2/06/2016

Which Republican presidential candidate has the highest probability of winning the general election?

My son Maxim and John Stossel have set up a website entitled "Election Betting Odds," where they show the probability that the candidates will win the Republican nomination and the presidency.  The problem with the current odds for winning the presidency is that what you really want are the odds of winning the presidency conditional on winning the nomination.  Looking at the odds for the candidates with at least a 10 percent chance of winning the Republican nomination, the conditional probabilities of winning the presidency are (8:30 AM EST February 6th, 2016):

Rubio 45% = 25.3%/56.7%
Trump 30% = 6.8%/23%
Cruz 28% = 3.5%/12.3%

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2/02/2016

UPDATE: Incredible winning rate of Hillary Clinton's coin flips to break caucus ties, a fifty-fifty split would have had Sanders ahead


As about 12:21 AM CST, there had been six out of six coin flips that Clinton had won to break ties.


The odds of winning six out of six coin flips with a fair coin is only 1.7%.  Using the latest number of delegates on Drudge shown above at 7:00 AM EST would still have Sanders ahead by one vote if the coin flips had gone 50-50.  Sanders would still be slightly ahead by 698 to 697.

Counting the votes might be a little more complicated in Iowa.  If each coin flip determines more than one of these 1,395 delegates, then Hillary would have had to win more than 50% of the coin flips to win the race.

UPDATE: The Washington Post reported that the Des Moines Register missed some cases.
The initial 6-for-6 report, from the Des Moines Register missed a few Sanders coin-toss wins. (There were a lot of coin tosses!) The ratio of Clinton to Sanders wins was closer to 50-50, which is what we'd expect. . . .
There might have been a total of 13 coin flips with Hillary Clinton winning 7 of the six. 

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