Prediction Act

Will former National Party leader Don Brash take the ACT Party leadership? Will he start a new party on the right? Here's the odds over at iPredict:

• Rodney Hide to win Epsom as an ACT Party candidate: 29% chance. Contract had been trading over sixty cents for most of the last month. Recall that ACT needs to keep Epsom, take another electorate, or get over 5% of the ballot to return to Parliament. It's now 30%, but only because I bought a few shares. The contract's fun for its volatility; I have no special insight into Epsom.
• At least one ACT MP to be elected to next Parliament: 51%. Had been trading around 64% for most of the last month. Nudged up past 70 cents on the early rumours of Brash taking over ACT, then collapsed to the mid 40s before starting back. The market's expecting ACT's chances outpace Hide's where previously the two markets ran in lock step.
• What share of the party vote will the ACT Party win at the next election? 3%. I've never put a huge amount of faith in the continuous vote share markets as the payoff curve is too flat for really reliable results. But the market isn't seeming to think that ACT's 50/50 shot of returning to Parliament is coming from a surge in the popular vote or from Hide's keeping Epsom.
• Rodney Hide to depart as leader of ACT: 34%. Don Brash to lead ACT: 32%. Perhaps punters are figuring Brash would take an electorate seat for ACT if he took the leadership. Or perhaps they're reckoning that Brash winning a leadership challenge would lead to higher poll numbers where a successful Hide defence would nevertheless prove pyrrhic: something like 1/3 chance of 7% of the vote under Brash plus 2/3 chance of 1% of the vote under Hide - that gets you the 3% trading price in the vote share market. But there are other ways of making the numbers work, and I'm wary of reading too much into the 3% price in the vote share market.
• Rodney Hide to win Epsom as an independent or representing a party other than ACT or National: 3%. This contract was basically dead prior to the current unrest; it's since seen a couple of spikes up to 8% and down to zero. Whoever had the big orders in at the bottom of the book has hopefully done well. Somebody's presumably thinking that Hide will be rolled and will then run as an independent. I'd throw in a few standing shorts around 8%, but then I'd be in constant terror that I've not been watching Twitter closely enough.
• New right wing party (with Brash) to be registered before the next General Election: 40%. This had been trading south of 10% for a few weeks before spiking up to 70% with the Don Brash interviews; it's now back down to 40%.

Current prices suggest ACT's chances would be better with a change in leadership, but they're far too volatile to draw strong conclusions for now. I've had to update prices twice while drafting the post. Stay tuned.