I Made a Movie and a Spreadsheet to Find Out if Any Dems Will Hit 5 Percent After the Debate
As you know, it is Debate SZN. I will 100 percent admit that I have been a rainy cloud about PredictIt’s gambling markets for the Democratic Debates and have been using my blog for therapy. This is due to the fact that the healer I had been seeing moved out of the tent city on my sidewalk to start a social justice themed cannabis store for pets.
However, last night I was visited in my dreams by something more powerful. It was the Alpha Fairy and she looked like Rep. Tulsi Gabbard surfing.
Needless to say, the Alpha Fairy was a total smoke and I was willing to do whatever she told me. And what she told me to do was bet on this market.
I am now going to rip through this analysis quicker than I rip through a bottle of Robitussin during Cops.
I hate most of PredictIt’s Democratic Debate markets because they’re tied to RCP Averages, which are constantly moving and dilute the effects of whatever polls Dem candidates crank out post-debate. So as far as I am concerned those markets are more useless than a tofu patty. But this market is tied to Scott Rasmussen’s June 26 survey which means we have one isolated variable to work off of. I am basically a PhD scientist so I get hard whenever you tell me that we can employ the scientific method to go mining for alpha. Let’s take a look at what this report says:
As you can see there are tons of Democratic candidates who are banging out 1s and 0s like they are in the high school band and just discovered beer. Let’s see how some of them performed last night. I am going to take Google’s numbers for Cory Booker, Julian Castro, and Tulsi Gabbard, because for whatever reason, the Fake News Media has been jaw boning about them the most. I will benchmark them against Sen. Amy Klobuchar (green) because basically everyone agrees that she got smoked.
Do you see what I see?
Booker, Gabbard, and Castro all popped. So the B and C-list candidates definitely turned it up. That was enough for me to start doing some real research on whether or not a single night’s performance is enough to boost candidates into the 5 percent range. See the video below for the path to alpha:
[wpvideo 8bTIPIwv]
The point of all that is to say that there is plenty of reason to think that a minor candidate could pop to 5 percent. The danger spot is that the first GOP debate only featured 10 candidates versus the 20 in the Democratic field. So let’s look at how the GOP debates would have faired in this marketplace:
| Candidate | Heaver Avg | Heater Avg RCP | Rasmussen |
| Rubio | 7% | 7% | 10% |
| Carson | 10% | 10% | 8% |
| Fiorina | 7% | 6% | 9% |
| Paul | 5% | 4% | 4% |
As you can see, three out of the four candidates who went on a heater would have won this bet. However, there are twice as many Dems on showcase as Republicans, so let’s divide this number by two:
| Candidate | 1/2 Heater Avg | 1/2 RCP Avg | 1/2 Rasmussen |
| Rubio | 3.50% | 3.33% | 5.00% |
| Carson | 5.00% | 4.83% | 4.00% |
| Fiorina | 3.25% | 2.83% | 4.50% |
| Paul | 2.61% | 2.00% | 2.00% |
In this version, only one candidate would have cracked 5 percent in Rasmussen; and only one other would have pulled the numbers for a W in today’s market.
Then there is the question eyeballs. The first GOP debate crushed with 24 million viewers. Night one of the Dem circus drew 14 million. That means that regardless of how many people watch night two, the maximum audience to see all the candidates will be ten million short of the GOP set. But I have warned you many times about facts and I will say it again — you should absolutely never trust them. That is because there is one key difference between 2015 and 2019. That is that Joe Biden is leading, not Donald Trump.
Trump’s fan club is easily the most loyal group of people in history. I honestly think they would jump into the seat of a Japanese kamikaze fighter for him quicker than you can say, “fake news.”
They basically already are because Trump’s polling numbers are sinking faster than Japanese aircraft carriers in the South Pacific. That Donald Trump just has a killer hold on his base.
Joe Biden is different. I am 99 percent sure that people say he is the #1 candidate for the same reason they say that the Mona Lisa is the best painting ever — because they’ve just been told that is the right answer but have no idea why. Long story short, I don’t think Uncle Joe has a tight grip on his supporters which is why he’s been shedding them since his campaign announcement. So really, we are asking whether or not 1-4 percent of Biden’s supporters will jump ship for the same candidate. Also factor in that Bernie Sanders is going to be standing on stage with Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and Kirsten Gillibrand, which will make him look so old that you will be able to smell the mothballs through your TV screen. So I am not putting it past Sen. Sanders to feel the burn when he gets slapped in the face and deserted by his team too.
What’s the right pick? IDK. The data makes it sound like a NO. But I sort of have a woody for YES. I’ll let you know what I decide. The good news is that you can watch the debate tonight and make up your mind after.
UPDATE — This is a clear NO. See our post here.Â
KEENDAG.
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