U.S. Cabinet
The finest (early) indicators of which of Trump's picks will be confirmed (or slipped in via recess appointments)
Anyone who was in the prediction market world back in late 2016 and early 2017 remembers (whether with fondness or horror) the frenetic markets tied to Trump’s Apprentice-style senior staffing decisions.
And with the ink not yet dry on the election results, 2024 is shaping up in similar fashion.
A series of increasingly controversial announcements have left the world (and traders) to wonder: 1) whether the new Senate majority headed by John Thune will manage to (or want to) get the nominees confirmed, and 2) whether Trump will resort to recess appointments for the least palateable picks.
Happily, between
, Kalshi, and , we have dozens of active markets to look at. They don’t all measure the same outcomes, which actually gives us even more granular insights into how traders expect the cabinet confirmations (or lack thereof) to play out.The more traditional picks (Rubio for State, Burgum fo Interior, Collins for VA, Zeldin for EPA) are all trading above 90%. Instead - for now - we’ll focus on… the other guys (and gals).
The four names Trump has announced (rather than simply floated) as winning his nomination, who face the rockiest path to actually serving are:
Homeland Security: SD Governor Kristi Noem
Defense: Fox News personality and Army National Guard officer Pete Hegseth
Health and Human Services: Former presidential candidate and activist Robert Kennedy, Jr.
Justice (Attorney General): Former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz
We’ve identified all the active markets on those 3 platforms, applied our qualitative weights (based on volume, real-moneyness, tick size, fees, and market microstructure) and present you with the following aggregated market-implied fates of the Flagitious Four.
Of the bunch, Gaetz (on whom a House ethics report was set to drop just before his elegantly-time resignation) is clearly the most controversial, though Kennedy is perhaps not too far behind.
Traders, however, give Kennedy a much better shot at actually serving in the cabinet (82%) and find it more likely than not he’ll get there via a successful Senate vote (71%). Gaetz on the other hand, will likely never take the office to which Trump claims he intends to appoint him (42%) and is even less likely to get there with a Senate blessing (31%).
Hegseth is only slightly safer than Kennedy, with an 86% chance of serving (72% that he’s confirmed). Meanwhile, Noem (the erstwhile scandalousness of whose nomination seems suddenly quaint in light of who was to follow) finds herself sitting pretty at 95% to serve (90% to be confirmed), climbing steadily from the mid-80s in recent days, as the rogues gallery has grown more crowded.
We don’t have live-updating real-time tracking aggregates for cabinet markets yet, but those will be coming soon, at least for the HHS and AG markets (and whichever others may next cause Senatorial and journalistic jaws to drop).