Resolves YES if the next Speaker of the House to be elected [EDIT: Kevin McCarthy] is still in office at the end of their two-year term (January 3, 2025), and NO if they leave office for any reason (being ousted, resigning, dying, etc).
Background: Kevin McCarthy, front-runner to become the next Speaker (PredictIt currently says he has a 68% chance), has just conceded "he would lower the barriers for rank-and-file members to attempt to depose a sitting speaker ... If adopted, the new rule would allow five members of the House majority to force a vote of no-confidence in their leader." (https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/01/kevin-mccarthy-speaker-vote-00076002)
All Speakers since 1940 have served out their full terms, with three exceptions: John Boehner resigned in 2015 after conflicts with the Freedom Caucus, Jim Wright resigned in 1989 after an ethics investigation, and Sam Rayburn died in 1961 at age 79. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_speakers_of_the_United_States_House_of_Representatives)
General policy for my markets: In the rare event of a conflict between my resolution criteria and the agreed-upon common-sense spirit of the market, I may resolve it according to the market's spirit or N/A, probably after discussion.
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Post-mortem: In retrospect, was the ~80% probability too high? Why did the market think McCarthy was here to stay so soon into the year? Was this really such an unlikely event? Maybe it just feels less weird because the coalition is exactly the one that was foreshadowed during the original vote.
@Conflux I think it was pretty reasonable, though it wound up being about how much McCarthy valued being speaker versus not having the government shut down. I, along with most political commentators, thought that he valued the position more than it seems he actually did.
@Gabrielle Oh, so essentially you think if McCarthy hadn’t arranged to prevent the shutdown, he’d likely be speaker until 2025?
@Conflux Maybe not until 2025 - he had more challenges to work through, like the next debt ceiling, and however they would’ve ended the shutdown - but I think he basically intentionally chose to give up the speakership to prevent the shutdown.
I do think the market was a little high, but I think that, if he had valued it highly enough, he could have arranged to stay the speaker for the whole term. (I’d bet on that at 80%, if that were a proposition I could bet on.)
@Conflux In hindsight, I definitely think this market was too high. I fairly absentmindedly bet yes at very bad prices so I can't claim any wisdom aside from noticing a couple days in advance that it was way high, but I think there's a couple factors that should've made this market much lower.
1: McCarthy's election clearly teetered on a knife's edge- and the motion to vacate meant that it could be renewed literally at any point by the faction who hated him.
2: There are a couple key deadlines for every Congress- namely, government funding and debt limit. McCarthy cleared the debt limit, but did so with significant quarrels among the caucus over his deal with Biden, and which only set up a bigger fight over government funding.
3: September 30th was the funding deadline. Either they were going to permanently shut down the government, or they were going to compromise. There was no grand budget compromise waiting in the wings that would have satisfied everyone, and the White House didn't seem eager to agree to all their demands.
4: The ethics committee has been all over Matt Gaetz recently.
probably more things, but that's what comes to mind. I think the proper a priori price here would've been ~65%. The polymarket for him remaining speaker just for 2023 was around 75% for the most part, so this market was clearly way high.
@SemioticRivalry I mostly agree, but re point 1 I don't think it was really a "close" fight. There was very little chance he was going to lose (source: https://manifold.markets/BTE/will-kevin-mccarthy-be-the-next-spe), the question was just how long it would take him to win.
And I think Gabrielle put it well, most people thought he would essentially just keep caving to the demands of his Republican detractors (as he did during the Speaker fight) in order to keep his position secure. Though I think SemioticRivalry is right that in retrospect there was no way an agreement was ever going to satisfy both the Democrats in the Senate and the right wing of the House, and they were going to have to reach an agreement eventually...
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@ztownsend Sounds like a question for a prediction market? https://manifold.markets/Conflux/will-the-speaker-of-the-house-serve