Ron Paul is the most electable Republican, and I have the math to prove it

During Presidential primaries, voters consider not only the policies of the candidate they are voting for, but also their ability to win in the general election. While far left and far right candidates may have some success in energizing their base, many primary voters eschew their preferred candidate if the one they deem as next best is more likely to win the general election. 2012 seems ripe for this line of thinking, as nobody actually likes any of the Republican candidates and most voters in the GOP’s primaries are thinking along the lines of “Please God, anything but four more years of Obama.” Because I am such a caring person, I decided to help out Republicans who may be thinking this way by crunching the numbers and figuring out who is the most electable. “What numbers?” you ask. It is for reasons like this that God invented intrade.com, a website which allows you to buy and sell “shares” of future events. Because open markets consolidate the best available information in their price, I took the probability of a candidate winning the Republican primary and divided it by the probability of him or her winning the general election. The result is the probability of them winning the presidency should they be the Republican nominee, or their electability percentage.

As the above chart shows, Ron Paul is the Republican most likely to win the general election should he receive the Republican nomination. Therefore, if you a voter in the Republican primary who is not enamored with any of the candidates  but would prefer any Republican to Obama, then Paul is the man for you. Of course, I could try to sell you on the soundness of Dr. Paul’s economic policy and libertarian philosophy, but none of that matters to the marginal voter.