ubikcan

Huckerbee for GOP VP?

In less than one year we will have elected a new President of the United States. It is not too early to see what the current consensus “market” opinion is about a number of political questions.

Using crowdsourced “market” data like this is potentially as accurate as polls and perhaps even better. In polls people often don’t have formed opinions about issues or might have opinions but not be going to vote etc (this can be alleviated by only asking likely voters). Additionally, markets give people a chance to be more honest even about outcomes they don’t prefer because they will gain financially (eg., Republicans can bet on Hillary winning if they think she will even if they don’t prefer that outcome).

In market futures trading, people put down real money by making a prediction, or a bet if you like, about what they really think will happen in order to benefit from it.

For example, the market right now shows that they think the most likely by far VP for the GOP ticket will be Mike Huckerbee, currently trading at 27.1 (percent chance). This is well above the other candidates.

(The most likely Dem VP is Obama, trading at 21.5.)

In terms of an overall winner the markets are clearly predicting a Democratic party victory (62% likelihood) and more specifically a Hillary Clinton victory (though they are less sure about the precise identity, at 47%).

Republicans are currently only given a 36% chance of winning the presidency, with Giuliani leading at only a 14% chance.

As I did for the Midterms I’ll follow these predictions over the course the campaign season.