|
||
How Gamblers are Betting on Palin's Move
The news of Sarah Palin's resignation reached gamblers while they were mired in holiday traffic, vacationing in cabins without internet access, or at the shore with children in need of supervision. Still, somehow, they found time to handicap and place a flurry of online bets regarding Palin's future.
Scientific studies show that, historically, gamblers are the most accurate forecasters of political outcomes, more so than the best polls or most insightful analysts. As the famously successful Kentucky horseplayer Mike Maloney once told me, "Polls can be inaccurate. People may say what is politically correct, the questions may be leading, the pollsters may be biased. A pollster can still bill for an inaccurate poll. [Gamblers] must make an accurate line or they lose -- period."
Gamblers have another advantage that may come into play in wagering on Gov. Palin: Better intel.
According to Ray Paulick, a protégé of notorious oddsmaker Jimmy The Greek before becoming a handicapper for the Daily Racing Form, "Behind every race-fixing story or allegation is a gambler who gets information about what horse is or isn't 'live.' The shocking news is how little it takes to buy information."
His horse sense tells him that Palin's move does not augur scandal or criminal charges, however. "I just think she has a case of the size-ten hat," he says.
Gamblers the world over evidently agree. On Friday, the day of Palin's resignation announcement, Intrade's odds of her winning the 2012 Republican presidential nomination fell sharply (see live chart below). By Saturday, however, with no evidence of a looming Lakehousegate or another shoe about to drop, wagering yielded a 50% surge.
Intrade's CEO John Delaney told me, "This suggests to us that out traders think that her resignation may be to start building a base from the lower forty-eight states."
Palin's 2012 nomination odds have continued to rise since.
Koleman Strumpf, a University of Kansas economics professor who tracks betting trends, says, "It will be interesting to see if this holds."
Especially as new information trickles in, one way or another.
Follow Keith Thomson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kqthomson
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Palin is just a media-manufactured personality, with no more substance than Joe the Plumber.
Read the Vanity Fair article to find out how poorly her own party thinks of her.
I don't know about gamblers, but Bill Kristol is going All-In (and all out) for Palin. Methinks the gamblers should take the Kristol effect into account - this guy NEVER gets it right.
Palin embodies the simplification that the right finds so endearing, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. She doesn't speak the same political prose that we all hate, and her 'gaffes' are no worse than Bush's. At least she doesn't invent words. Federal Departments, maybe, but not words. She speaks in everyday language and has a background most of us can identify with. She answers questions honestly, or at least tries to, and sticks to her guns (pun intended). She's the everyman that we've all come to idealize as being the consummate Washington outsider that can bring real change. And she's good-looking.
Her detractors see her as a power hungry beauty queen who would stab her own mother in the back to get ahead. Her ignorance of the world (and even the broader US as a whole) isn't so disturbing as is her embrace of it and her indignation over changing herself and expanding her view. That stubbornness, coupled with her mention of a double-standard when she is criticized makes some people despise her. Then there is her positions on abortion, energy and creationism...
You're either in one category, or the other. There is no middle ground. Like most people, I think her recent move is so she can make a run at the White House. However, I'd wager that she's going the Perot/Roosevelt route and start a third party, maybe even resurrecting Teddy's Bull Moose, or just as a Conservative. Time will tell...
What if she became the prez? Really, I don't think it's impossible. If O doesn't perform as expected, if the economy continues to underperform, if people continue to lose their jobs, there would likely be enough people who would roll the dice and vote for her. Imagine.
The Christian right rants against gambling, when of course Ralph Reed made a lot of his money through Jack Abramoff's deals with Indian casinos.
I'm willing to bet most of the gambles polled were male and 'thinking' with anatomical parts other than their brains.
Palin has not done well -- and likely will not do well in the future -- with a substantial percentage of women voters because she insults our intelligence.
I remember your article on gamblers handicapping the last Presidential race. If I'm not mistaken, they were saying McCain would drop Pailn as his VP candidate.
Glad I didn't put any money on that one!
On one hand, I think it'd be great to see her TRY and debate with Obama.
On the other hand, I want her to go away.
I think our little engine that could, Sarah Barracuda, would find a way to defeat Obama in a debate by a nose.
If you are reading this far and you agree with the above statement, please, please, please explain why. Pretty please.
If the economy doesn't improve, or the health care doesn't get fixed, Obama toast. Too many promises which he can't deliver on.
I hope she goes somewhere where it's easy to turn the dial
Sarah Palin is the biggest gambler here. As Chairman of the Alaska Oil and Natural Gas Regulation Board she resigned after she uncovered serious corruption there by the Chairman of the Alaska GOP and Alaska's (R) Attorney General. She exposed them to statewide scrutiny, won the election for Governor and prosecuted them and other political thugs. As Governor she enforced the forgotten Alaska Constitution enabling each Alaska citizen to profit from their rightful property, an equal share of the state's natural resources. She's led the largest infrastructure project in the USA, the huge new pipeline from Alaska to the Lower 48. Lately she's been vetted by hoards of muck rakers who have not found a single shred of evidence against her. All have been dismissed. Like so many others before her she stepped away from elected office to pursue a larger endeavor. She is poised for bigger things.
Crooked politicians in DC fear her piercing words. They know what she did to the crooks in Alaska. They know that her words ring true and their corrupt bubbles will burst if she is allowed to speak any further. Because they can't win on issues they attack her womanhood, her children and anything that will change the emphasis away from their own corrupt behavior.
That she declared her political independence on the 4th of July reminds us that she aligns herself with Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Adams who also gambled. They gambled with their lives, their "treasure" and their "sacred honor."
If Greed and ego are the goals of religion, than she will do just fine.
Palin is a crook!
I must have missed the news. Was she convicted of a crime?
Palin's my hero!
Keep it up. You would make a good speechwriter for her. Too bad she doesn't have the intellectual horsepower to understand why she needs one.
Oh, give me a break. I had a friend who lived in Alaska ten years before Palin got there, and they were already getting oil lease divident checks. She bragged about that like she invented it. Palin merely cozied up to the powers in charge until she had enough leverage to backstab them and grab for power.
If you believe that investigations have found no evidence of abuse against this lady, you are mistaken.
Her piercing words? Hardly. it's her piercing screech.
And you can't align her with our Founding Fathers. The quote you're struggling for is "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." In the first place, Palin's "honor" is seriouisly in question because by resigning, she has broken her sacred oath of office.
In the second... she does not respect one of the foundations of our Constitution: separation of church and state.
"The Government of the United States is NOT, in ANY sense, founded on the Christian religion." John Adams
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law." Thomas Jefferson, Feb 2, 1814.
"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes." Jefferson, Dec 6, 1813.
Palin doesn't measure up.
Palin's stance on religion are to me pitch perfect and coincide with long standing American traditions. I've heard her say that religion is a matter of personal conscience and that one person's or groups views shouldn't be forced onto another person or group. I stand with that. I'm against force and so is she. She and I are by the way not in the same religions.
In the vein of the "pro choice" movement I find it ironic and disturbing that when she and her daughter chose they we're attacked for not aborting the lives of their babies. There is great hostility that they don't kill their babies. Why is that?
I am and have always been pro choice. It's queer that when women actually choose life the Left convulses. Your assertion that a President Sarah Palin would force any religion on anyone else is baseless fantasy.
This culture of death and the forced unity of thought that the Left favors has been tried already in the Socialist Workers' Party led by Hitler, the Socialist Baath Party in Iraq led by Saddam Hussein and the Communist Parties in Russia, China, Cuba and al Quaeda, the Taliban to name a few.
Regarding alignments, Palin aligns herself with those who founded this country by her stated philosophy and symbolic timing in her 3rd of July speech.
President Odinga, Obama, Barry Soetoro (or whatever else he calls himself) said very clearly during the campaign he has "a different philosophy from those guys on the dollar bills." He said that the US Constitution is a very limiting set of negatives. He expresses admiration for the old USSR's constitution which is a body of positives about what the government promises to provide its subjects.
OMG, you've got to be kidding me!
This is the best laugh I've had in a while... thank you!
Sarah Palin is the biggest gambler here. As Chairman of the Alaska Oil and Natural Gas Regulation Board she resigned after she uncovered serious corruption there by the Chairman of the Alaska GOP and Alaska's (R) Attorney General. She exposed them to statewide scrutiny, won the election for Governor and prosecuted them and other political thugs. As Governor she enforced the forgotten Alaska Constitution enabling each Alaska citizen to profit from their rightful property, an equal share of the state's natural resources. She's led the largest infrastructure project in the USA, the huge new pipeline from Alaska to the Lower 48. Lately she's been vetted by hoards of muck rakers who have not found a single shred of evidence against her. All have been dismissed. Like so many others before her she stepped away from elected office to pursue a larger endeavor. She is poised for bigger things.
Crooked politicians, tyrants and thugs in the White House and halls of Congress fear her piercing words. They know what she did to the crooks in Alaska. They know that her words ring true and their corrupt bubbles will burst if she is allowed to speak any further. Because they can't win on issues they attack her womanhood, her children and on anything and everything that will change the emphasis away from their own corrupt behavior.
That she declared her political independence on the 4th of July reminds us that she aligns herself with Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Adams who also gambled.
And you really should remember that MOST gamblers wind up broke.
And people wonder why the rest of the industrialized world is leaving us in their dust. It's not about your patter - it's about the metrics, and we are falling fast as a nation. The populist know-nothingism SP embodies celebrates an ethos and politics that have us, foam fingers to the contrary, falling further and further from #1. The nations her base excoriates as exotic or "socialist" have higher quality-of-life numbers almost across the board than we - literacy, life expectancy, infant mortality, per-capita income, access to health care, educational achievement, etc., although that ONCE was not true.
We have fallen as a nation - this is not rationally disputable. All post-war (ll) leadership in toto has delivered to date has been to hobble the most powerful military power and engine of prosperity the world has ever known - beaten the sword of victory into a trough of gluttony and corruption. What SP sells is the distilled essence of what has led us from the pinnacle of world leadership and prosperity to struggling to keep our heads above water while the world passes us by. To spend another day on this path is unpardonable - to sprint down it is to willingly douse America's flame...
"foam fingers to the contrary" Beautifully phrased, 3d.
Palin should pay you to write this stuff .
I think at one point the favorites in the 2008 gambling websites were HRC and Guilani. Show me a professional gambler and I'll show you a guy that lives in the park 6 months out of the year. The idea that somehow gamblers are better at handicapping politics than anyone else is nonsense. If you look at what they bet on, it pretty much follows the polls. There may be some times when they are early to the party, but just as often they are late (witness the "Palin bounce" after the convention).
Don't forget, these same gamblers were giving odds that McCain would drop Palin.
Yep, the exact same gamblers. The ones who were counting on McCain having at least a little common sense left. Betting on a politician using reason or logic is always a sucker's bet.
I read the previous Huffington Post link: it makes a case that the gamblers have a better won-lost record than the pollsters, not that gamblers are all-knowing deities.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-thomson/the-most-accurate-electio_b_140181.html
And if that's not enough, the Koleman Strmpf link: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:Ud00z1MEACcJ:www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/BettingPaper_final(JEP_Resubmit).pdf+koleman+strumpf+gamblers+elections+rhode&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Gov Palin may even withdraw her resignation. It remains her perogative.
She may return from the long weekend and say that after seeing and hearing from more family and friends, constintuents and supporters, she has realized she needs to remain Gov of Alaska.
She passed the ball and is finishing the 'pick and roll' ready to get the ball back for a layup.
If she's turned in her resignation, I don't think the State of Alaska is going to let her pass that off as a menopause moment.
Her analogy of "passing the ball" was completely wrong. If she had delegated some projects to the Lt. Governor you could say she "passed the ball". She quit the team and walked off the court in the middle of a tournament. She is a quitter. Quitting mid-term is NOT the sign of a good elected leader and insults those that voted for her to serve four years. Spin it all you want, but you will just get dizzy. End of story.
Here's Palin's value as a political candidate:
She's a personification of wedge issues. Whether she wins or not, she'll have you NOT thinking about Wall Street robber barrons, NOT thinking about a military industrial complex that has the US looking close to Rome circa 500 AD, etc.
profound
At what age can the severity of a child’s Down Syndrome disability be determined? What happens if Palin's DS baby, Trig, needs lots of care? That's got to affect the betting odds.
I'll be that if you're a presidential candidate, you get free childcare, even free childcare from a DS specialist.
Please, point us to any links that would allow us to place the bets! After that speech, I might be willing to bet on the book's logic. I would bet on a "raise money for legal fees" as well as the potential crimes that are documented.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
