Ron Paul has better chance than Cain of getting Nomination

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according to intrade.com a website where they let the market figure the probabilities

gives the following chances
Mitt (secret commie) Romney 70.9%
Newt (two Tiffany accounts) Gingrich 12.8%
Ron (Lets get rid of the military) Paul 4.5%
Herman (both hands) Cain 3.6%
Rick (derp) Perry 3.4%

70.9+12.8+4.5+3.6+3.4 = 95.3%
the remainder of which I am pretty sure is not held by Huntsman.*

Barack (the beast) Obama is trading at a 50.6% chance of winning.

* it really does not work that way anyway.

Predicting the winner is pointless until after the first half-dozen or so primary elections, at least.

There's always the chance that some of Paul's more zealous supporters are buying shares and inflating his chances deliberately.

Ron is polling at 20%(statistical tie in one poll and 4% behind a dying Herman Cain in latest polls)in Iowa and 17%(solidly 2nd place) New Hampshire. If he can win both of those, he will be odd's on favorite. He is a much more viable candidate than Herman Cain at this point, if he was given 1/10th the air time Hermie gets he would be in 1st place.

Hermie's campaign is sinking and he'll be relegated to Perry/Bachmann status by the end of the month.

The Earth is flat. You can contradict me if you want to, but I'm right. I'll prove it by plugging my ears and saying "nyah nyah" to anything you say and presenting flawed and childishly constructed syllogistic arguments, and if you make me really mad I'll start typing in big, bold typeface until you go away.

So there.

Actually, I just read the full OP and realized that I wasn't dealing with one of the Ron Paul faithful.

Excuse me, just a reflex bred from one too many a pointless and frustrating argument with people who have all the perspective and breadth of thought of those people who read David Icke like it's religious scripture. Carry on. Just pretend I'm one of those Vietnam vets who still occasionally scream and dive to the floor with their hands covering their heads.

If I recall, In 2008, intrade gave Paul somewhere around a 10% chance of winning the GOP nomination (clearly way too high). Part of the reason for this is that intrade makes you post your worst-case losses at no interest. Intrade tends to overestimate the likelihood of long shots because there is little to no profit to be made shorting them (You would usually be better off sticking your money in a CD for year). Intrade needs to pay interest or let you sell contracts without posting the margin if they want to accurately measure the probability of unlikely events occurring.

Ron really does have a good shot at winning in Iowa tho. Win there and they couldn't ignore him anymore. He polls strong in New Hampshire and Nevada too. That's 3/5 of the early states where he has a great chance at at least 2nd place. National polls are really irrelevant at this point. Early states are what you want to watch and the bandwagon effect will do the rest.

Intrade has him at like 26% there. Romney is like 36%, Gingrich 18%, and Cain and Perry like under 10%.