Mitt Romney's choice of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate has thrown the state of Florida back into play in the prediction markets, suggesting political handicappers do not think the Republican wunderkind's budget proposals will play well in the retiree-heavy state.

To be fair, these same markets gave Ryan only a 15.8 percent chance of getting the nod from Romney as of Friday morning. While those are non-negligible odds, the markets were more certain that Romney would play it safe and go with the more vanilla Tim Pawlenty or Rob Portman. As rumors of a Ryan pick gathered steam, his odds in the markets grew to well over 50 percent by 8 p.m., about four hours before the pick was confirmed.

When the markets were leaning in the Pawlenty/Portman direction, they gave Romney a 70.7 percent chance of winning the state of Florida. With Ryan officially on the ticket, Romney is clinging to a 56.3 percent likelihood of taking the state. We expect polls to follow this path in the next

(@barackobama)Twitter erupted in excitement Friday as news broke that Mitt Romney had selected Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, but the volume promptly dropped off as bedtime arrived. Now, in the sober light of morning, the Obama campaign appears to be effectively mobilizing its opposition research on the microblogging platform.

At 9 a.m. EDT, conversation peaked, with Twitter users discussing Ryan at a clip of about 40,000 tweets an hour, according to social media analysis firm Attensity. By 11 a.m., four of the five top URLs in those tweets pointed to official Obama campaign material. Minutes after it was posted, thousands of people retweeted an @BarackObama tweet listing "5 Things you need to know about Mitt Romney's VP pick." Also in the top five were a press release from the Obama campaign calling Ryan the "architect of the radical Republican House budget," a landing page on the campaign website branding Romney and Ryan the "Go Back Team," and GoBackTeam.com, which redirects to

With anywhere from days to weeks remaining in the long and tortured period of speculation over Mitt Romney's running mate, the Signal is increasingly convinced that either Ohio Sen. Rob Portman or former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty will get the nod. The prediction markets currently give them a 35 percent and 16 percent chance of victory, respectively. In other words, there's better than a 1-2 chance that Romney will opt for the safest choices available.

You could be forgiven for needing a refresher on which of these two politicians is which. Portman and Pawlenty are both white males in their 50s with records as reliable conservatives, not firebrands. Either would provide Romney cover from the right while providing a sense of prudent sensibility to the rest of the country. These men both provide a moderate benefit, credibility with the right, with little potential cost.

Running mate odds

Sources: Betfair and Intrade

From a strategic standpoint, the biggest difference between them is that Portman is from