Posted on 11/15/2007 3:43:17 AM PST by Kevmo
Why the smart money is on Duncan Hunter
OK, so you’ve got a thousand dollars burning a hole in your pocket and you want to make a statement with it at the same time as getting 40X return on your “investment”, you want $40,000 for that $1000 bet, like Hillary did in her Pig Belly futures or whatever it was. You’re going to decide between putting it down on Hunter or Thompson over at Intrade because these are the 2 most conservative candidates in the race.
https://www.intrade.com/
Which one do you choose?
Let’s start with the guy who has 3 balls. He’s got courage in spades. He’s engaged enemy soldiers in Viet Nam when he was a LRRP ranger and he got a Bronze Star for his real bravery. His friend and supporter also has 3 balls, the guy who we all know as “the man who broke the sound barrier”, Chuck Yeager. While they’re campaigning in Iowa, all you have to do is ask Chuck to tell the story about how he and Bob Hoover were in Russia and got that chance to fly a YAK and Bob took it up gently and respectfully and flew it straight & level into the horizon… and then returned over the viewing stand flying upside down and basically causing the Russians to pee in their pants. After hearing this story or one of a million others, Hunter will take the podium and leverage that emotional courage language that Americans love, and they’ll all look at each other & nod, saying, “this is the guy who should be my president”.
Now let’s cover the guy who played a soldier in the movies. He was quite convincing when he was telling Jack Ryan of the CIA that he wouldn’t be able to get to the submarine because it involved flying in a helicopter, and the last time Jack was in a helicopter he spent 3 months recovering from the accident. It’s interesting and fun entertainment, but it is not real. While he and his friend are campaigning in Iowa, he will need to build his own emotional leverage with the audience, and this is not a Hollywood script.
Right now over at Intrade, Thompson futures contracts are trading at about 6%. There was a time when he had the lead and was trading at 35%, but over the last few weeks he has lost about 30 points. He had the spotlight shining on him as the most conservative guy with the best name recognition, while thousands of his supporters were crossing their fingers during the debates hoping he wouldn’t screw up.
https://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/contractSearch/
Hunter futures contracts are at 0.1%. Over the last few weeks they have remained at 0.1%, with the volume staying put at 27778. That is the number to watch. All it takes is for that number to start moving. It means someone is buying Hunter’s contract at a very low price. Within a few weeks, that number will be history. Hunter has been campaigning on a shoestring budget and slowly gaining recognition in the polls, recently just coming in at 4%.
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/28889/republicans_2008_giuliani_28_thompson_19
All he needs is one more percent. Hunter needs to get to 5% in the coming weeks in order to be invited to the Iowa debate by our friends at the Iowa GOP.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1922644/posts
At that point, everyone will know he’s at 5% in the polls. His futures contracts at Intrade, if they’re still at 0.1, will have relentless upward pressure from bargain hunters, but by then it will be too late to buy in at that price.
Here’s where the decision gets made, why the smart money is on Duncan Hunter rather than Thompson. In order to get 40X return by investing in Thompson, you would have to buy his contract to win the whole kit & caboodle, the presidency, which is now trading at 2.5.
2008.PRES.THOMPSON(F)
Fred Thompson to win 2008 US Presidential Election
At $6, you could not get 40X return on the Fred.Nominee contract. If you bought it at $5, the best you could get is 20X return.
2008.GOP.NOM.THOMPSON(F)
Fred Thompson to be the Republican Presidential Nominee in 2008
The forum at Intrade seems to waver between those who think Fred’s campaign is imploding and those who think it will rebound. But they have freewheeling discussions about the why and how that we have been missing here on Free Republic.
https://bb.intrade.com/intradeForum/posts/list/1805.page
So your decision comes down to this: Is it more likely that Hunter will get 1% more exposure in national polls, and move up to 4 or 5% at Intrade or is it more likely that Thompson will win the presidency outright? Remember, this is the guy who had the spotlight shined on him as the conservative golden boy and lost 30 points at Intrade, and has been losing ground in the polls lately.
While his supporters are crossing their fingers hoping he doesn’t screw up, Hunter’s supporters are folding their hands in prayer hoping that he’ll just be himself.
Over the last few days, I’ve seen a couple of posts like this
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1925179/posts?page=284#284
According to Polls, Fred Thompson Foundering
Posted by Kevmo to SergeiRachmaninov On News/Activism 11/13/2007 1:51:29 PM PST · 284 of 536
It is a bitter time for those who have invested all their hopes with Fred and repressed all doubts. ...Still it is not much fun when you have chosen your candidate, put him on a pedestal, and gone to war for him, and then reality starts to batter you. I’ve already trod the path from hopeful about Fred, to disappointed, to angry in my disappointment. I really should do better at being gentle to those who are somewhere else along on that path.
***That is some amazing candor. I honestly do think that Hunter will not disappoint you in that way. He may not win the nomination due to lack of name recognition, but he is doing what he can about that. His character stands head & shoulders above the others in the race.
That is the emotional language of someone who has felt betrayed by his candidate. But the Hunter followers do not feel betrayed, they have circled the wagons and they are coming out fighting. That’s where you put your money down, where there is fight to the inner core, and the guy they’re fighting for is genuine.
All it takes is that one or two Freepers will copy this article and send it to their wealthy friend who did so well in the stock market during the dotcom boom, or won a thousand bucks at a beer drinking tournament or whatever. Then we’ll start to see that 27778 number trickle, then it will flood through relentlessly. And that will serve as a metaphor for the entire republican campaign, what has been a trickle of support will soon break through the floodgates in myriads of ways, whether it’s our grandmother sending in the $25 check to Hunter’s campaign
http://www.gohunter08.com
or Iowans asking if they could put up a sign on their front lawn or our grandchild folding her hands in prayer for this courageous man.
And then we’ll see Hunter smile.
BUMP!
You may as well ask if Genghi had ever been Khan. Remember that the formation of the Republican party was a revolution even greater than the one which brought our independence.
***I wouldn’t agree with that. But it’s an interesting statement. How would you quantify or verify it? By the number of dead? I think the Revolutionary war had ~100k??? dead Americans, and the Civil War had ~500k dead Americans and abortion has seen ~50M dead Americans since RoeVWade.
Do we have that now?
***I don’t know. Dobson is saying he would go 3rd party if tootyfruityrudy is nominated, but he has not endorsed a candidate. I cannot hide my disappointment in this man whom I admire. We could have a revolution but I doubt it. While our soldiers are at war, America is at the mall.
40 to 1 for Hunter to win the WH? I like those odds. ....a lot better than the Cleveland Browns to win the Super Bowl (also around 40 - 1).
***No, it’s 40 to 1 for Thompson to win the White House. It’s 40 to 1 for Hunter to hit $4 on Intrade, and he’s polling 4% now. Those are pretty good odds.
If you want to go for Hunter to win the whole shebang, he’s still stuck in the field and those odds are 500 to 1. If you like 40 to 1 odds for Hunter to win the White House, I just made your day. If you win you gotta buy me a dinner. Think about it $100 would get you $50,000. (Minus the cost of a dinner & commissions & whatnot)
2008.PRES.FIELD
Field (any other candidate) to win 2008 US Presidential Election M 0.2 0.4 0.2 4916 0
2008.PRES.THOMPSON(F)
Fred Thompson to win 2008 US Presidential Election M 2.5 2.6 2.5 16606 0
Oh, Kevmo. You are right. “While our soldiers are at war,
America is at the mall”. Almost anyone educated after the early 60’s are absolutely clueless!
I wasn’t talking about the war, I was talking about the societal revolution which made abolition such a moral imperative that the new party prospered, and dominated politics from 1856 to the 1880s.
Kevmo: if Hunter gets to 4% on Intrade, reflecting his current polling status
Kevkrom: You’re still incorrectly conflating support numbers with probabilities. Even if the obvious 4% outlier were accurate, Hunter still has an approximately zero chance of winning the nomination, as is reflected in his stagnant and marginal “price” on Intrade.
***Is that considered an invalid reasoning, that a candidate’s price on Intrade would somehow reflect his polling numbers, or at least be affected by them? If so, prove it. When you say “Hunter still has”, you’re repeating exactly what I say when I say that Hunter is at 0.1% on Intrade, you add nothing whatsoever of value to the statement except a revealed intent to show that Hunter in a bad light. And I want to show him in a good light.
If you had $1k and could choose 2 futures in PigBellies, both offering a 40-to-1 payout and OptionA pays out in a few weeks and OptionB pays out in a year. OptionA would pay out in a few weeks when Intrade reflects the current polling numbers or somesuch data about pigbellies, and OptionB would pay only if Pigbellies are one of the most expensive commodities in the market one year from now (or choose a similar suitable outcome). Option B has gone down by 30 points due to fundamentals and Option A has stayed static and low due to fundamentals. Which is a better option? Option A is, and Duncan Hunter is the better option.
Kevmo: The fact that the media hates true conservatives trumps that underdog thing.
rovian_storm: You need charisma AND the record to back it up. ...Whether you have charisma and a crappy record or a great record and no charisma, you’re still missing 50% of what you need to close the deal.
Think what you want about underdogs, but the media doesn’t pay attention to Hunter because he gives them no reason to.
***How can we verify this one way or the other? You have your opinion and I have mine. How can you quantify media bias? When Hunter came in 2nd place in the Spartanburg straw poll, the media guy was so flustered because he obviously had been told that Hunter had no chance. We keep hearing that, and yet he’s still around and the other conservative in the race has been messing up on his campaign. Remember how Bill Sali won his race: by counting on the media to go out of their way to huff & puff against his conservative credentials and claim that he was down by 20 points just before the election which he won handily. Similarly in liberal Cahleefornya, proposition 187 won overwhelmingly when the media jumped the shark and was calling people who would vote for it racist. Americans know when the media is so liberal that it’s ridiculous, and that would help a truly rock-ribbed conservative candidate like Hunter. Going for the mush middle means Hildebeast wins.
Both links are more than specific. Try reading them. And for the 2nd one, be sure to note the $5 billion price tag.
I would indeed expect correlation, but not proportionally so. If Candidate A is polling at 80% and Candidate B is polling 20%, there's no way anyone in their right mind thinks that Candidate B has a 20% shot of winning; the "Candidate B" contract would likely receive no bidders even at a trivial price because the candidate has no reasonable chance of ever winning, and hence paying off.
Same thing here -- a short-term rise in the polls still doesn't imply that anything has fundamentally changed in terms of the probability of Hunter winning. He's still no better than seventh, which means he not only has to dramatically improve his own standing, he has to surpass six other candidates, and has shown no signs of being able to do so. Therefore, no one is biting on the contract because there is no expectation of the value of the contract rising in the foreseeable future.
If you think they're wrong, then by all means buy up all the 0.1 price contracts you can.
Finally, this far out, note that this type of market is far more volatile than measures of actual support. Short-term trends are dramatically over-represented in perception of long-term probabilities. As the window shortens, prices will stabilize closer to "reality".
i like Hunter, I even sent him some money a month or so ago but I also like Fred. I really don’t see much different in the two besides their life story.
I have been moving toward Fred since the debates.
***Then you have made your rational choice and that is all I would ask. It seems to me that the poll numbers and Intrade data are trending in the opposite of your conclusion about Fred. To be overtly clear, I will vote for Fred if he’s the nominee, but I really do think Hunter is the better man. It would be so cool to see a set of side-by-side debates, winner take all. Of course that won’t happen.
I'm going from memory. There were five hundred ninety... something shares available at 0.1 the last time I checked, and today there are 639. Not remembering the actual value, I had a somewhat "fuzzy" answer of about 7-8%.
No, this isn’t an opinion. It is a FACT that the MOST INFLUENTIAL REPUBLICAN STRAW POLL is the Ames poll. You comparing it to other, lesser, straw polls is disingenuous.
Can you cite for me the historical significance of the Spartanburg straw poll? I’m certainly not aware of any.
Even if they were the same, why didn’t Hunter have similar performance where it mattered? Huckabee is a contender now, solely because of his performance in the Ames straw poll. Why didn’t Hunter do what Huckabee did?
How are Hunter’s numbers in SC again, speaking of Spartanburg?
Respectfully, that's not the issue (IMO)
You look at Hunter and see Reagan. I look at him, and Tancredo, and see Goldwater.
I believe the country would have been much better off if Goldwater had been elected in 1964. But I believe it was an act of massive hubris and irresponsibility to nominate him under the circumstances which obtained in 1964.
The huge legislative majorities which Johnson garnered in the 1964 election caused damage to the nation from which we have yet to recover (if we ever do).
I am not looking for "the most conservative candidate" BECAUSE I believe that a Hillary Clinton blowout, with LBJ-sized legislative majorities, will be the result.
I understand that you and many others do not share that opinion.
But it's an opinion, based on recent electoral data. It's not a lifestyle choice, or an expression of my own personal desires.
So, the way I look at it, it's not marching off a cliff - it's trying to keep you all from driving the nation off a cliff.
The primaries should give us a lot of useful information about the state of the electorate.
That's why, as they say, they play the games.
You gotta deal, Kevmo. 500 to 1 is an absolute steal.
I’m not looking to vote for someone to throw their shirt off and show me their boobs, i’m voting for someones record.
***Dang, that would get the vote if it were someone like Ann Coulter!
We have to win over the middle, and they do not want to be preached to, they want to be sold. Duncan is a great conservative preacher, but his sales skills need refining.
***Thanks for the elaboration, I appreciate it. I think Hunter CAN win over the middle with his immigration and anti-fleecetrading policies, which are hot button items across the board with middle class republicans and democrats. It doesn’t even need to be a hard sell, he just needs the exposure.
Another thing, while I know he has put out statements on his web site and such on a number of issues, he has to actually play on all those issues publicly as much as possible.
***He is. It’s just a lot slower than all of us would have preferred. Thompson’s entry into the race took the wind out of his sails. Thompson’s tanking should put the wind right back in.
Also I have said often that this is a political game and after 27 years in the house Duncan has not really stood out.
***I don’t buy it. I have seen no evidence one way or the other that this is important to mainstream America. I never heard of Dan Quayle before he was chosen as VP. The PROCESS itself generates name recognition. That’s one reason why character is more important than name recognition.
It is past the time that most politicians who end up as national players have broken out. I am told it is because he “does not bow down” or “does not play politics”.
***I am not told that. So we need to find an objective middle ground where what you say is supported and factually accepted by guys like me. I do not know how to do it.
Well guess what, the game the left and the middle have brought us is politics, so to win it we have to be in it. Otherwise we are just those whiny folks over on the fringe arguing with the wind.
***This paragraph doesn’t make sense.
As far as evidence, it is all simple observation. Where has he been the past 27 years, why has he not gained more notoriety and where is he in the polls after a year of being in the race.
***He was doing just fine until Thompson showed up. Thompson had his chance and he squandered it. If Thompson had not entered the race, Hunter would be in the top tier right now.
Blame the press or whatever, but a politician is responsible for his own destiny as much as anyone.
***It is so much like the aRINOld/McClintock discourse that I would hope some freepers would take notice. McClintock was doing just fine until aRINOld showed up with his obviously superior name recognition. I can’t say I like how that went, but that’s the way politics works. We, however, are supposed to be conservatives posting on a conservative website (NOT a GOP website) and we should have all learned the lesson. Many have not. Thompson had his day in the sun and the numbers are in — he has squandered his lead. Let’s learn what we should have learned and get behind Hunter for the good of our party.
To try and pass it off as some conspiracy or the like does him and his efforts a disservice, because it grants a scapegoat, not a solution, which in the end is what you are after, getting it fixed and moving up to victory.
***When I see the conspiracy theories I’m reminded of how frustrated we all felt in 1997 and 1998 when I first joined FR. There were a lot of Conspiracy Theories in those days. They were scary, kooky, fun and I didn’t take most of them seriously. I think Conspiracy Theories are the smoke that rises from the fire of frustration. We saw a lot of funny ones from DUmmy Funnies because the DUers were frustrated. It is a simple sign of frustration.
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