Intrade's Prices Indicate Obama And Trump Would Be In A Neck And Neck Presidential Race

A comment I posted on Intrade's security, "Donald Trump to be elected President in 2012" on Trump's chances of winning the 2012 presidential election:

To be elected president, the candidate has to be on the ballot. If the person does not get a party nomination, the chance of winning the presidential election is zero (write in's and independents are extremely unlikely to win, except may be for someone very wealthy and widely known, like Oprah, etc.).

The Intrade prices for a "to be elected president" security are conditional on the probability (Intrade price) of getting a party nomination. If you do not get the nomination, your presidential election winning Intrade security will drop to zero. The chance of winning is conditional on getting the nomination first.

That means the Intrade price of winning the presidency equals (=) the Intrade price of getting nominated times the true chance (price) of winning the presidential election.

For Obama, using current prices, 62.3 = 91.8 times the probability of winning, or 67.9 chance of winning the presidency again (62.3/91.8)

For Romney, its 10.0 = 23.9 times probability of winning the presidency, or 41.8 chance of winning the election (10/23.9).

For Trump, its 5.2 = 5.5 x probability of winning, or 94.5 percent. But an analyst of Trump's chances to win might want to lower those odds since Trump has the recognition and resources to run without the Republican party nomination and his true odds may not be 5.2/5.5 but 5.2 divided by a number bigger than 5.5 to reflect his higher chances of being on the ballot even if he does not get the Republican nomination. The Intrade price for another party other than Dem or Rep to win the presidency is 1.7. If one takes that as an Independent or write in odds of winning [inadvertently left out: as Trump's odds of being an Independent or write in candidate], then Trump's chance are 5.2/(5.5 + 1.7) or 5.2/ 7.2 or 72.2 percent chance of winning the presidency if he is on the ballot.

So, Obama's and Trump's odds of winning the presidency in an election against each other are very close at this very early point in the presidential election race.