Open Thread, January 4-10, 2016

polymathwannabe

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2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

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Polls seem to indicate that Trump has a massive lead in the Republican primary, far ahead of Cruz who is far ahead of Rubio. UK Bookmakers put him slightly behind Rubio, and slightly ahead of Cruz. Why the discrepancy?

For that matter - that's the odds of him being the Republican candidate. For the primaries, they put him ahead of Rubio for both the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire Primary. Does winning the primaries not make him the Republican party candidate? Are there other primaries that aren't being bet on? Do they think his performance in NH and IA is somehow anti-correlated?

I'm kind of hoping that the bookmakers are offering free money here, but that seems unlikely on priors.

There's a lot of reasons to think that national polling is not predictive of a primary race

First, the relevant decisions are made state-by-state.
Second, the sampling issue for primary voters is much harder that for general election voters. Among other reasons, people are paying a lot less attention, so people who care strongly are probably more over-represented than is typical.

Does winning the [Iowa and New Hampshire] primaries not make him the Republican party candidate? Are there other primaries that aren't being bet on?

Yes to your second q... (read more)

3ChristianKl10y

Winning two primaries does not make him the Republican party candidate. The idea is that while Trump has 40% at the moment that means he has more than any other candidate but as time goes on other candidates drop out and the 60% that don't vote for Trump at the moment still won't vote for Trump but for somebody else. Apart from that other people start to understand Trump and how to respond to him as time goes on and they think that as time goes on the establishment candidate Marco Rubio will benefit from that.

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