As though New Hampshire wasn't already overprivileged enough in the broken primary system, the state may be the one to tip the scales in the general election to either party. According to The Signal's elections model, which orders the states from most to least likely to go to the Republican candidate, a GOP win in New Hampshire gives the challenger 270 votes to Obama's 268. If the president wins, he carries the election with 272 votes to his opponent's 266.

Our model, which I developed with Yahoo Labs economist Patrick Hummel by analyzing data from the past 10 elections, gives Obama a 59.4 percent likelihood of winning in the Granite State. This number is slightly higher than our prediction in our first post about our equations last week because the Real Clear Politics average of presidential approval polls has increased from 48 to 49 percent. The most likely outcome is still that Obama will win by 303 votes, carrying Ohio and Virginia as well as New Hampshire. As we noted before,

With fewer than nine months to go before Election Day, The Signal predicts that Barack Obama will win the presidential contest with 303 electoral votes to the Republican nominee's 235.

How do we know? We don't, of course. Campaigns and candidates evolve, and elections are dynamic events with more variables than can reasonably be distilled in an equation. But the data--based on a prediction engine created by Yahoo! scientists--suggest a second term is likely for the current president. This model does not use polls or prediction markets to directly gauge what voters are thinking. Instead, it forecasts the results of the Electoral College based on past elections, economic indicators, measures of state ideology, presidential approval ratings, incumbency, and a few other politically agnostic factors.

We'll dip into what the model says in a moment, but first a note about models in general: there are a lot of them, from complex equations generated by nerdy academics (like the team at The

Rick Santorum has slipped ahead of the Mitt Romney in the polls, marking an ignominious milestone in the Republican nomination: Since last summer, when Romney was at the top of the early polls, the lead has switched nine times. In order, it's gone to Rick Perry, Romney, Herman Cain, Romney, Gingrich, Romney, Gingrich, Romney, and Santorum, who now leads the Real Clear Politics' aggregated trend with 30.2 percent to Romney's 28.6 percent. Notice a pattern?

The Signal continues to predict that Romney will win the nomination. According to the prediction markets, he has a 72.8 percent likelihood to win the nomination, followed by Santorum at a non-negligible 17.8 percent. That's a far more vulnerable position for the former Massachusetts governor than he found himself in a few weeks ago, but it's still an uphill battle for Santorum. On the following chart, the vertical line represents when the first polls closed on Tuesday, February 7, when Santorum won three primary states (two for

It's no secret that states with early primaries or caucuses have had an outsized influence on the outcome of the nomination. Cutting to the front of the calendar is such a boon, particularly given the economic boost that campaigns deliver, that states are willing to sacrifice their influence at the convention in order to hold their contests early. After weighing the benefits, for example, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida all chose to violate Republican National Committee rules and hold their primaries earlier than allowed, thus sacrificing half their delegates at the convention.

Romney in Iowa (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

There are many reasons why this is a broken system. Without sufficient penalties for states jumping the gun, the next cycle's primaries could easily spill into December of 2015, while states that play by the rules will remain insignificant.  So here at the Signal, we're proposing a simple way to fix this process, while preserving a staggered order of contests: Treat the nomination like a market, and let states bid on how early they want to go.

The rules are simple: The RNC sets the dates of the primaries ahead of time, with a limited number of coveted early contests. To determine the order, every state says what percent of its delegates it is willing to give up in order to go first. Whichever state is willing to sacrifice the highest proportion wins the first slot. The remaining primary slots would be allocated in much the same way. The states next say what percent of delegates they're willing to forgo to be second in line to vote--presumably less than they would pay to go first, but still a substantial amount. Whoever bids the most for second position wins it, and so on. It's a classic economics problem. We have a commodity--early primaries--that's in short supply and high demand. The delegate market determines how precious those slots are.

Rick Santorum pulled off a huge upset yesterday in Colorado. Just before the returns were announced, our model had Mitt Romney as high as 96 percent likely to win the contest, giving Santorum just 4 percent for his upset. As there was just a 1 in 25 chance and Santorum pulled off our first Election Day surprise, expect something like that to happen about in about 1 in 25 races. These numbers are derived with prediction market data.

Santorum also converted his expected victory in Minnesota and the "beauty contest" primary in Missouri, with no delegates. Romney slipped all the way to third in Minnesota, where he won in 2008.

But the markets are far from convinced that Santorum can sustain his good fortunes. His odds of winning the nomination rose slightly, to a non-negligible 11.3 percent likelihood to Romney's 79.5, followed by Newt Gingrich at 3.1 percent likelihood, and Ron Paul at 2.8 percent likelihood.

The real damage to Romney is not that he is at serious risk of losing the

Update, 9:07 p.m. ET: This post has been updated with the most recently prediction data for the likelihood that the candidates will win, place, or show in Minnesota. Preliminary results show Rick Santorum off to a strong start with Ron Paul also doing well, but Mitt Romney still clinging to a likely second place finish:
Win,Place,Show FL_Update1
Sources: Betfair and Intrade, Real-Time Data

There are three primary contests tonight and, for the first time since Iowa, one of them is looking close. First, in the not-interesting department, is the Colorado caucuses; Mitt Romney won there by 41 percentage points in 2008 and he is poised for an easy victory in 2012. Rick Santorum is 95 percent likely to come in second and Newt Gingrich is 90 percent likely to come in third. In the even less-interesting department, Missouri is holding a "beauty contest" primary in which no delegates will be allotted to the winner.

In Minnesota, however, we could see a reversal of fortunes for Romney. He won the caucuses in 2008 by 18

Commentators love to complain about how political coverage resembles sports journalism, tallying wins and losses instead of covering the issues. But while journalism professors can wave their canes all they like, we've found that football is a convenient metaphor for political matchups. In both cases, you have prediction markets that produce odds of victory in a contest that is fundamentally uncertain, and in many ways the primary and general elections resemble a multi-round playoff.

Last weekend there was major action in both arenas, with the Nevada caucuses on Saturday and the Superbowl on Sunday. A week before the primary, Romney had a 95 percent chance of winning with the state (which he did). Going into the Super Bowl, the Patriots had 57.5 percent odds, according to one major market (which they didn't). In other words, if the Super Bowl was played 100 times, the Patriots would win 57 or 58 Lombardi trophies to the Giants' 42 or 43. Likewise, in 100 Nevada caucuses, Romney only

Last Tuesday, the Susan G. Komen Foundation announced it would no longer fund clinical breast exams and mammograms through Planned Parenthood. The $680,000 per year that was going to Planned Parenthood helped provide exams for 170,000 mainly low-income and minority women. The organization claimed that they were tightening their rules for grant recipients and denying grants to any organization under investigation. (A pro-life Congressman from Florida is leading a Congressional inquiry into whether Planned Parenthood uses public money to fund abortions--an initiative many see as politically motivated.)

On Friday, February 3 the organization abruptly reversed its decision amid a firestorm of criticism on Twitter, Facebook, and many blogs.There is little doubt that social and media pressure forced Komen to reverse its plan. The Figure shows the representative Twitter hashtags associated with Komen during the controversy, from January 31-February 3.

Representative Twitter Hashtags for Komen During Planned Parenthood Controversy

Sorting through over 100,000 tweets that