Ron Paul takes the lead in Iowa.

[kentonio]

Savaging you like this feels sort of good, but I get the feeling that I'm hardly the first. Makes it less special somehow.

Aww bless, you stat geeks are so cute.

[Egbert]

Savaging you like this feels sort of good, but I get the feeling that I'm hardly the first. Makes it less special somehow.

You appear to have "savaged" nobody. You did give the impression that you are, as usual, carrying on like a rabid and deranged loon. Perhaps you succeeded in "savaging" yourself.

[KrazyHorse]

Once more demonstrating that not only do the vast majority of people have no clue what they're talking about, but they also have no clue why they're saying it.

EDIT: that was directed at the monkey filosofer, not the aussie twit accountant, but who really cares...

[Dinner]

The turn out numbers are kind of interesting. It seems that Ron Paul got a lot more people to show up at the caucuses but other than Paul's increase the total Republican turn out was actually down slightly. Paul has tons of negatives but at least he does seem to motivate people to go out into the snow in order to drum up support for him while the rest of the field just doesn't have that enthusiasm. Gingrich's speech sounded a lot like he was saying (to paraphrase): I know I can't win, I'm endorsing Rick Santorum, and I'm going to spend the rest of my time bashing Romney over the head.

[Uncle Sparky]

Tie between Romney & Santorum - if the results hold they each receive 11 delegates. I'm not surprised Santorum did so well in the corn-holer state

[Dinner]

Just two weeks ago Santorum was polling near dead last. The only one he was beating was Huntsman. He went from being someone selling hotdogs in the stands to being the home town hero/ latest not Romney. Several Fox News personalities have spent months calling 2012 "the Fox News primary" claiming Fox's lock on Republican viewers meant they had the power to change everything wrt Republican primaries and it actually looked like Fox was right too as they built up one not Romney after another. The problem is the other guys collapsed one after another too.

The top three Iowa winners were the pick of the party's elite/insiders (Romney), the "true conservative" evangelical which Fox spent most of their time ignoring (Santorum), and the "crazy outsider" which Fox actively spent most of their time smearing. Interestingly enough supposedly (if the pundits are to be believed) the two guys who spent the most time and effort doing the traditional knocking on doors, visiting church groups, and shaking hands at fairs were Santorum and Paul. That means despite Fox bragging about how they were supposedly the new king maker the guys who took the traditional ground game route did pretty well.

[Dinner]

BTW it's official Romney wins by 8 votes and it looks like Iowa GOP improves their record from 2 out of 7 to 3 out 8.

[Lorizael]

The results are not in yet, as far as I know. In fact, romney iowa 92.5-94.8 santorum iowa 6.0-10.0 is the current quote.

Secondly, you utter imbecile, even in the case that romney were to lose iowa, THE MARKET WAS IMPLYING A 1 IN 7 OR SO CHANCE THAT THIS WOULD HAPPEN. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO STATISTICAL TEST YOU COULD DO WITH THOSE TWO PIECES OF INFORMATION WHICH WOULD DEMONSTRATE SIGNIFICANT DEVIATION FROM THE EMH (even if we discount the fact that you cherry-picked a single point in time, which increases the trial factor).

In order to garner information on the accuracy of intrade predictions, what would be required is a larger number of observations of independent events. Now run along and play with the other children

Out of curiosity, what tests could be run that would show intrade to be inaccurate?

[HalfLotus]

Romney will not be the nominee. The GOP establishment doesn't want a less charismatic liberal running against Obama for the presidency.

The GOP is supposed to lose to Obama, but they need to do it with a weak "conservative" (Perry or Gingrich, preferably for them) so the US political establishment can continue it's "kooky", "out of the mainstream" narrative against the right, and eventually solidify the US as a fabian liberal/socialist country prior to pushing us into a North American Union, and eventually bankrupting us and making us a client state of China.

Mark my words.

[loinburger]

I think that the GOP wants to lose so that gay marriage will be legalized and then the GOPers can gay marry each other. Mark my words.

[Lorizael]

Romney will not be the nominee. The GOP establishment doesn't want a less charismatic liberal running against Obama for the presidency.

The GOP is supposed to lose to Obama, but they need to do it with a weak "conservative" (Perry or Gingrich, preferably for them) so the US political establishment can continue it's "kooky", "out of the mainstream" narrative against the right, and eventually solidify the US as a fabian liberal/socialist country prior to pushing us into a North American Union, and eventually bankrupting us and making us a client state of China.

Mark my words.

If Romney does become the nominee, how will you rationalize your error in order to maintain your conspiracy thinking?

[loinburger]

The Mormons are a branch of the Illuminati

[Lorizael]

Another possibility is that they're monitoring HalfLotus' communications and will intentionally produce results that discredit his predictions.

[MikeH]

At least the coverage of this has allowed us to see exactly how much Santorum is a ridiculous nutjob.

[MOBIUS]

You can't make this **** up if you tried!