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Party Politics: Washington Watches GOP Candidates Debate

Republican presidential candidates, from left, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Donald Trump listen as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush answers a question at the FOX News-Facebook GOP debate on Thursday. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Republican presidential candidates, from left, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Donald Trump listen as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush answers a question at the FOX News-Facebook GOP debate on Thursday. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

While the Republican presidential candidates were on stage in Cleveland, several Washington clubs took on the air of sports bars at debate-watch parties scattered across the city.  

Roll Call did the bar crawl and hit those at the National Press Club, the Union Pub and Johnny Pistola’s.  

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Kickoff at the PredictIt party.  (Simone Pathé/CQ Roll Call)

The vote market:  "I'm voting for Bernie, but my money is on Hillary," said one Democrat at the PredictIt party at Union Pub. And that pretty much sums up the thinking behind prediction markets -- that they are more accurate because they are based on who people think will win, not who they want to win.  

PredictIt officials noted the stock in Carly Fiorina, who many political observers agreed performed strongly in the early debate, went up before the first debate even started.  

Another bettor, a Democratic hedge-fund manager who said he had met Donald Trump several times and is a self-avowed political junkie, said he had invested in PredictIt but was mainly at the party for the spectacle, which he compared to a Muhammad Ali fight. "People would tune in to see whether he got knocked out, or they loved him and they watched to see him prevail. ... There was nothing in the middle." And that's why he said he was there Thursday -- to see a "brawl."  

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