– Pence: 3.5%
– Youngkin: 3.5%
– Haley: 2.5%
Third tier: 5% aggregate
– Noem: 1%+
– Romney: 1%?
– Tucker Carlson: 1%?
– <1% each: Mike Pompeo, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Donald Trump Jr., Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, Rick Scott, Larry Hogan. Not listed: Vivek Ramaswammiey.
On the all-candidate “Who will win the in 2024?” betting-market
There is another 2024-presidential betting-market on PredictIt, involving all candidates (of both D and R) parties: “Who will win the 2024 U.S. presidential election?” [update: link corrected]. It offers a useful supplement and contrast with the “Who will win the Republican nomination,” the latter being my original focus here.
Possible choices given in the “who wins presidency in 2024” market are: Biden, Trump, DeSantis, Harris, Newsom, Buttigieg.
Implied-chances-to-win, based on trading-prices as of June 3, 2023, are:
Democrats: 47%
– Biden: 38%
– Kamala Harris: 4%
– Gavin Newsom: 3.5%
– ‘Pete’ Buttigieg: 1.5%
Republicans: 53%
– Donald Trump: 29.5%
– Ron DeSantis: 23%
(Recall also that there is no possibility to bet “None of the above” or the like; a bet must be for a specific named person and from among the list of options given.)
— I note that DeSantis does better relative to Trump in this “will-win-general-election” market than he does in the “will-win-Republican-nomination” market.
In the “Who wins R nomination” market, Trump-advantage is 175-to-100 (50% to 28/29%); but in the “Who wins the general election” market, Trump’s advantage is only 128-to-100 (29.5% vs. 23%).
In other words, if we conceptually combine the data from both, the “market” thinks Trump is relatively more likely to lose the general election. A lot of bettors implicitly foresee Trump winning the R nomination and losing the general election.
In the general-election market, DeSantis’ implied-chance-to-win exceeded Trump’s for a long time. Trump re-took the lead on April 3, 2023. (As of April 2, it was: DeSantis, 24% to win general-election; vs. Trump, 23% to win general election.) The Trump-over-DeSantis crossover happened in the R-nomination market on March 23, 2023, eleven days earlier.
— California’s demagogic governor, Gavin Newsom, reached as high as 7% in implied-chance-to-win the general election in much of mid- and late-April 2023. That is same relative position as held by Tim Scott in the R-nomination market. The Tim Scott betting-market strength is a puzzle, but so is the Newsom strength.
Did the many Newsom “buyers” of April 2023 really believe he would win?
Whatever it was, Newsom faded down to the 2.5% to 3.5% range by mid-May 2023, where he remains in early June.
There was a big surge in trades involving Newsom on the date May 29, 2023. There were more Newsom stocks bought or sold on that day than there had been the previous few-weeks combined. May 29th is shortly after the California Democratic state convention. Newsom did some of his usual grandstanding there. (It was the first such all-hands convention held in person since 2019; the Corona-Panic blocking it successively in 2020, 2021, and 2022.)
A highlight of the California Democratic state convention in 2023 was when Newsom came out with a pro-Wokeness vow that he would appoint a Black-female to the U.S. Senate to replace the ailing and elderly Dianne Feinstein if the latter reties. Newsom’s latest pro-Wokeness affirmation-of-faith and (headline-making) pledge must have been interpreted as a sign, of some kind, to presidential-campaign watchers — hence the heavy trading. But, in aggregate, the heavy trading of May 29th didn’t move Newsom’s trading-price. He is still at 3.5%, only a small number of long-shot die-hards with him. But if Joe Biden pulls an “LBJ” some time in the next six months with a surprise announcement that he is retiring, is Newsom such a bad bet?
Greetings , Hail. – Mistake in your first paragraph: it should say “Who will win the presidency”..
Would love to meet whoever has his money on “Buttigieg” .!
Thanks, Bo
Test
Republican Party 2024 betting-market, update for mid-July 2023
The PredictIt betting-market added two new choices on June 28, 2023: the fast-talking, Hindu-Indian-origin Vivek Ramaswamiey, and the known-quantity fat-guy Chris Christie. Both are doing relatively well.
The current “implied chances to win the Republican nomination” are:
— 50% Trump
— 15% DeSantis
— 12% Vivek Ramaswamiey
— 7% Glenn Youngkin
— 6% Tim Scott
— 5% Chris Christie
— 2% Nikki Haley
— 2% Mike Pence
— 0% to <1% each: Romney, Cruz, Tucker Carlson, Tom Cotton, Donald Trump Jr., Rubio, Josh Hawley, Rick Scott, Larry Hogan, Kristi Noem.
If we still use "tiers," clearly there is only one man in the "first tier." There is flux in the "second tier," in that people have been giving up on DeSantis. The media continues to insist he is failing; The narrative-drumbeat to that effect is strong. This anti-DeSantis line seems like a form of insider-politics, the meaning of which I don’t fully understand.
On the Democratic Party 2024 presidential nominee betting-market:
The market has shown little interest in Robert F. Kennedy Jr., after he was added as a choice in late June 2023.
Implied chance to win the ‘D’ nomination for president in 2024:
— 64% Joe Biden
— 19% Gavin Newsom (Calif. governor)
— 10% JFK Jr.
— 5% Kamala Harris ([shudder…])
— 2% All other, specific named persons (long-shot bettors mostly have money on Hillary Clinton and Pete Buttigieg.)
None of these implied-%-chances-to-win have moved much, at all, since JFK Jr. was added.
The latest Peak Stupidity entry called “The stupidity of Mike Pence” has more on the status of the Pence campaign as of mid-July 2023, including much discussion in the comments.
We’ve already seen that the betting-market has shown no enthusiasm: PredictIt had Pence a 3.5% implied-chance-to-win in May 2023; it was down to 2% in July 2023.
Update, early August 2023: What to make of the Ramaswamy rise
The PredictIt betting-market gained attention in late July 2023 when the Vivek Ramaswamy buying-price pushed above the Ron DeSantis buying-price, which held from July 27 and July 30, 2023.
This change was associated the coordinated hit against Ron DeSantis, and all associated with him, for the school-textbook anti-Black racism scandal in which DeSantis was accused of being pro-slavery. This scandal began in earnest about July 23 as a major left-wing talking-point, seen and heard everywhere people look for such signals. The textbook scandal cut off several points from DeSantis’ PredictIt buying-price (and therefore his implied chance to win the nomination). He had been around 18%; he dropped to <14% during the textbook-racism imbroglio.
At the "Ramaswamy peak" of late July 2023, Ramaswamy was at 17% implied-chance-to-win; DeSantis, at his low-point during the textbook scandal, was down to 12.5% implied-chance-to-win. DeSantis then recovered. But the signals from powerful forces were received and Ramaswamy was knighted an acceptable figure.
Ramaswamy was a total unknown as of mid-2020, and was created as a public figure only by Tucker Carlson. Tucker brought Ramaswamy on his influential show regularly starting in mid-2020 and up to his early 2023 campaign-launch, also happening on his show (Feb. 21, 2023). Ramaswamy gave a bullet-pointed list of reasons he was against Wokeness and why of course it fell to him, as a Nonwhite of recent foreign origin, to lead White America to oppose Wokeness.
I note again that Ramaswamy was a complete unknown as of mid-2020. He got around to publishing a book-length form of his bullet-pointed list of reasons he says he is against Wokeness and why he, as a supposed slick tech-millionaire and someone who is not White, is the natural leader of anti-Wokeness in the USA and can lead a coalition of disgruntled Whites and slick elite-immigrants like himself.
The latest is that Ramaswamy got a large surge of ‘buys’ on PredictIt today (afternoon EDT, August 2, 2023) that pushed him up two points in implied-chance-to-win. As of this writing, Ramaswamy stands at 13.5%, against DeSantis at 14.5% (both in calculated implied-chance-to-win).
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The full list as of Aug. 2, 2023:
Implied chances to win the Republican nomination for U.S. President, 2024, based on PredictIt betting-market data:
— 49.5%: Donald Trump Sr.
— 14.5%: Ron DeSantis
— 13.5%: Vivek Ramaswamy
— 7.5%: Tim Scott
— 5%: Glenn Youngkin
— 3.5%: Nikki Haley
— 3.5%: Chris Christie:
— 2.5%: Mike Pence:
— ca. 1% aggregate: All other specific candidates, split between Ted Cruz, Mike Pompeo, Mitt Romney, Tucker Carlson, Tom Cotton, Donald Trump Jr., Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, Rick Scott, Larry Hogan, Kristi Noem.
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Is Ramaswamy, who, as I say, shows signs of being a sleek political con-man, “all hype”? Is DeSantis still a better bet? Is the market irrational in this case?
On the eve of the first “Everyone-But-Trump Republican Debate” (Wednesday, August 23, 2023, 9pm U.S. Eastern Time; three days from this writing):
— — —
Implied-chances to win Republican nomination, per PredictIt betting-market data:
— 47.5% Trump
— 19% Vivek Ramaswamy (ughh…)
— 11% DeSantis
— 7% Tim Scott
— 6% Chris Christie
— 4% Glenn Youngkin
— 2.5% Nikki Haley
— <2% Pence
— 1%?: Doug Burgum (a new candidate)
— 0.1% to <1%: Romney, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, Tucker Carlson, Rick Scott, Larry Hogan, Kristi Noem.
— — —
I have negative thoughts about Vivek Ramaswamy, on how cynical his campaign is, and how his out-of-nowhere demagogic success is a signal of how flabby the U.S. Right is.
With candidacies like this, the support tends to be over-hyped and in part a virtue-signal. (The same, in different form, goes for Tim Scott.) This is even now suggested by bettors.
Vivek Ramasawmiey, Tim Scott, and Nikki Haley: two have only shallow ancestral ties to the USA; (Vivek's parents having been holders of an H1b-like visa when he was born in the 1980s). All three of them got where they are, in political life, by varying measures of "affirmative action"). But together the three control 55% of the non-Trump betting-market odds here, just as the early-end of the traditional start to the serious political-primary season is set to begin.
WHO WON THE REPUBLICAN DEBATE of AUGUST 2023?
A lot of talk on this over the past 36 hours.
But here we have a data-based estimate of “who won the debate,” not according to partisans or possibly-questionable insta-polls subject to short-term effects (and to say nothing of Internet-polls and Twitter-bots), but according to the betting-market which, in theory, is wiser than the insta-reactions:
Update 36 hours after the debate
Implied-chances to win Republican nomination, per PredictIt betting-market data (with comparison to three days before the debate, above):
— 55.5% Trump (+8)
— 14% Vivek Ramaswamy (-5)
— 13.5% DeSantis (+2)
— 2.5% Tim Scott (-5)
— 2.5% Chris Christie (-4)
— 3.5% Glenn Youngkin
— 6% Nikki Haley (+4)
— 2% Pence
— 0% to <1%: Doug Burgum, Asa Hutchinson, Mitt Romney, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, Tucker Carlson, Rick Scott, Larry Hogan, Kristi Noem.
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We see that "the market" (PredictIt betting market) believes Trump was the biggest winner of the Everyone-But-Trump Republican Debate of late August 2023.
The biggest losers:
By point-loss total, the biggest loser is Ramaswamy, with the caveat that he was over-valued (hyped) to begin with. By momentum, the biggest loser is probably Tim Scott.
Ramaswamy, a demagogue who personifies the successful peddler of snake-oil. He came out of nowhere, says all the right things to attract support, and was promoted in all the right places, but his “stock” was probably over-valued in much the same way that a tech-stock can be overvalued, being based on hype and not fundamentals.
The Ramashwamy drop a few points should not be over-estimated, for his strange campaign is still much stronger than it “should be” on general merits. The drop back down to 14%, down from his implausible-high of 19%, puts him back at the value he had as of August 17th-18th.
It seems to me Ramaswamy has been overvalued all along. If adjusting for the hype-candidate factor and the phenomenon of scooping-up Diversity-points and Demagogue-points, we might put Ramashwamy considerably below DeSantis.
Ramaswamy’s “loss of the debate,” per the betting-market data, is an interesting contrast with the many artificial twitter-polls and things that claim he “won,” often by suspiciously decisive margins.
I did a sample of Youtube comments on videos released after the debate that highlight Ramaswamy. The experiment I devised: How much scrolling to find one neutral (not pro-Ramaswamy) comment? How much to find one anti-Ramaswamy comment? The answers were astonishing, in both cases a lot longer than you’d think in a level-playing-field. I conclude that VR has large bot-farms working for him. It fits his overall modus operandi. Everything about this man’s political life is fake, including much of his apparent support.
Ramaswamy is running ostensibly to rule over a country with which he has limited connection, and for a job for which he has no qualification. Nor does he have any political track-record, beyond releasing a bullet-pointed, low-market book in 2021, marketed by a grinning, virtue-signaling Tucker Carlson.
The first entry of Ramaswamy into politics with his book. That book was about why he, Vivek Ramaswamy — a Righteous Nonwhite Immigrant who was helped along by White institutions, goodwill, and handouts all his life (including by his parents being handed golden H1b-like visas in the mid-1980s) — why he opposes Wokeness. “And to those many, many of you out in White Middle America too stupid and/or lazy to read: See it in easy-to-follow bullet-pointed form or via my sleek, cool tweets. For those who want the book, fear not: we do ship to trailer parks!”
The best way to see the Vivek Ramaswamy campaign is really as a career-move. At best, he positions himself for a cabinet position if Trump is reelected. At worst, he can milk a money-train as Righteous Nonwhite Immigrant for years and years to come.
Tim Scott is the biggest loser in relative terms, in that he lost two-thirds of his chance to win according to the PredictIt bettors (from 7.5% to 2.5%). His debate performance was weak, and there was no evident reason why anyone would follow him.
Yes, Tim Scott has definitely faded into the third tier, now that 36-hours of movement after the debate has passed under the bridge-of-time.
As such, expect some big offensive from his people soon, but it would be hard from him to do something like a “If elected I guarantee to deport ALL the migrants who arrived since 2020”-type line and seem plausible.
Just as previous hyped Black candidates that seem to pop up reliably single cycle on the Republican side — such as the absurd Herman Cain (2012) and the pleasant-but-unqualified Ben Carson (2016) — these candidates always-always-always get an artificial boost.
(The same sort of boost on the D-team side frankly carried the totally-unknown-quantity Barack Obama to the White Hose for eight years. Ramaswamy knows well he can also demagogue off the same forces: racial virtue-signaling. Back in the 2007-08 period when Obama skated onto the scene, Ramaswamy was in his early twenties and an affirmative-action beneficiary scooping up cash-handouts to Righteous Nonwhite Immigrants who have a Right-to-Rule over the USA; the same phenomenon allowed someone like Obama to walk into the presidency laughing all the way.)
Two other honorable-mention losers were: Doug Burgum and Asa Hutchinson.
Doug Burgum actually had some long-shot bettors with him before the debate. It’s unclear why he was invited to the debate at all, with some speculating that he has close ties to the Fox corporate heads.
The long-shot bettors pushed Burgum up to a 1%-implied-chance-to-win at his peak, but that’s all gone after the debate. He made little impression. He could have won by declaring he would deport illegals, end birthright citizenship immediately, and other Ann Coulter positions that attracted attention to Trump in mid-2015, butu he is too much a nice-guy to try that.
Burgum is now at ~zero, within the pack of fourth-tier candidates in buying-and-selling-driven PredictIt market-pricing, alongside people who are not even running, like Mitt Romney.
Meanwhile, Asa Hutchinson performed so poorly and looked so ridiculous, with his angry anti-Trump diatribes, that despite PredictIt adding his name recently, Hutchinson is firmly at 0%.
No one is betting on Hutchinson, not even perennial long-shot bettors. Burgum is with him. As neither man moved the needle, and they desperately needed to, it’s hard to see how they have any future in this race.
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The biggest winners:
By point-gain total, the biggest winner is Trump. But that’s not very interesting news except to confirm conventional-wisdom that “he was right to skip the debate.”
We are really interested in the second-place and third-place contenders, and how close they are to Trump or to the third-tier people.
I must say that Donald Trump‘s gain after the debate is impressive in one sense: He has now reached his highest-ever level of implied-chance-to-win during the campaign season (after other candidates declared their candidacies). This points to the entire non-Trump “field” collectively losing the debate.
The biggest winner among the second-tier crowd on points, was: Nikki Haley, on both absolute and relative terms. Suddenly Haley is in fourth place.
Nikki Haley may now be at the cusp of successfully consolidating a portion of the anti-Trump base-vote. But she has, so far, merely re-gained lost ground rather than made any real advances. Either way, she will not likely be ending her campaign any time soon.
Some argue the biggest winner was really Ron DeSantis, not because he “gained” so much but because he “didn’t lose.” He blocked, for now, those who say his campaign was spiraling downwards and would not recover.
Eventually he needs to make offensive gains and not just play defense, but showing that he can stand on the defense was important at this stage.
If DeSantis had flubbed the debate, he could have faded down to a Chris Christie level. Instead he remains at about the same level in this betting-market as he has been since mid-July, which is low but (we can now say) not at terminal-decline level.
THE “IOWA” 2024 BETTING-MARKET
New PredictIt betting-market(s) deal with Iowa Caucuses (Jan. 15th, 2024):
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A summary of the implied-percent-chances for each outcome, for each candidate, based on trading prices in the betting-markets today for first-place and second-place:
Trump
— 1st: 66% implied-chance to finish first in Iowa.
— 2nd: 14% implied-chance to finish second in Iowa.
— — Total: 80%
(Read the above as: “The market, as of today, is four-fifths certain that Trump places first or second in the Iowa Caucuses of Jan. 15th, 2024.”)
DeSantis
— 1st: 17%
— 2nd: 36%
— — Total: 53%
(DeSantis has had a modest up-trend for his first-place-in-Iowa chances since the Aug. 23rd debate. Pre-debate, he had been at 12%; at one point on Aug. 27th-28th, he pushed close to 20% before fading again to 17%.)
Vivek Ramashwammiey
— 1st: 8%
— 2nd: 23%
— — Total: 31%
(The H1b-visa candidate has had a significant up-trend for his second-place-in-Iowa chances since the Aug. 23rd debate; pre-debate: 13%; now 23%. I believe this is over-valued for hype of the moment, as some bettors have money on him in the way people bought GameStop stock in 2022 because it sounded like a cool Internet thing at the moment.)
Nimrata “Nikki” Haley
— 1st: 5%
— 2nd: 11%
— — Total: 16%
(Haley has had a significant up-trend for her second-place-in-Iowa chances since the Aug. 23rd debate; <3% pre-debate, and now she has jumped to 11%-chance for 2nd place.)
Tim Scott
— 1st: 3%
— 2nd: 10%
— — Total: 13%
(Tim Scott has had a significant down-trend for his second-place-in-Iowa chances since the Aug. 23rd debate; pre-debate: 18% but now only 10%.)
Pence
— 1st: 1%
— 2nd: 2%
— — Total: 3%
Christie
— 1st: 1%
— 2nd: 3%
— — Total: 4%
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The Iowa Caucuses are the first time people will be voting on these candidates. Forty delegates to the Republican nominating convention in summer 2024 will be awarded proportionally according to the votes each person receives.
If you take a technical view on delegate-counting, it doesn’t actually matter who is first, second, or third, and fourth. Only percentages matter. Obviously, first and second, etc., do matter for narrative purposes, as elections are so often stage-managed and spin-doctored, and semi-artificial “momentum” happens.
Percentages will matter more than exact placing. If 35% vs. 30% vs. 29% for the top three, it probably doesn’t matter who is in which “place” (1st, 2nd, 3rd), even for narrative’s sake. Even so, the trading-prices of these Iowa betting-markets are suggestive of how confident people are, and DeSantis looks relatively strong.
The market thinks that DeSantis will probably finish in the top two in Iowa. If so, it would seem that guarantees his staying-power in the race, if he wants to stay.
On current trading-prices, the market is 53% sure DeSantis gets 1st or 2nd. But that is factoring-in a probably-inflated price for Ramaswamiey (reflecting some true-believers in the hype, discussed in previous updates). If Ramaswamiey’s price is reduced to a more-realistic level to factor-out the hype, the market is around “almost 6 in 10” sure that DeSantis places in the top two, against “8+ in 10” sure that Trump will place in the top two in Iowa.