Thursday, October 29, 2015

Presidential Probabilities

Now that Intrade is gone, here is one place to see who is ahead based on betting odds.

Update: A friend emails me:

It's clear from the numbers that this market doesn't expect a credible third-party candidate.  Interestingly, this means that the reported unconditional probability of becoming president (the third column) is the product of the reported probability of winning a party nomination (one of the first two columns) and the implied conditional probability.

Clinton's implied probability of getting elected conditional on winning the Democratic nomination is 60.3%.  That means that, "on average," the Republican nominee has a 39.7% chance of winning.  The market's view of the relative strengths of the Republican candidates can then be seen by comparing their implied conditional probabilities to this 39.7% figure: 

Rubio    41.9%
Trump   42.0%
Bush      55.4%
Carson  38.8%
Cruz      36.6%