20/1 Edwards 
Do the compilers actually follow politics? I thought I had a steal at 14's :laughing: What I suspect they've done is look at the opinion polls and price a book up accordingly. Unfortunately for the bookies the American system is very different and I think they've failed to legislate for some key issues.
Few people doubt that the Democrats will win at the present. The disapproval ratings and the attitudinal answers to various questions are all recording figures in excess of what has normally precipitated a change in Adminsitration. John McCain's campaign has just gone into terminal decline and the one time Republican fav has been well and truly eclipsed by Giuliani now.
The crude opinion polls about party preferences (stripping away a named candidate) continually point to an unnamed Democrat, (the shrewder Republicans are given 2008 the swerve). However, unlike this country America doesn't vote anywhere near as loyally along partisan lines, and the cult of the personality is all important. You don't see conventions and rallies with signs up saying vote Democrat/ vote Republican for instance, you see the candidates name instead - it's weird, but the candidate is bigger than the party.
In this instance therefore the notion of pricing up based on Democrat versus Republican is questionable (even though you'd apply this logic for a British election). The opinion polls that matter at this stage are those that present the voters with hypothetical match ups. It's worth remembering the campaign will be fought out along these lines (Bush versus Kerry etc) not Republican v's Democrat, or Red v's Blue.
Amazingly the answers to this questions change dramatically, and in a way which is frankly incomprehendable to us.
In hypothetical head to head match ups Giuliani beats both Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama. The last piece I read on this suggested that even the nosediving John McCain was only 0.3% behind Clinton, and he's the most pro-war candidate in the race and is widely regarded as being damaged beyond repair for it, as all the others are seeking to distance themselves and re-write their voting records etc (Clinton has the most work to do here). As I've said before at length, people in the UK (and that includes our bookies) have got very little grasp of just how divisive and hated Hilary Clinton is in the States (and critically the Southern states at that)
When the penny drops with the Democrats, (as the White House is there's to throw away) and they realise that both Obama and Clinton will lose to Giuliani or Thompson (I wouldn't be too scarred of Romney) then they'll have to select Edwards, the white, southern, lawyer with a portfolio of championing the under dog and the televisual looks, and sharp mind to go with it. His price might get bigger yet, as I wouldn't expect him to be first out the blocks, but would expect him to come through when the Southern states start holding their primaries and when more opinion polls that use hypothetical match ups and start to set the alarm bells ringing amongst Democrat voters that both Hillary and Barrack will lose to Rudy, but Edwards will beat him.
