Curry the runaway MVP favorite

"Who will win?"

If you want to know who will win a presidential race, that's the best poll question.

Most polls ask voters who they intend to vote for. But the question with the most predictive power is actually who they believe will win. It's the question that cuts to the chase.

For instance: In 2012, about 60 percent predicted Barack Obama would be re-elected, and he was. There are other reliable methods with more nuance, including the complex algorithms devised by Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, but this simple question works very well, according to research by economists David Rothschild and Justin Wolfers.

The same thing applies to the NBA MVP race.

So that's what we did: We asked our ESPN Forecast panel: "Who will win?"

The answer: Stephen Curry.

How do we know? Because our panel is taking in all the info -- from TV, ESPN.com, blogs, Twitter, friends and frenemies alike -- and using that to make a prediction.

Only a few of our panelists have an actual MVP ballot, and some have asked whether that hurts the panel's reliability. The answer is, not really. The panelists are close observers of the NBA, and they are picking up the same signals that actual MVP voters pick up (and send out). In fact, the bigger and more diverse the panel, the more reliable it is.

This is the same panel that has an amazing track record of awards forecasting. It's the same panel that said last year at midseason and consistently after that thatKevin Durant would defeatLeBron James on the way to his first MVP award. How did they know? They picked up the signals.

This year, with the MVP race reputed to be the closest contest in years, we asked the panel three times in the past two weeks in order to see the trends.

April 2: The day after James Harden went off for 51 points in a Rockets win over the Kings, the vote was fairly decisive: Curry was likely to win the MVP award, with the odds about 1-in-4. Harden was seen as 18 percent likely, with Russell Westbrook receiving a modicum of support.

April 9: Right before Curry torched the Blazers on TNT with 45 points on 23 shots, the panel said almost exactly the same thing: Curry was 85 percent likely to win, with Harden at 15 percent. (Westbrook got zero percent of the vote.)

Of course, in each case, the panel was leaving the door open for Harden to come from behind with a string of great games.

April 13: Curry is up to 91 percent likely, with Harden receiving 6 percent and Westbrook, who was coming off an amazing 54-point game on Sunday night, at 3 percent.

On each occasion, we also asked the panel who should win. This is where Harden fared better. On April 2, he was at 33 percent; he moved up to 35 percent April 9 before falling to 24 percent (April 13).

But Curry still led the field in each case, with 52 percent, then 56, then 69.

Barring a massive upset, Steph Curry is your 2014-15 NBA Most Valuable Player.