Presidential Wager
By Sean at 24 August, 2007, 5:22 pm
Speculation and debate over who will be Russia’s next president has all but screeched to a halt. While a few months ago Kommersant was speculating whether Putin would pick a governor, and if so which one, now it seems that no one is willing to hedge their bets that the next President of Russia will be anyone but Sergei Ivanov.
And, dear reader, if you’re a gamblin’ man, you wouldn’t put any money down on anyone else but Ivanov. According to the current betting line provided by the internet gaming site, Unibet, the First Deputy Prime Minster is a favorite with odds of 2.2 to one. Ivanov continues to deny that he’s running for the top job, but no one believes him. Dmitri Medvedev comes in second with odds of 3.75 to one. Following far behind is former Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov at 10 to one. Other Russia hopeful Mikhail Krasyanov is 14 to one. Finally, it appears that the Communists look to fade further into irrelevancy, at least on the level of presidential politics. KPRF mainstay Gennady Zyuganov rates at 30 to one.
Even the most unlikely of victors get thrown a bone in the betting world. Mikhail Khorodkovsky gets some love at a distant 200 to one, as does Russian first lady Liudmila Putina. One notable absence is bogey man tycoon Boris Berezovsky and Western darling Gary Kasparov. Their odds are apparently so steep that they don’t even merit mention. I’m sure they rate better in a death pool.
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I don’t know, I might put $10 on BAB at 500-to-1 or something – think of the payoff! – the guy seems to have a lot of tricks up his sleeve.
I saw this a day or 2 ago and was going to email them about one of the people I was surprised to see not on the list (it said one could email for odds on such dark horses). I was going to ask about Naryshkin – a couple of accounts I’ve seen have named him the dark-horse-of-the-moment – and figured that a $10 or $20 wager at 200 or 300 to 1 would pay off so well that it would be worth the risk.
I’m hoping one of the social scientists who reads SRB will weigh in with a more serious assessment, but I recall seeing in recent years a fair bit of serious scholarship about the power of markets (which is what this field of odds is) to predict outcomes. They only work when there are lots and lots of people involved (e.g., the Iowa Electronic Markets), and the absence of Naryshkin – indeed, of anyone who’s been talked about in the media as a possible candidate – as well as the 100-to-1 given impossible candidates like Anpilov and Yavlinsky (Abramovich and Mrs. Putin are unlikely candidates to be sure, but surely more likely than those two, and this line has them at 200-to-1) suggests the Unibet pool on the Russian presidential election is a thinner market than one needs to see the predictive power such markets supposedly have.
I wonder whether they pay out if the next president takes charge without an election (a la Yeltsin’s New Year’s Eve retirement)? The proposition being bet on is “Who will be the next Russian president?” so presumably it doesn’t matter how they get there. Maybe the people betting on Kasyanov are betting on a color revolution…not something I’d bet on, even at 14-to-1, but who knows.
And what happens if there is no “next President” of Russia in 2008 – if Mr. Putin yields to the will of the masses and sticks around. It seems he should be among the candidates on the list, but I’m not an expert in how such pools are set up.
Thanks for highlighting this, Sean, maybe if all of your readers go bet what we think, the market’s predictive power will grow!
Serdyukov. You heard it here first.
I’d lay a chervonets on that at 200-to-1… time to email Unibet. Incidentally, Intrade has a more classic political futures market dealing with the Russian 2008 question (see “Russian Politics” in the left-hand sidebar).
Whoever he’s going to be, he will be younger than Putin, and have a good head of hair.
Shoigu. He’s performed very well. He’s always around when there’s a disaster showing he’s doing things. He gets regular airtime, is very popular, is quite balanced. Add to that if he was elected, it would be a very good signal to the racists who call themselves patriots that they’ve got the wrong end of the stick.
Either way, Putin’s legacy will be in the ‘ex-’FSB Putinites he’s left in place so I expect Puting to probably play the role of the grey cardinal. Here’s an art from 1999 saying that the Kremlin naming Putin as the next President will be the kiss of death’:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/1999/08/10/wyelt210.html
I think there is a more than reasonable possibility that it will be someone relatively unknown. Putin enjoys pulling rabbits out of hats and leaving certain groups perplexed:
At one time, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov was considered a contender. Offhand, if I’m not mistaken, he’s Western educated (again offhand, a Harvard degree). He came across well during one of the Davos panels which featured Yulia Shevtsova, Vladimir Ryzhkov and a not so objective US mass media moderator.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Putin annoints a dark-horse or lesser known candidate. I don’t think it works for his own possible return to the presidency to see the next president be a strong character or personality.
Even someone considered loyal like Ivanov might start getting ideas about a 2nd term come 2012, running to oppose Putin and creating a split within the Kremlin. It’s almost the only way I could see a 2nd viable political party forming.
Of course, the whole thing could go Hudsucker Proxy on Putin by 2012, even with a dark-horse candidate. People are fickle. To some degree, I think Putin is counting on an economic downturn in the next 4 years, if he is thinking of another term or set of terms after 2012.