Fun with Intrade Predictions Market and Conditional Probability
by tdaxp ~ March 6th, 2008
Obama campaign’s generating scandals, indicating that their candidate is dissembling for votes and saying that Hillary’s a monster. Shocking, I know. But seemingly it doesn’t matter, because Hillary shares are at .28%, right?
Well, not quite. Hillary’s weakness is that she needs to keep winning to be competitive. If she loses Pennsylvania, say, it’s over.
But that also means that, if one assumes that Hillary will win Pennsylvania, she has a real shot at being the Democratic nominee. Currently, Intrade‘s Hillaryshares for winning Pennsylvania are 73.5.
Let’s call Hillary winning Pennsylvania “A,” and Hillary winning the nomination “B” Therefore
P(A), the probability of Hillary winning the nomination, is .280
P(B), the probability of Hillary winning Pennsylvania, is .735
Now, I’m assuming that it’s impossible for Hillary to win the nomination if she loses Pennsylvania. Losing Pennsylvania would not only let Obama finally win a “big state,” but one tailor-made for Hillary to walk all over him in. So P(A,B), the probability of Hillary winning both the nomination and Pennsylvania, is the same as her winning the nomination; therefore, P(A,B) = P(A) = .280.
Now, in conditional probability, the probability of Hillary winning the nomination assuming that she wins Pennsylvania would be written P(A|B), and can be figured as such:
P(A|B) = P(A,B) / P(B)
because P(A,B) = P(A) = .280, and P(B) = .735, then P(A|B) = .280 / .735 = .381.
According to inTrade and conditional probability, if Hillary wins Pennsylvania,then she has nearly a 40% chance of being the Democratic nominee.
Considering that she would still finish behind in pledged delegates, her odds aren’t that bad.
No wonder Obama surrogates are two-faced about NAFTA and spiteful toward Senator Clinton.
No wonder Camp Obama is so deceitful, and so mean.
The New York Times uses top 1% of income, not wealth. From the legend:...
March 7th, 2008 at 5:02 am
You’re ignoring what will matter most (as there is nearly no way she can beat him in pledged delegates, baring 65-35 & 70-30 landslides in every state from now until June): the popular vote.
Obama is expected to win most of the states besides Penn. & West Virginia. Given that Michigan is leaning towards a caucus as a “do-over” for their illegal primary in January, this benefits Obama further.
The only way she could beat him in popular vote would be for her to blow him out by massive numbers in the few states she’s projected to win (Penn, West Virginia, maybe maybe Indiana).
That’s not likely to happen either.
The nomination is Obama’s. The problem will be that if he is not careful, he’s going to wipe out his reputation before he even gets to McCain. HE must challenge Hillary, not attack her.
Given Clinton’s camp started the NAFTAGATE deal by assuring the Canadians first they too were half-serious about changing NAFTA, utilized the politics of fear with their 3 AM ads (based on false, non-existent experience that Clinton is supposed to have) and proudly won the votes of the 5-10% of people in Ohio for whom race mattered significantly in their voting for Hillary, I wouldn’t exactly be calling Obama a saint or anything but he’s certainly fighting a political demon that needs to be driven out of our political bloodstream.
A McCain-Obama race would be one of vigorous debate, honorable discourse and sharp contrasts.
A McCain-Clinton race would be a disaster, equivalent to a Bush-Clinton race in 2004 with its nastiness, partisan divide and destructive tenor.
March 7th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Eddie,
While market prices are not calculated linearly, I’m pretty sure the Hillaryshares selling for 28 cents on the dollar does discount for the fact that she willl lose both pledged delegates and the popular vote.
Which is what makes her odds of winning if she an clinch Pennsylvania, and this post, so interesting!
It’s interesting to see Hillary bringing such destruction to the Democratic nominating process. She comes with better policy and more experience than Obama. But she would not run as good a campaign, and her campaign would never stop.
March 7th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
More experience? In what? Better policy? Where, what, when?
The Chicago Tribune (No great friend of Obama, especially recently) explodes the myth that she has foreign policy experience of any real substance.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-experiencemar07,0,51719.story
She’s not only a liar, but a terribly bad one at that.
The fact that the mainstream media does not pick up on the truth like this only increases my sense that they are pro-Hillary in the sense that they know she sell
March 7th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
ads and increases ratings and circulation. The longer this drags on, the longer their paychecks are guaranteed to be justified.
March 7th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Eddie,
Regarding your calling out of Hillary:
“More experience? In what?”
In a foreign policy area I like, her support of the Orange Revolution [1].
In one I don’t like, her activity in the Fourth World Conference on Women.
” Better policy? Where, what, when?”
Health care. She has the best plan of all the serious contenders.
“She’s not only a liar, but a terribly bad one at that.”
Agreed. Like Gore on the Internet, Hillary may be incapable of honestly taking credit for real achievements.
March 7th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Slim pickings there.
Her health care plan would be DOA in a highly improbable Clinton administration b/c she’d likely be looking at a Republican dominated Congress or a narrow majority with large elements of her own party supremely hostile to any and all of her initiatives.
Not to mention the word compromise and negotiate does not exist in the HRC dictionary.
I am beginning to be fascinated by the consequences of Clinton stealing the nomination from Obama by tearing the Democratic Party apart.
I think President McCain could jettison much of the burdensome, ideological right wing (the discredited National Review & Weekly Standard crowd especially) and rule from the center by picking off the disaffected Obamacrats who want nothing to do with the Clinton wing of the party and combining them with the “Sam Club” GOP elements, especially from out West.
March 7th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Re: healthcare, has Gov. Romney’s plan worked in Mass. yet or is there still not sufficient evidence to support a conclusion on it? I actually respected that plan on the merits…..
March 8th, 2008 at 6:47 am
Eddie,
Certainly implementability is an important component of any plan. The Clintons famously failed to get health care reform through when they had a Democratic congress, but achieved a lot (WTO,welfare reform, etc) when they were opposed by Republicans. Obama doesn’t have any track record. So given a mixed-one and an unknown-one, I’d say it’s a wash.
While I disagree with Clinton’s employer-mandates, she seems to be the only one who realizes that voluntary risk-pools are increasingly untenable in health care [1].
Unsure about your comment on “the discredited National Review & Weekly Standard crowd,” as the readership of those two magazines are from different wings of the party, and rarely agree on specifics.
[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2007/09/17/the-good-and-bad-of-the-new-hillarycare.html
March 8th, 2008 at 8:15 am
We’ve seen no proof Hillary had anything to do with getting WTO or welfare reform (or anything) passed. Her only proven policy experience was the healthcare reform fiasco which was almost entirely her fault.
Thus your assertion that its a wash is bogus to me.
March 8th, 2008 at 8:32 am
Eddie,
Indeed, as far as WTO and welfare reform go. Though her husband’s had much to do with that. She would not be as far as she is without her husband’s machine. Their permanent campaigns are so comingled, I don’t see that changing.
When I endorsed Obama for the Democratic nomination [1], I endorsed him because Hillary’s style is so bad it will hurt the country. I believe that, as I believe her style is so bad that it’s hurting her party now. Indeed, her style is so awful that it overrides her policy leadership on Europe and health care, and her political machine’s experience in global ruleset building.
[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/01/03/vote-mccain-vote-obama.html
March 9th, 2008 at 6:28 am
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