[Content note: This post is highly speculative and not particularly rooted in skepticism.]
Americans are getting to the point in the election cycle where we can say that it is coming down to only five or six serious challengers, all vying for the last four slots: Democratic Party Establishment, Democratic Party Insurgent, Republican Party Establishment, Republican Party Insurgent. The establishment candidates will have a history of service to their respective political parties, climbing the ladder in more-or-less conventional ways, typically serving as a state governor or U.S. Senator. Insurgent candidates, by contrast, will be drawn from outside party politics and they will espouse a more extreme, less compromising, and fairly populist version of what generally passes for mainstream politics.
Here are my final four picks as of this week:
The left half is pretty much settled, and more or less beyond dispute. The right half is trickier, but easy enough once you realize that an outsider candidate is well ahead in the polls whereas an increasingly popular establishment candidate is leading in the endorsement primary.
I could well be wrong, of course. Perhaps Carson will surge ahead of Trump, and Kasich will somehow claim the establishment role. Perhaps I’m leaning too much on Conventional Wisdom™ to bifurcate each party nomination race into establishment and insurgent lanes. Perhaps, too, I’ve missed some crucial trend in the data.
All such caveats aside, a famous skeptic once said that sometimes you just have to “pick a pony and bet it.” Accordingly, here are my best guesses for the final four.
Your thoughts?
