Is Huntsman more electable than Romney?

Intrade runs betting markets on just about everything. Because people are putting money on the line, the current intrade share prices can be used to estimate the “common wisdom” among bettors about how likely something is.

The political markets are fun to watch. There’s a market for betting on the outcome of the 2012 presidential election and another for betting on the Republican nomination race. At present, the betting on Intrade leads to these predictions (sorted in descending order by the middle column):

We can take this one step further. If you were to bet on a candidate’s chance of winning the general election in 2012, you would have to factor in that candidate’s chance of winning the nomination first. By fiddling with these numbers, we can estimate each candidate’s electability in the general election.

For example, if we divide Romney’s 34.2% chance of winning the general election by his 68.5% chance of winning the GOP nomination, then we infer that Intrade’s bettors believe that Romney has a 49.9% chance of beating Obama if he receives the nomination. (That is, 34.2/68.5=49.9). If he is the nominee, bettors believe Romney has a 49.9% chance of beating Obama.

Let’s do that math for all these candidates. Here’s the result (in descending order):

I question the result for Ron Paul. He has such an energized base that I wouldn’t be surprised if his supporters were irrationally optimistic about his odds. Hard to say.

But aside from Ron Paul, bettors believe that Huntsman is the most electable candidate. And in a result that may interest Utah readers, gamblers are more willing to bet their money that Huntsman can beat Obama than that Romney can. (Please, no jokes about $10,000 bets. I know. It’s tempting.)

I wrote a similar post back in June. Back then, Huntsman had a 48.0% chance of beating Obama, better than Romney’s 41.1%. Huntsman still has better odds against Obama, but Romney has closed the gap somewhat.

Possibly related posts:

• Why Mitt Romney is not the inevitable nominee
• How different are Romney and Perry ideologically?
• Does Huntsman have better odds against Obama than against Romney?

Possibly related posts (automatically generated)

• Why Mitt Romney is not the inevitable nominee (November 22, 2011)
• How different are Romney and Perry ideologically? (September 8, 2011)
• Does Huntsman have better odds against Obama than against Romney? (June 7, 2011)