There is good news for fellow anti-Huckabeans out there. Even though Huckabee won the Iowa caucus, according to Intrade the victory didn't really help him all that much. His prospects for winning the GOP nomination as a whole only rose a modest 5%; contrast that to Obama, who gained ~20% from his Iowa victory. Clearly, people are betting that Huckabee's long term prospects are still poor.
It turns out that the most significant impact of Huckabee's victory is that it weakened Romney and Guliani, while strengthening McCain. I was wondering why McCain was boosted, even though he lost in Iowa, too. I can only guess that the New Hampshire Primary has something to do with this phenomenon. The NH primary has been very close between McCain and Romney up till now. However, unlike McCain, Romney was expected to win in Iowa and held the lead for a long time. Thus a Huckabee victory damages Romney, but not McCain, since he was never expected to win Iowa. Thus McCain has a boost in the NH primary, which suggests he may gain the momentum to win the whole thing. People must be wondering when Guliani plans on making a showing at all...
Meanwhile, HRC and Obama *were* neck and neck in NH. As I wrote below, I am betting (literally) that Obama's Iowa victory will give him the momentum to win in NH. The Intrade markets seem to agree. Obama's prospects for winning the Dem nomination jumped from about 25% to 45%, while Hillary's dropped from 65% to 50%. What an exciting race. Thank god I'm still on Christmas break.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment