Your GOP market update.
Online investors are betting Tom DeLay (R-TX) won’t go down on money laundering charges. “The market’s at 29 to 30 percent probability that he will be found guilty of consipiring to launder money,” Mike Knesevich of online futures trading company Intrade told me.
However, the market for House Republicans is plummeting, in no small part due to ethics scandals that have ensnared DeLay and others.
At Intrade, the bottom’s fallen out of the market for Republicans retaining control of the House in the November elections. In February traders went 75-25 on the GOP keeping the House; now, it’s just about 50-50.
Knesevich ran down the market’s predictions for a few of our scandal-dogged incumbent candidates:
Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA): He’s out. “The probability a Democrat wins has been steady at 70 percent. Santorum doesn’t look like heâs got it.”
Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT): Even odds to win. “That’s a 50-50. That’s still very close.”
Sen. Katherine Harris (R-FL): Get outta town. “Whoah. . . Democrats have a 78 percent probability to win Florida. Doesn’t seem to be much movement on that one recently.”
