Online Exchange Shows Jeb Bush as the GOP’s 2016 Favorite

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Donald Trump leads just about every public-opinion survey of the Republican presidential field, with one notable exception: PredictIt, the online marketplace for investors looking to buy and sell shares in an expected outcome.

Among those prognosticators willing to put actual money behind their predictions, Mr. Trump trades at a lower price than former Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. As of Thursday night, it cost 24 cents to buy shares of the prospect that Mr. Trump will be the next GOP nominee and 41 cents to buy shares that it would be Mr. Bush.

In other words, polls may show that Mr. Trump is the candidate-of-the-moment for Republicans, both nationally and in the early nominating states of Iowa and New Hampshire, but the folks putting real money on the race don’t consider the celebrity real-estate mogul the favorite to claim the Republican presidential nomination next year.

Academics and professional investors have long debated the effectiveness of markets to predict outcomes, and a 2008 study suggested that polls tend to influence the market price of various political events. But users of an earlier online-predictions exchange correctly picked the winner of 2012 White House race, nailing the results in every state but Florida. Likewise, PredictIt traders correctly picked the outcome of the recent bailout referendum in Greece.

The odds.