Ron Paul Intrade Update
As I’ve explained previously, and for reasons I’ve explained previously, I tend to trust prediction markets much more than polls as predictors of events like elections.
As the below graph shows, Ron Paul has made some steady progress since early this year, when he was a near-penniless candidate whose name brought out only blank stares from people asked about him.
He’s still trailing Il Duce by quite a margin, and he appears to be getting a boost from Fred Thompson’s implosion. It now appears to be a race between Giuliani, the front-runner, Romney in second, and Paul as the dark horse.
The money and the name recognition is starting to come, and media appearances such as that on The Tonight Show will only help. Now it becomes a race against time, to see if he can put the money to use by the early primaries in January, where a good showing is crucial if he’s going to have a chance at the nomination.
Right now, he’s trading at about a 7-8 share on Intrade, which is about a right considering his relative obscurity. I’d like to see his numbers on Intrade rising above a 10 share by the beginning of December, a month from today. If he can take that and build into the low-mid teens by the end of the year, I’ll take it as a sign that he’s got enough name recognition to make a play in the early primaries. But to have a shot, he needs to jump out of the internet and into the American home, and the next two months will determine if that’s a reality.
