A GOP Presidential debate will be held on August 23, 2023.
This market resolves to YES if businessman Vivek Ramaswamy wins the debate, according to CNN.com. Otherwise, it resolves to NO.
The most prominently featured article about the debate, linked from the homepage and posted the day after its conclusion, will be used as reference. "Live updates" about the debate are excluded. If the article covers "5 winners and 5 losers" or something similar, then Ramaswamy must be listed first (or last, if the order is counting down) in the list of winners. As long as he is referred to as the sole or the most prominent winner, the reason is irrelevant, even if all he did was meet expectations and even if he didn't attend.
If CNN does not post any articles about the debate before August 31, 2023 at 11:59:59pm EDT, if none of the articles about the debate offer an opinion as to who won or lost, or if the debate is cancelled, then the market resolves to N/A.
RESOLUTION: A search of CNN.com was conducted and there were no articles that stated that Ramaswamy won the debate at any position. One opinion piece including a number of commenters had the first commenter state that Haley won the debate. A second piece grading the debate suggested that Haley won the debate and that Ramaswamy lost.
Some comments included links to X, to videos of CNN television broadcasts, links to articles on other sites, and polls conducted of voters. None of these were considered because those sources were not in the resolution criteria.
Because Haley was clearly the consensus winner from the CNN commenters, this market resolves to NO.
Keep the conversation going at https://manifold.markets/SteveSokolowski/will-vivek-ramaswamy-win-the-septem !
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Since there were some complaints about how this market resolved, I included it in my meta-market about controversial primary debate markets.
To be clear, though, I think the resolution was unambiguously correct and the creator handled it well. I would strongly advise against changing the resolution.
Pretty much everyone in this article says that Ramaswamy did bad, and most of them agree that Nikki Haley won the debate:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/08/24/opinions/first-republican-primary-debate-roundup/index.html
Also, I'm pretty sure it's the most prominent CNN article about who won the debate. It's the first one I saw, and I can also find it by Googling, "who won the republican debate cnn".
@JosephNoonan Plus, this one puts him in dead last, once again giving Haley the win: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/08/24/opinions/debate-coach-report-card-gop-desantis-ramaswamy-graham/index.html
@JosephNoonan A small sample but the Republican voters from Iowa had Vivek as the outright winner. Does a CNN opinion piece even have any credibility to answer this question? @SteveSokolowski
@Akzzz123 I agree that Ramaswamy won. But the criteria state that the most prominent article will be used. There is no article linked from the homepage that states that he won.
Perhaps there will be before midnight, but the New York Times doesn't count, on-air coverage doesn't count, and posts on X don't count. Perhaps we should have made the criteria a poll of voters, but the rules can't be changed now.
Does a CNN opinion piece even have any credibility to answer this question?
That is literally what the resolution criteria for this question are.
@JosephNoonan I know, but I wouldn't use Fox to decide who won a Dem presidential debate. There's also the pro-establishment bias in almost all mainstream sources. It's tough to come up with a good objective criteria though.
@Akzzz123 Well, if it means anything, Fox's main article this afternoon was criticism of how Ramaswamy misunderstood the Constitution. All in all, except for extremely-online polls, CNN doesn't seem to be an outlier in terms of what pundits think.
@SteveSokolowski It's a biased source though and not representative of what domain experts would think especially on controversial topics like Ukraine war, origins of SARS2 and so on.
@Akzzz123 I don't think any of that matters for this market, though. There is no objective way to determine who won a debate, so the market creator said it would be based on who won according to CNN. Even if that's an unusual source to use to determine the winner of a Republican debate, there was nothing misleading about this market. Anyone betting on an obviously ambiguous question should have read the description to see the precise resolution criteria, saw that it was resolving based on CNN, and bet accordingly.
@JohnBrown Do people think Vivek is a serious contender? Horrendous policies aside, I have literally no faith in the GOP to rally around a guy that looks like him.
Maybe Nikki though, or anyone else..
@Gen Yes. He basically is Trump #2. However, he's not going to be in jail, he is interesting but doesn't seem to be one to create an administration filled with drama, and he's not old. Republican voters clearly like Trump, but it's very easy to see a situation where Trump ends up with multiple convictions and people want someone to step in.
The guy is being vastly underestimated. This is a party that elected a businessman who also had zero political experience, who was the oldest President ever in a time when people complain about age, and who was about 10% as smart as Ramaswamy.
@Gen “A guy who looks like him” is how Democrats think of Republicans, not how Republicans think of their candidates. That kind of condescension led to Trump. Trump was a big FU to the Clinton establishment, and that appealed at the time.
You can’t just be against things anymore, and both Vivek and Nikki have lots of ideas - and energy. They play well against Joe nodding off.
It will be an interesting year.
@Gen I do think Vivek is a contender. He is carrying the energy of Trump and channelling it through an optimized understanding of right-wing talking points from the past several decades. This is why Christie's "ChatGPT" remark landed so well for me. I don't think he will make it all the way to the Oval Office. Young biotech entrepreneurship is not what conservatives are looking for, and if there is to be serious opposition to Trump, it will come from conservatives, not populists or elitists. He also clearly has an axe to grind as evidenced by his wilder policy proposals. He's playing the game of politician; I don't trust him to be positively effective at anything presidential other than becoming a temporary frontrunner.
@cloudprism Perhaps he can steer the conversation from “Trump v Biden” to “issues”. I’ll question your statement that young biotech entrepreneurship is not what conservatives are looking for. What is that based on? I think a smart young person who has accomplished things is very attractive. Agreed Vivek might not make it all the way, but at least he has a function.
@JohnBrown As someone in tech, being successful in tech is not something people are fans of in general. For example, support for Zuck is only begrudging, and mainly just due to his opposition to Musk. The Covid saga was dramatically controversial. Green energy and digital livelihood are heavily dependent on global supply chains; that is not "MAGA". He knows that his background is not relatable, so he's compensating by playing up ways he might be seen as such. (Rapping Eminem, specific references to GOP history, etc.) Trump is the only one who can really carry the Trump torch into 2024, and I don't see success there either. As much as some may wish it to be so, this is not the "roaring twenties". Sense and sensibility are what matters in the coming years.
@cloudprism Zuck is pretty uniformly hated, and doesn’t really rub off on Vivek. Being successful in tech is not a turnoff; failure in business is a turnoff. “Lack of experience” didn’t hurt Barack - youth, vigor, eloquence, and being “the first” took him to office over a much better qualified guy.
@JohnBrown If Vivek pivots to being himself, a successful tech worker with strong opinions about how to lead the country into the next several years, instead of a calculated caricature of uber-republicanism, then he stands a better chance.
@cloudprism In the general election, yes. So he needs to be Trump-ultra to win the primary over Trump, and then change things up. That's how he becomes President.