[gringoDan]

I'm bullish on Yang's and Buttigieg's chances in general. I also think that their chances of winning the nomination (and election) are much lower than the odds indicated in betting markets.

There is a huge betting market selection bias in that the only people using these betting platforms are young and tech-savvy (i.e. the type of people who are in these candidates' base). Additionally, you can place nominally small bets, meaning there is no real skin in the game. Increase the minimum bet size to $10,000 or so and I think the odds will become much more realistic.

[suby]

You'd then be biasing it towards the opinions of people who can afford a 10,000 dollar bet. I'm not sure that that's any better.

[gringoDan]

Fair point. I hoped that some arbitrarily large number would 1) cause people to actually consider their biases and bet accordingly and 2) allow for smart money to exploit any market mispricings. But I suppose a lot of rich dumb money could just flow in.

[bilbo0s]

Yang's chances are small, Buttigieg's chances are about equal to Beto's, and better than any other candidate's outside of Biden. (And it's an open question as to whether Biden is actually serious.)

[Alex3917]

IMHO Yang has much better odds that Buttigieg. Mayor Pete is just blowing up right now because he had a CNN town hall, but he doesn't seem to have a lot of depth of policy and that's going to hurt him a lot as we get into the debates and then going forward. Whereas Yang hasn't yet had much mainstream media exposure, but has a lot of depth to his policies.

[bilbo0s]

>but he doesn't seem to have a lot of depth of policy...

???

Are you saying that you believe people will be out there voting based on who has the best policies?

Serious question.

As a matter of full disclosure, I, personally, don't believe that's how elections work. I think people vote for the guy or gal they like who also has the ideas they feel most comfortable with. Not the guy or gal they like the best. (Although, at times, a candidate that they like better.) And not the guy or gal with the best ideas overall.

People are more than flexible in this regard. If a candidate out there has terrible ideas, but people like him or her better than the other candidates, that candidate will get the votes. Not because people think he or she's best for the job, but more because they want to keep the other candidates away from power. They don't even need to like the candidate, necessarily. They just need to DISlike the OTHER candidates.

In short, I believe there are lots or reasons people vote. (Or not.) But I don't believe that policy analysis is one of them.

[Alex3917]

I mean people vote based on brand, and having good policies is one way to build a brand. There are lots of other ways, E.g. Bernie and Trump both have good brands, but they are completely different.

But regardless, the debates are going to weed out the candidates who lack substantive policies unless they have a good brand built on something else.