Posts tagged Jon Huntsman

From June to Decem­ber, we gave you a run­down of the Repub­li­can field for the 2012 Pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion. These “Stam­ped­ing Ele­phant” fea­tures (see image at left) used to come about mid-​​month. For the next few weeks, or at least until the nom­i­nee becomes clear, we plan to update these weekly on Thurs­days (weakly stam­ped­ing ele­phants?), as the results from Sat­ur­day and Tues­day votes come in and are digested by the punditry.

The Iowa Cau­cuses didn’t change things much in terms of place­ment of Repub­li­can con­tenders, though it did whit­tle the num­ber down by one. For­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov­er­nor Mitt Rom­ney was the big ben­e­fi­ciary on Intrade. There is now a 75 point gap between Rom­ney, with an 81 per­cent chance of win­ning the nom­i­na­tion, and second-​​place for­mer House Speaker Newt Gin­grich, at six percent.

We started the monthly recaps in June with 11 can­di­dates and poten­tial can­di­dates judged by Intrade investors to have bet­ter than a one per­cent chance of secur­ing the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion. Nine can­di­dates met the one-​​percent thresh­old in July and August. In Sep­tem­ber, the num­ber of maybe-​​viable can­di­dates dropped to six. October’s run­down had seven can­di­dates at greater than one per­cent on Intrade. In Novem­ber, there were still seven can­di­dates, with Mitt Rom­ney and Newt Gin­grich in the first and sec­ond posi­tions, Texas Gov­er­nor Rick Perry fad­ing fast in third, and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ron Paul (R-​​Lake Jack­son, TX) and Jon Hunts­man tied for fourth. Her­man Cain was still in the race last month, but drop­ping fast in sixth place, and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Michele Bach­mann (R-​​Stillwater, MN) in seventh.

At the time of our last run­down, 21 days ago in mid-​​December, the “Not Rom­ney” was Gin­grich, but his “Not Rom­ney” surge lasted no longer than a month. For­mer Sen­a­tor Rick San­to­rum had the good sense to mount a “Not Rom­ney” surge in late Decem­ber, just in time for the Iowa Cau­cuses. That brought him into a tie with Rom­ney (who pre­sum­ably is unable to mount a “Not Rom­ney” surge). At last report, Rom­ney led by eight votes, 30,015 to 30,007, so I’m com­fort­able call­ing that a tie because it’s a mar­gin of 0.0066%, well within the mar­gin of error of any vot­ing sys­tem with over 100,000 votes cast.

This close to the cau­cus, Real Clear Pol­i­tics aggre­gated poll aver­ages aren’t going to help us much. RCP is cur­rently aggre­gat­ing polls from mid-​​December to Jan­u­ary 3, so there hasn’t been time for the aggre­gated polls to react to the news of the San­to­rum Sur­prise. How­ever, Intrade investor/​bettors have had time to digest and act on the Iowa news, so let’s once again focus on those num­bers.  (more…)

And then there were six.

Once a month, we give a run­down of the Repub­li­can field for the 2012 Pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion. Since these get posted about mid-​​month, this will be the last run­down before the pri­mary sea­son begins in earnest. By the time I write next month’s “Stam­ped­ing Ele­phants”, as we’re wont to call it around here, we’ll have some actual vot­ing data from the Iowa Cau­cuses (Jan­u­ary 3) and the New Hamp­shire Pri­mary (Jan­u­ary 10).

Iowa Elec­tron­ics Mar­ket pre­dicted place­ment of Iowa Repub­li­can Cau­cus can­di­dates. From top to bot­tom, first three places are: Ron Paul, gold; Newt Gin­grich, pur­ple; Mitt Rom­ney, teal.

Speak­ing of the Iowa Cau­cuses, the graph at right shows the stand­ings of each can­di­date as of Decem­ber 14.

We started this monthly recap in June with 11 can­di­dates and poten­tial can­di­dates judged by Intrade investors to have bet­ter than a one per­cent chance of secur­ing the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion. Nine can­di­dates met the one-​​percent thresh­old in July and August. In Sep­tem­ber, the num­ber of maybe-​​viable can­di­dates dropped to six. October’s run­down had seven can­di­dates at greater than one per­cent on Intrade. In Novem­ber, there were still seven can­di­dates, with Mitt Rom­ney and Newt Gin­grich in the first and sec­ond posi­tions, Texas Gov­er­nor Rick Perry fad­ing fast in third, and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Ron Paul (R-​​Lake Jack­son, TX) and Jon Hunts­man tied for fourth. Her­man Cain was still in the race last month, but drop­ping fast in sixth place, and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Michele Bach­mann (R-​​Stillwater, MN) in seventh.

This month, Cain is gone, Perry is still drop­ping, and Paul has had a bit of a mini-​​surge.

Today, there are still seven can­di­dates, but Perry and Cain have faded as the “Not Rom­ney” can­di­dates. The “Not Rom­ney” this month is Gingrich.

As with past months, I gath­ered Real Clear Pol­i­tics aggre­gated poll aver­ages and Decem­ber 14 Intrade prob­a­bil­i­ties for each can­di­date, rounded to the near­est whole num­ber. (more…)