But if endorsements switch despite the candidate continuing to be in the race(and in the lead), then that means they were based on assumptions that turned out to be wrong.
Who’s switching?
I predict that Joe Biden is going to enter the Presidential race.
Based on what evidence? You need to observe a distinction between what you hope for and what you predict.
He can if he wants, but I don’t think it’s necessary. Especially for a pretty non-left-field prediction as “Biden will run”. We all know what he’s been saying; it’s perfectly fine (if not necessarily wise) to make a prediction like this based purely on a feeling, in my view.
adaher - I’ve seen some decent contributions from you over the past several weeks. I’m beginning to think that our old jokes about your reality defying negative predictive power are out of date. Alas. 
Also, if Jindal drops out within a month or so, I’d think you would deserve props of some sort. You can’t expect pinpoint accuracy in these exercises.
This doesn’t help though. This has all the content of predicting that a coin flip will be heads. Whatever the outcome, it teaches us nothing.
Twenty tabulated predictions like that might teach us something about adaher, but honestly who cares? The point of these exercises is to learn something about conceptual frameworks. For example if you said, “I think Biden is going to enter the Presidential race because he thinks he’s the only person that can defeat Carson,” I’m pretty sure we could falsify that no matter what Biden did.
More generally, I wish you could file away your single sentence thoughts on a text editor, word processor or spreadsheet and only post them if you could substantiate them in some way. That’s a serious recommendation btw: some number of my scrawlings don’t make it on to the board.
ETA: (Props to your more substantial prediction about Biden/Clinton/endorsement in post 35 though. I was working on a more general point. Which I sort of mangled, given that the post I just quoted was part of a relevant discussion.)
I agree with this, though I’m not sure the facts are with me. On the one hand Bush, Rubio, Kasich and the former candidate Walker are broadly acceptable to Republican establishment funders. OTOH, individual billionaires can now sponsor a pet candidate, so the old patterns aren’t necessarily compelling in the wake of Citizens United. And Kasich, while favored by Fox News in some ways, is polling in low single digits.
Ah. There’s my answer. Lots of single digit candidates got their bump in the polls in 2012. Santorum was wise enough to peak during the actual primary. Kasich might be pursuing that sort of strategy, which is wise. I think he’s still in the game. And unlike Santorum, he actually could garner broad establishment backing in a big way, fwiw.
He extended his deadline and he’s been effectively campaigning for weeks now. If he wasn’t going to do it he’d just not do it, whereas if he is getting in, he wants to pick his time.
The billionaires aren’t sponsoring the outsiders though.
Right now though it looks like Rubio is the guy emerging from the establishment pack.
Well Trump is sponsoring himself and Fiorina has personal wealth she can tap into, if she’s willing to conduct a lower budget Santorum style campaign.
OTOH hand, it’s unclear whether low budget stuff can hold up against the organization of a Jeb Bush campaign.
Maybe. He’s only a little over 1 point ahead of Jeb though, and hasn’t broken into double digits. The PredictIt! market puts Rubio at the lead at 39%, which seems high to me. I think Kasich is a buy at 13%. Not sure how high I would go though. PredictIt
Here is the 538 endorsement compilation. The 2016 Endorsement Primary | FiveThirtyEight
The leader is Jeb, followed by Chris Christie (which is hilarious given the Bridgegate arm twisting conducted by his staff), Huckabee, Rand Paul, Kasich and Ted Cruz. It seems that most of the Republican endorsers are still sitting on their hands though.
You’re ignoring a couple perfectly reasonable hypotheses, however. He could actually be making up his mind. He could be planning to not run, but wary of completely, finally closing that door. I’d still be inclined to guess Biden won’t get in, but I wouldn’t be completely shocked to be wrong on this one.
It’s unclear whether Jeb Bush can hold up against a Jeb Bush compaign!
I honestly think Bush has been the biggest surprise of this campaign. I know there’s the whole Trump/Carson/Fiorina nonsense, but everyone expects nonsense from the Republican nomination process in the months leading up to Iowa. Traditionally, the establishment guys don’t start really closing the circle until the actual voting is underway, and even then, it can often be a few states in. Bush’s completely disastrous campaigning, OTOH, I completely did not foresee. Bush seemed like a default winner going in. But now every single Republican candidate seems too flawed to possibly win the nomination. And yet, one of them is going to win. And that’s a strange place to be.
How are you feeling about the rest of your list now?
Joe’s announcement also throws a wrench into this prediction:
I’m still thinking its kind of weird that he announced this before Hillary testifies tomorrow. He may reasonably expect that she will handle it all with aplomb, and a meltdown is out of the question. On the other hand, why not wait just one more day to find out?
That could have been a consideration - by scheduling his announcement for today, it may help cement the image of the committee as simply trying to attack the other party’s nominee. By delaying it until afterward, he would have helped the impression that the Dems are still worried about it.
Makes sense to me. From a purely ‘Good of the Party’ perspective, announcing today rather than, say, Friday, is a small, calculated risk with an obvious payoff. Of course, the timing might also just be coincidental - Biden set himself a deadline to announce whether or not he was running, and stuck to it.
Edited to add: Do we have an updated list of predictions and status thereof? I’m curious.
It sounds like he wanted to, he was definitely sounding people out, and I guess he didn’t like enough of what he heard.
In any case, my list stands. I do not think Hillary Clinton will be the next President, although I won’t make a firm prediction on that count yet because the Republicans could do something incredibly dumb like nominate Bush or Trump or Fiorina. But in a Rubio-Clinton race, or Kasich-Clinton, or even Christie-Clinton race, she’s toast. And I will make a firm prediction as soon as the nominees are set in stone.
This is not such an unreasonable prediction (though I disagree with it), but in my view your prediction that O’Malley, Carson, and others are more likely to be president is not at all reasonable. Assuming Hillary has about an 80% chance at the Democratic nomination (and it’s probably a lot closer to 95%, in my opinion), then even if you only give her a 25% chance to win the general election, that’s a 20% chance overall to be president.
What other candidate from either party has greater than a 20% chance to be president?
If you’re just going from gut feel, rather than numbers, then that’s okay and you can disregard this question.
I’m going by approval. I just do not think someone with her levels of disapproval can get elected. In order for her to win a general election, some voters who actively disapprove of her would have to vote for her. That can only happen if someone particularly odious like Donald Trump is her opponent, or if she obliterates another Republican with negative campaigning. Which can happen, I just don’t think it’s likely. The Republicans always come to their senses and nominate someone who can win. There hasn’t been an unelectable Republican since Goldwater.
I’ll ask the question differently – what % chance would you give to Hillary to win the Democratic nomination? If she wins, what % chance would you give to her to win the general election? And if you like, give me your estimates for the other candidates you listed as being more likely to win than her.
For me, I think Hillary has a 95% chance to win the nomination, and since it’s so early, I’ll put her at a 55% (coin flip plus a very slight lean for demographics) to win the general election. For the rest of the candidates you listed before, I wouldn’t give any of them except Rubio more than a 5% chance at their party’s nomination (and only a 1% chance or so for Carson and O’Malley), and a 40-50% chance to win the general. For Rubio I’ll say a 25% chance at the Republican nomination, with a 50% chance to win the general election if he gets it. None of those come close at all to Hillary’s likelihood of winning, by my estimation.