If you call gambling smart, ...

... then the smart money is on Rubio.

According to Justin Wolfers of the New York Times, Marco Rubio -- not Donald Trump -- is the front-runner for the GOP nomination. This contention he bases on a survey of political prediction gambling sites:

Mr. Bush's fall to No. 2 in the markets represents a sharp shift from earlier this month, when Mike Murphy, the head of Mr. Bush's Right to Rise super PAC, boasted to Bloomberg Politics that "if you look at the prediction markets overseas, which are kind of interesting, because that's the one place real money's involved, we constantly rank number one," adding, "The smart money's figured this out."

As Mr. Bush's star has faded, that of Mr. Rubio has brightened. Mr. Rubio, who is set to appear Sunday morning on CNN's State of the Union political talk show, shares many similarities with Mr. Bush. Both are Florida-based mainstream conservatives who are popular among Hispanics. In some sense, this shift from Mr. Bush to Mr. Rubio is just a rebalancing as to which establishment candidate is expected to win the nomination. [links in original, format edits]

I agree that this analysis is likely more accurate than polling data, given that, among other things, the margin of error for polls a year out from the general election is much larger than the margin of victory in the election itself.

Speaking of polls, the prediction markets put the current leaders, Trump and Carson, at around one in six and one in twelve odds of winning, respectively.

-- CAV