By Noah Lieberman

Ballotcraft is a fantasy politics game (think fantasy football, but for politics). Play against your friends and win by best predicting what’s going to happen in upcoming elections. Sign up and play here: www.ballotcraft.com.

With the most recent Republican debate concluded just moments ago, let’s take a look at how the night developed on the BallotCraft market and what that means for the future of the campaign.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio entered the debate in an enviable position: he led the rest of the field by a mile, with seemingly no possibility of being toppled. And for the first hour of the debate it looked as though that this would remain the state of the race, as the infighting between the other candidates kept him looking presidential and on top of the market. More importantly, it kept other candidates who had a chance at dethroning him from coming close, as the outsiders trying to solidify support couldn’t speak long enough to make their case. By the time we were one hour in, he had a 30 point lead over the next closest competitor, at 46 percent to Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s 16 percent.

However, as the night progressed and questioning began to focus on the leading candidates, Cruz began to break away from the rest of the pack. Though Donald Trump had put in his best performance of the campaign by staying steady at 11%, Cruz made the big statements and fought enough against the moderators and competitors to distinguish himself as the clear second-place candidate. From there on out it was a slow-burning battle between the two senators, with Cruz gradually gaining ground from the other candidates while Rubio declined even more slowly. Rubio held a 23 point lead at 10:00, a 20 point lead 15 minutes later, and a ten point lead ten minutes after that. The two candidates largely stayed out of each other’s way, and the market was slow to react for that very reason.

That is until the two came into direct conflict over immigration. Cruz and Rubio had the most memorable battle of the night over amnesty, slamming each other over their past positions. Though the audience didn’t seem to favor one over the other, the market clearly thought Cruz the victor and he shot up past his Floridian counterpart to a 44 to 23 lead, his first of the night. The lead continued to build as the traders had time to reflect on the exchange, peaking at a 28 point advantage for Senator Cruz. Though that lead slightly receded following the next commercial break, Cruz clearly came out on top. From there the market bent slightly as each candidate spoke, granting Rubio a few points when he talked about military spending, and a few for Cruz as he spoke on his fellow candidates. Closing remarks brought little change as well as all nine candidates stuck mostly to their talking points, with the prices heading into closing had Rubio at just over 25 and Cruz at 52 percent.­

When the final votes of our focus group were cast, they echoed the market’s sentiment: Cruz won over Rubio by a healthy, though still competitive, margin, 43% to 28%. Fiorina, Christie, and Paul also received votes, though not enough to think they are suddenly relevant in these debate markets again. This clearly indicates that Cruz vs. Rubio is the outsider/insider matchup to watch, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of the debates, and perhaps most of the primaries, were only won by one of these two candidates.

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