…or at least that’s what the bookies at Betfair (as reported by Oddschecker) appear to believe.
Here are what your winnings would look like on a $100 bet (including your original stake money) assuming that either Trump or Cruz wins the popular vote in Indiana tonight:
Cruz is trading at 10 to 1 against, which makes him a fairly long shot. Trump is selling at 33 to 1 in his favor, so you’d only win $3.03 on top of your original $100 stakes. Betting on Trump is so safe right now that it is actually boring. Meanwhile at Five Thirty Eight, the polls only forecast model has Trump up to 97%.
In related political betting news, the probability of a GOP brokered convention has dropped to 9% over at PredictIt, indicating that the futures markets have mostly foreclosed on the possibility of a second round of voting in Cleveland. (Bit embarrassing to admit that I bought this contract back when it was much closer to even odds, but politics nearly always tastes like chagrin.) Putting all this together, it is difficult to see how anyone can possibly take the GOP nomination from Trump at this point in the race. It makes me deeply uncomfortable to admit that a reality show star and insult comic like him will probably win a major party nomination—given my ongoing optimism about humanity in general and Americans in particular—but I’ll just have to learn to live with this dissonance.
http://twitter.com/Metamagician/status/726976501996916736
If you’ve any thoughts on how a political outsider with almost no historical ties to the GOP has become well-nigh inevitable at this point, I’d be quite interested in hearing them. As a result of cultural balkanization and self-selection effects, I’ve yet to actually meet a Trump supporter in any sort of social context where we could affably discuss such things.
