You have an imaginary $100 to bet. You have to place ONE bet on the Republican and ONE bet on the Democratic nominee for president with a minimum bet of $5 and you have to bet all $100.
You only have two choices to wager, the frontrunner or the field:
For the Democratic side you can pick Hillary Clinton or the field.
For the Republican side you can pick Jeb Bush or the field.
Democratic Odds:
Clinton will pay 1:3 (for every $3 you bet you win $1)
The Field pays 3:1 (for every dollar you bet you win $3)
Republican Odds:
Both Bush and the field will pay even money
Please note that I am not a professional oddsmaker but this will make the math easy and I think create action on all four sides, but I could be wrong about that.
You can only bet once and you cannot change a bet once you make it!
Bets will be placed between now and June 15th. I’ll tabulate and post the results when both parties have made the nomination or it is obvious who will be nominated in both parties.
$50 Hillary on the D side (I’d be surprised if you get any action on the field at 3:1).
$50 the field on the R side. Even a couple of days ago, I might have gone Bush, but he is looking more and more like his brother, and I don’t think that’ll play this time around.
Clinton at 1:3 is easy money as far as I’m concerned It would need to be at least 10:1 or so before I played the field. SO I’ll bet $99.00 on that. I’d bet $100, but I don’t like carrying around 33 1/3 cents in change.
Bush is a good bit harder. 1:1 seems about right. I’m not a gambling man, so I’ll just put the mandatory $5 bet on the field in that one, given the sheer number of alternative options makes his nomination slightly less than probable.
ETA: misread the rules, and thought we had up to $100 to bet on each race. Make that $93 on Hillary and $7 on the Republican field.
A year ago, I’d have bet on the field on the Democratic side at even odds, no question. This is looking increasingly unlikely, but it feels dishonest for me to change my bet: If she does win the nomination, I’ve earned the crow I’ll eat (and fortunately, that’s all I’ve put at stake). Gripping hand, though, you’re offering odds here, so I’ll go with D: The Field.
And on the R side, Jeb himself said that he has no political future. The only reason he has any chance at all is that someone has to manage to fail to lose. So I’ll also go with R: The Field.
I think it is significantly better than 3 to 1 that HRC will be the Democratic candidate (and not too worried about her health) and I give slightly better than 50/50 that Bush will crash and a Rubio or Walker could win, even on long shot a Paul. Note I understand this to be just on who the nominees are, not who wins the general.
75 on Clinton, 25 on the R field, mainly because there’s a non-zero chance Jeb’s handlers will be unable to fix his public Iraq position in time. The Establishment’s next best bet would be Rubio, but they’d have a harder time fixing his immigration position, and Walker’s far too teabaggy. They have no other prospects except maybe Kasich. So the Moneyed Interests will still probably stick with Jeb and hope for Clinton to finally collapse after all these decades.
Only a health scare can plausibly keep Clinton from the nomination and Presidency, but nothing political.
I’ll go $95 on the Democrat field, and $5 on Bush.
I’d say Clinton is more likely to get the nomination than any other specific individual, but I still think she’s more likely to lose than not. And only two real candidates have even declared on the Democratic side. I can’t see calling Hillary a sure thing without even know who she’ll be running against.
For the Republicans, I’d say JEB has about even odds. None of the six declared candidates look like real contenders, and there aren’t a lot of better options in the wings. But I figured the combined chances of all the declared and potential candidate, plus any unknowns, probably works out to about 50%.