BRA
The Daily Mail has a new article which reports the Romney campaign isn’t worried about the recent flurry of D+8 and D+9 polls because the 2012 election is already underway in early voting and there is no sign whatsoever of a pollyanna 2008-style or better Democrat turnout advantage in the swing states:
Florida:
“Although Obama appeared to make big strides on the first two days of eight-day period for in-person early voting, his pace slowed on Monday and Tuesday. Democrats netted 73,000 vote from the first two days, but gained 28,000 votes on Monday and just 16,000 votes on Tuesday.
In the meantime, Republicans lead among absentee ballots by 70,000 votes. Democrats won the combined early vote by more than 360,000 in 2008 and currently lead by just 49,000.”
Colorado:
“More Republicans than Democrats have voted early in Colorado, suggesting that the swing state, where Obama campaigns on Thursday, could be slipping from the President’s grasp.”
North Carolina:
“In North Carolina, which Obama won by just 14,000 votes in 2008, Romney has cut the Democratic early voting advantage by 100,000. Obama has not visited the state since September and Democrats have privately conceded that he is unlikely to win it.”
Nevada:
“In Nevada, Obama is also well behind his 2008 support in the Democratic stronghold of Clark County, where he will also campaign tomorrow.”
Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, Florida:
‘We’re wildly over-performing in Republican McCain counties and Obama’s significantly underperforming in Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Iowa and North Carolina compared to 2008,’ a senior Romney strategist told MailOnline.
‘You go county by county and we are very happy where we are. We have leads among election day voters and independents. The Obama campaign is saying it’s a 2008 model. But it’s not. Obama needs to win independents.’
On a conference call with reporters, Rich Beeson, Romney’s political director, said: ‘In Florida right now about 2.2 million votes have been cast in early and absentee.
Right now as of today only 39,645 more Democrats have voted than Republicans. When you look at the independent break in each state, they are behind where they need to be going into election day next week.
‘We will win election day by double digits in Florida so they clearly are in a bad place going into day. They have three more days of early vote but they also have four so far where they have not made up any ground.’ . . .
The Romney campaign is increasingly confident it will win in Iowa, which Obama won in 2008 and where his caucuses victory over Hillary Clinton launched him on the way to the White House.
‘Iowa is a state where there’s a very clear line of demarcation,’ Beeson said. ‘Democrats tend to vote absentee and Republicans vote on election day. If the Democrats go into election day with less than a 130,000 lead on partisan registration and independents break, then we will win Iowa.’”
If the 2012 electorate is a D+8 electorate or D+9 electorate, as many of these recent polls are blithely assuming, then why isn’t there any sign of this in early voting? Why isn’t Obama matching or beating his turnout in early voting in 2008?
It’s the same D+8 electorate, right?
“If Romney wins, this is the calmest calm before the storm I’ve ever seen.”
I’m sure the general fear of PC reactions has nothing to do with people being quiet or saying one thing and doing another when they get to the voting booth.
The state poll averages show Romney is done in Ohio and therefore done period. The libtard talking point in this particular is the best explanation for Romney’s move into these other blue states: desperation. Of course Obama is going to defend them. This is common sense. The stakes are so high Team Obama quite understandably is not going to take any chances.
The latest this morning:
Wang at Princeton: Bayesian probability of Obama rejection: 99.2%.
Nate Silver: 81%
Time to deal with reality. In the last two elections, Wang hit the bullseye in one and was off by one electoral vote in the other.
The state poll averages show Romney is done in Ohio and therefore done period. The libtard talking point in this particular instance is the best explanation for Romney’s move into these other blue states: desperation. Of course Obama is going to defend them. This is common sense. The stakes are so high Team Obama quite understandably is not going to take any chances.
The latest this morning:
Wang at Princeton: Bayesian probability of Obama reelection: 99.2%.
Nate Silver: 81%
Time to deal with reality. In the last two elections, Wang hit the bullseye in one and was off by one electoral vote in the other.
This morning Rasmussen has dropped Romney from +4 to +1, a tie essentially.
The state poll averages show Romney is done in Ohio and therefore done period. The libtard talking point in this particular is the best explanation for Romney’s move into these other blue states: desperation.
The libtard talking point is not the best explanation. The late strategies can be spun either which way. I.e., Romney’s capitalizing on his strength and the Dems are desperately clinging to their imaginary “firewall,” or the libtard explanation. I know I’d rather be 0bama moving into Arizona and North Dakota and Missouri with Romney defending Ohio than 0bama defending Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, with Romney campaigning there. That’s what you do when you’re routing the other guy, you move into his territory. If Romney’s so desperate, he should be concentrating on Ohio.
As for Ohio, do you have a link? Or just more of your usual nothin’? Because this is from the 31st:
http://battlegroundwatch.com/2012/10/31/early-ballots-youth-vote-and-cannibals/
Karl Rove has his usual data driven column in the Wall Street Journal that sheds great light on both the national picture and most importantly the Battleground State of Ohio. Since this blog is all about the Battlegrounds and only the Battlegrouds we will focus on that portion of the column. Rove hits on three key issues that will likely decide the Ohio vote. First, in 2008 President Obama lost the election day vote in Ohio to John McCain but banked so many votes in early voting he carried the state by solid margins. For the final two points it is important to recall that nearly all Obama/Biden campaign stops are on college campus. This is designed to achieve two important goals. First, engage a key demographic for Obama whose support has flagged this election cycle. The second is to energize this low-propensity demographic to cast their vote again for Obama without cannibalizing votes the campaign was already certain to gain. In each one of the above facets in the Ohio vote, President Obama re-election effort is failing miserably:
Early voting
Adrian Gray, who oversaw the Bush 2004 voter-contact operation and is now a policy analyst for a New York investment firm, makes the point that as of Tuesday, 530,813 Ohio Democrats had voted early or had requested or cast an absentee ballot. That’s down 181,275 from four years ago. But 448,357 Ohio Republicans had voted early or had requested or cast an absentee ballot, up 75,858 from the last presidential election. That 257,133-vote swing almost wipes out Mr. Obama’s 2008 Ohio victory margin of 262,224. Since most observers expect Republicans to win Election Day turnout, these early vote numbers point toward a Romney victory in Ohio. They are also evidence that Scott Jennings, my former White House colleague and now Romney Ohio campaign director, was accurate when he told me that the Buckeye GOP effort is larger than the massive Bush 2004 get-out-the-vote operation.
The youth vote
Democrats explain away those numbers by saying that they are turning out new young Ohio voters. But I asked Kelly Nallen, the America Crossroads data maven, about this. She points out that there are 12,612 GOP “millennials” (voters aged 18-29) who’ve voted early compared with 9,501 Democratic millennials.
Cannibals
Are Democrats bringing out episodic voters who might not otherwise turn out? Not according to Ms. Nallen. She says that about 90% of each party’s early voters so far had also voted in three of the past four Ohio elections. Democrats also suggest they are bringing Obama-leaning independents to polls. But since Mr. Romney has led among independents in nine of the 13 Ohio polls conducted since the first debate, the likelihood is that the GOP is doing as good a job in turning out their independent supporters as Democrats are in turning out theirs.
Looks like 0bama is going to have to exceed his 2008 turnout to win Ohio. What am I saying? OF COURSE he’ll exceed his 2008 margins! Looks like you better hit the bookies and double down!
I have every analysis other than BGW, Dick Morris and Karl Rove on my side. No need for me to link the whole English-language internet. With Ohio, there is also the oversaturation factor. You reach a point of diminishing returns, and it’s now or never with the money and time Romney has left. That’s another libtard talking point. In this particular instance, the libtards have the better arguments. Obama has no reason to attack. He just needs to hold White northerners to win.
I have every analysis other than BGW, Dick Morris and Karl Rove on my side. No need for me to link the whole English-language internet. With Ohio, there is also the oversaturation factor. You reach a point of diminishing returns, and it’s now or never with the money and time Romney has left. That’s another libtard talking point. In this particular instance, the libtards have the better arguments. Obama has no reason to attack. He just needs to hold White northerners to win.
One link where both sides are talking will be enough. No need to link the entire Internet, you poor put-upon dear you.
With Ohio, there is also the oversaturation factor. You reach a point of diminishing returns, and it’s now or never with the money and time Romney has left. That’s another libtard talking point. In this particular instance, the libtards have the better arguments. Obama has no reason to attack. He just needs to hold White northerners to win.
Oh, now it’s the oversaturation factor. But obviously Romney’s campaign is run by 2-year-olds, so THEY’RE not smart enough to know that; they’re just moving into other states because they’re desperate.
No, no contradiction at all between your oversaturation libtard talking point (it’s not a libtard talking point) and your “Romney’s only going into blue territory and not putting everything into Ohio because he’s desperate” libtard talking point. I guess I’m spewing libtard talking points now, since I’ve made the oversaturated Ohio point several times in the last few days.
Yes, expanding into enemy territory is always a sign of desperation. That’s what I do when I’m losing the territory I have to win – I expand into other territories.
Libtards don’t have the better arguments, you just prefer them.
0bama has no reason to attack – other than winning. Clutching his NE base is obviously a sign of strength.
Hell, some numbers on the Ohio early voting would be nice. “The whole Internet,” you’re a funny guy!
http://baseballcrank.com/archives2/2012/10/post.php
P.S., Lew, you need to stop conflating poll top lines with “the polls say.” The polls say a lot more than their top lines. Ever heard of “bury the lede”? Your method is like reading the headlines for the day and thinking you know what happened. You have to read the articles to actually know, and similarly, you have to read the actual polls to quote them. When a poll says Romney’s winning independents by 10 points, that data’s every bit as valid as the headline; in some cases, moreso.
That’s what gets me about all these “poll watchers” – they’re not actually watching the polls. They’re cherry-picking, i.e., only watching the top lines. It’s sloppy and lazy.
Some numbers on Ohio early voting would indeed be nice if such numbers were available. Ohio doesn’t track by party affliation. There is no way to know with any certainty what Ohio early voters are doing. If you’d get your head out of right-wing sources like Rove and Brietbart, you might know that.
And as for BGW being alone, no. Hotair.com has a lot of the same kinds of info and stats. I’m sure there’s more, but I don’t keep up with all of this stuff. I only just hopped in the last few weeks.
Some numbers on Ohio early voting would indeed be nice if such numbers were available. Ohio doesn’t track by party affliation. There is no way to know with any certainty what Ohio early voters are doing. If you’d get your head out of right-wing sources like Rove and Brietbart, you might know that.
I know it already (I actually read what I posted, unlike you) I’d suggest that this means you’re wrong about me and the right-wing sources, but that would be using the kind of “logic” you’re fond of.
What we do know doesn’t look good for 0bama. He’s down from 2008, and Republicans are up. He’ll probably trail in early voting as Republicans usually do (by less than in 2008), then win the election-day vote handily (as Republicans usually do). He’s going to win the independents by a healthy margin, steal (way) more votes from Democrats than the zero steals from Republicans, and take the state’s electoral votes.
Rove on 0bama 2008:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/03/651662/-Karl-Rove-Predicts-Obama-Blowout
Here’s Rove on 0bama in 2008, by the way:
“Karl Rove, who is widely credited as the mastermind behind President Bush’s election victories in 2000 and 2004, predicts that Democratic nominee Barack Obama will win Tuesday’s election with 338 electoral votes while Republican John McCain garners 200.”
Final score: 365-173
0bama took North Carolina (15) by 14k votes, or 0.33%. He took Indiana (11) by 28k votes, or 1.04&%. If both had gone to McCain, the total would have been 339-199. Pretty good guess for a right-wing partisan hack.
I’m willing to be persuaded here. Someone talk me down from the ledge. But “bammy’s got it in the bag” and “my expert chink tells me” ain’t gonna cut it. I need something better than simply looking at the top lines of the polls (coming from polls that contradict themselves, at that) and averages of the top lines of the polls, and statistical models built on the top lines of the polls, and disregarding every other bit of info coming in.
Hunter, you should blog this one:
http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/morning-jay-why-i-think-romney-will-win_660041.html
When I started making election predictions eight years ago, I had a very different perspective than I do today. I knew relatively little about the history of presidential elections or the geography of American politics. I had a good background in political science and statistics. So, unsurprisingly in retrospect, I focused on drawing confidence intervals from poll averages.
Mitt Romney
Since then, I have learned substantially more history, soured somewhat on political science as an academic discipline, and have become much more skeptical of public opinion polls. Both political science and the political polls too often imply a scientific precision that I no longer think actually exists in American politics. I have slowly learned that politics is a lot more art than science than I once believed.
Accordingly, what follows is a prediction based on my interpretation of the lay of the land. I know others see it differently–and they could very well be right, and I could be wrong.
I think Mitt Romney is likely to win next Tuesday.
For two reasons:
(1) Romney leads among voters on trust to get the economy going again.
(2) Romney leads among independents.
Let’s take each point in turn.
Romney’s advantage on the economy. This to me is pretty straightforward. Take the recent NPR poll, which was a bipartisan survey conducted by Resurgent Republic and Democracy Corps. It found Obama’s job approval rating on the economy to be underwater, 47-52. The poll also found Mitt Romney to be more trusted on the economy over Obama, 50 to 46 percent.
Poll after poll, I generally see the same thing. Romney has an edge on the economy. That includes most of the state polls.
Moreover, this election looks to hinge on the economy, and little else. The recent Fox News poll broke the top issues into four: economic issues (like jobs); social issues (like abortion); national security issues (like terrorism); and fiscal issues (like taxes). To my mind, economic and fiscal issues are one and the same, meaning: 75 percent of respondents willing to pick a top issue picked the economy or fiscal issues.
I do not know of an election where the electorate was so singularly focused on one set of issues, and the person trusted less on them nevertheless won.
This makes 2012 different than 2004, when the electorate was focused on four issues, in roughly equal proportion – terrorism, moral values, Iraq, and the economy. Bush dominated the first two, Kerry the second two. This cycle, Team Obama tried to transform the culture into a second front in this electoral war, but they have clearly failed. Per the Fox News poll, just 13 percent of voters list that as their top concern.
Romney’s lead among independents. This second point is related to the first, but gets down to my view of the long-term trajectory of American politics, which corresponds quite closely to Sean Trende’s book, The Lost Majority.
After the Great Depression, the Republican brand was in tatters and the Democrats seemed to have saved the nation with the New Deal. The result was a forty-year period of Democratic dominance in party identification. The two Republican presidents between FDR and Ronald Reagan were Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, and their paths to office were peculiar. Eisenhower could have won the presidency running as anything, and Nixon required a crack in the Democratic coalition, winning just 43 percent of the vote in 1968.
During this period, it simply was not enough for a successful GOP candidate to win independents and self-identified Republicans. Barring a substantial third-party challenge from the Democratic side, a victorious Republican had to pull significant crossover support from the Democratic party. This is why Gerald Ford lost the presidency in 1976, despite winning independent voters by 11 points; Jimmy Carter carried enough Democrats to secure victory.
But the New Deal coalition by that point was fractured badly, and it finally broke into pieces in 1980. Democrats had, prior to that, enjoyed a 10-point or greater identification edge over the GOP, but that year it fell to just 4 points. Since 1980, it has averaged about 3 ½ points. And because Republican candidates typically hold their party together better than Democrats (or, put another way, there are almost always more Democratic defectors than Republican defectors), the effective edge has been even smaller.
This has led to the rising power of the independent vote. And its effects are all around us, if we only care to look.
From 1932 to 1980, the Democrats had unified control of the Congress for all but four years. That is an extraordinary level of dominance, unprecedented in American history, and speaks to the overwhelming advantage the Democrats had due to the Great Depression. But since then, the Democratic edge has collapsed, the Republicans have drawn to parity, and now we see control of Congress regularly swing back and forth. The reason is simple: Independent voters hold the keys to Capitol Hill.
The same goes for the presidency. Between 1932 and 1980 Democrats won eight of twelve presidential elections because the country was simply more Democratic. All four of the Republican victories came under unique circumstances, be it a war hero or a crack in the Democratic coalition. But since 1980, Republicans have won four presidential elections to the Democrats three, with one being a virtual tie. What’s more, the Perot phenomenon of 1992 remains a testament to the power of the independent vote.
So when I look at 2012, I see Mitt Romney with a lead among independents in almost every poll. But there is more than that. This is a president who lost the support of independent voters nearly three years ago when he and his allies in Congress passed a health care bill the independents did not want. I have watched and waited to see if independents would return to the president’s fold, but they have not. And the hour is very, very late.
Is it possible to win a presidential election while losing the independent vote? Sure. The independents basically split down the middle in 2000 and 2004, which left the outcome up to the relative strengths of the two party bases. But that is not what I see right now. Instead, I see a Romney margin among independents that ranges between 5 and 10 points. Prior to the 1980s, I could see the Democrats overcoming that, but not in 2012.
Plenty on the other side think 2008 is the exception to this trend, a sign of the emerging liberal majority, which the left has been waiting for ever since Adlai Stevenson’s candidacy in 1952. But they misinterpret 2008: the Democratic share of the vote that year was right within its historical track of the high-30s. What differed was a drop in Republican identification from the mid-30s to the low-30s.
Does anybody really expect that to persist this year? Of course not.
This means we will probably be back to a slender divide between the two parties, narrowed even more by greater Republican loyalty. In all likelihood, white Democrats from the Ohio River Valley to the Gulf of Mexico will defect from their own party’s ticket in droves. These children and grand children of FDR’s core backers will support Mitt Romney overwhelmingly, so a nominal 3 to 4 point Democratic identification edge over the GOP will shrink to 1 or 2 points, meaning that independents will determine the outcome, just as they have basically for the last 32 years.
Again, this is a different approach than the poll mavens will offer. They are taking data at face value, running simulations off it, and generating probability estimates. That is not what this is, and it should not be interpreted as such. I am not willing to take polls at face value anymore. I am more interested in connecting the polls to history and the long-run structure of American politics, and when I do that I see a Romney victory.
This is an example of ignoring evidence that goes against a position. In a contest of historical reliability featuring Rove versus the chink, the chink who does election stats as a side project/hobby missed by one EV. Rove missed by 27 despite a lifetime of work in politics.
If you’re going to consider a person’s opinion to help make a decision, in this case predicting an election, whose opinion does it make more sense to use? The guy who missed by 1 (and by 0 in 2004) or the guy who missed by 27?
In spite of all the evidence presented here, in the last 24 hours I have become more convinced that Obama is going to take this election.
If the Romney camp has as positive numbers as many say they do, they wouldn’t have to go around yelling about them. You would feel them in the wind.
Mark my words, there is no calm before change like the calm there is now. Therefore, there will be no change.
Confucius say…
..lorthern white round eye hip deep in BRA, he vote in legro velly much.
http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/332266/early-vote-down-15-cleveland-cincinnati
Early Vote Down 15 Percent in Cleveland, Cincinnati
On the Thursday before Election Day in 2008, 4,583 people voted early in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, which includes Cleveland.
This was a stronghold for the Obama campaign; on Election Day, Obama carried the county 69 percent to 30 percent for John McCain.
Yesterday 2,963 people voted.
Again, some of that may be because of people being preoccupied with cleaning up storm damage, etc. But overall, by this point in 2008, 39,110 Cuyahoga County residents had voted early. As of Thursday, 33,140 have — about a 15 percent drop. And note that the early voting was ahead of the 2008 pace until Saturday.
I’m told by an Ohio reader watching the numbers in Hamilton County (which includes Cincinnati) that they see a similar pattern in that corner of the state — early voting on pace until October 25, then a slowdown that has been consistent — about 1,500 early votes per day this week, instead of the 2,000 or so this county saw four years ago. This county — where Obama won, 52 percent to 47 percent, four years ago — is also 15 percent below last cycle’s total.
“Either they are running out of buses to transport the voters or they are running out of voters,” my Ohio reader concludes.
http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/332272/how-romney-camp-sees-early-vote-iowa
How the Romney Camp Sees the Early Vote in Iowa
Here’s how the Romney campaign sees the early vote in Iowa:
According to the George Mason Elections Center, 557,432 early votes have been cast in Iowa so far. Using the percentage breakdown provided by that site, we calculate that about 241,600 registered Democrats, 179,800 registered Republicans, 136,300 no party or other have voted.
This gives the Democrats a pure registered-party-member advantage of about 62,000. How have the no party/other crowd split? The University of Iowa poll has Obama leading among independents, 41.9 percent to 40.2 percent — yes, those seem low to me, too. The Marist poll in Iowa found “Obama has a 21 point lead among Independent voters who plan to cast an early ballot, while Romney is up 9 points among independents who plan to vote on Election Day.” Let’s give Obama a 60–40 split in the no party or other (although some undoubtedly are voting third party) and give him a 27,000-vote advantage in the independents.
That gives Obama an 89,000-vote advantage in the early vote; as noted above, the Romney campaign thinks they have about 87,000 more “high-propensity voters” than the Democrats do. That looks like a really close race . . . until you get to the independents who haven’t voted early, where Romney leads by 9 in Marist (let’s say 54–45).
We don’t know how many Iowa independents will vote on Election Day, but we know 1.5 million people voted in Iowa in 2008, and 33 percent were independent, according to the exit polls, so we’re looking at roughly 500,000 independent/no party/third party voters in the state. We also know that 26.1 percent of the 675,402 early voters in 2008 were no party or other party — 176,280. In other words, in 2008, about 323,000 independents voted on Election Day instead of voting early.
If Romney has a lead of 9 points among independents, he wins. The only question is by how many votes. If independent turnout on Election Day is 50 percent of 2008, Romney wins by 14,000 votes. If it’s 70 percent of 2008, he wins by 20,000 votes. If it’s 90 percent, he wins by 26,000 votes.
I forgot about the local one-link-per-post-or-it-gets-moderated rule, so I’ll post that again:
http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/332266/early-vote-down-15-cleveland-cincinnati
Early Vote Down 15 Percent in Cleveland, Cincinnati
On the Thursday before Election Day in 2008, 4,583 people voted early in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, which includes Cleveland.
This was a stronghold for the Obama campaign; on Election Day, Obama carried the county 69 percent to 30 percent for John McCain.
Yesterday 2,963 people voted.
Again, some of that may be because of people being preoccupied with cleaning up storm damage, etc. But overall, by this point in 2008, 39,110 Cuyahoga County residents had voted early. As of Thursday, 33,140 have — about a 15 percent drop. And note that the early voting was ahead of the 2008 pace until Saturday.
I’m told by an Ohio reader watching the numbers in Hamilton County (which includes Cincinnati) that they see a similar pattern in that corner of the state — early voting on pace until October 25, then a slowdown that has been consistent — about 1,500 early votes per day this week, instead of the 2,000 or so this county saw four years ago. This county — where Obama won, 52 percent to 47 percent, four years ago — is also 15 percent below last cycle’s total.
“Either they are running out of buses to transport the voters or they are running out of voters,” my Ohio reader concludes.
http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/332272/how-romney-camp-sees-early-vote-iowa
How the Romney Camp Sees the Early Vote in Iowa
Here’s how the Romney campaign sees the early vote in Iowa:
According to the George Mason Elections Center, 557,432 early votes have been cast in Iowa so far. Using the percentage breakdown provided by that site, we calculate that about 241,600 registered Democrats, 179,800 registered Republicans, 136,300 no party or other have voted.
This gives the Democrats a pure registered-party-member advantage of about 62,000. How have the no party/other crowd split? The University of Iowa poll has Obama leading among independents, 41.9 percent to 40.2 percent — yes, those seem low to me, too. The Marist poll in Iowa found “Obama has a 21 point lead among Independent voters who plan to cast an early ballot, while Romney is up 9 points among independents who plan to vote on Election Day.” Let’s give Obama a 60–40 split in the no party or other (although some undoubtedly are voting third party) and give him a 27,000-vote advantage in the independents.
That gives Obama an 89,000-vote advantage in the early vote; as noted above, the Romney campaign thinks they have about 87,000 more “high-propensity voters” than the Democrats do. That looks like a really close race . . . until you get to the independents who haven’t voted early, where Romney leads by 9 in Marist (let’s say 54–45).
We don’t know how many Iowa independents will vote on Election Day, but we know 1.5 million people voted in Iowa in 2008, and 33 percent were independent, according to the exit polls, so we’re looking at roughly 500,000 independent/no party/third party voters in the state. We also know that 26.1 percent of the 675,402 early voters in 2008 were no party or other party — 176,280. In other words, in 2008, about 323,000 independents voted on Election Day instead of voting early.
If Romney has a lead of 9 points among independents, he wins. The only question is by how many votes. If independent turnout on Election Day is 50 percent of 2008, Romney wins by 14,000 votes. If it’s 70 percent of 2008, he wins by 20,000 votes. If it’s 90 percent, he wins by 26,000 votes.
Let the New Jersey zombie hordes loose upon the gun owners!
Also let’s talk about secession. This Federal election is garbage. It has not helped the whiteman. All I saw was a fat Krispy Christie fellating Mocha Muhdigabe. That’s my takeaway from 2012. Tubby little loser getting on his knees in front of a cannibal.
Even a busted clock is right twice a day.
How did the polls (or your chink) do at predicting Reagan’s landslide over Carter in 1980?
Give it up now, Svigor. It’s over.
What’s the first rule when you find yourself in a hole? Stop digging.
Me, I’m the kind of guy to trust his lyin’ eyes over the poll top lines (not the actual polls; none of the 0’s poll-top-lines-wavers give a damn about what’s actually in the polls; they wipe their asses with what’s in the polls and flush it down the toilet; they actively disbelieve everything about the polls but the top lines) and tea-leaf-readers.
There is more on heaven and earth than is dreamed of in your poll numbers.
I posted Rove’s (really friggin’ good) 2008 call simply to point out two things:
He picked the actual winner, and got very close to an almost perfect EV split, missing by like 35k votes; and 2, he picked the Democrat over the Republican. So he’s not just some partisan hack in how he calls elections.
Very poetic. I’m talking about tons of different factors here, not “Nate Silver/Lo Wang/top-lines-of-polls.” I’m talking common sense, a cold reading of the electorate’s mood (and most importantly, FEARS), demographics, politics, the polls, etc.
That was a Shakespeare paraphrase.
I don’t know man. I don’t see it.
A commenter on BGW makes a good point: if Romney thinks Ohio is beyond his reach, why would he be spending so much time between now and the election in Ohio, with stops in Pennsylvania and Minnesota? Shouldn’t he be spending all his time in Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, to get the votes still in play?
If Romney thinks Ohio’s lost to him, he and his whole campaign are idiots.
Hey, I can see you not seeing it. That’s reasonable. Like I’m going to tell you what to think? I’m just talking about the data here. At best for 0, it looks like a photo finish. I see no reason to be solid on the 0 at the moment.
But doesn’t a photo finish belie all the polls you’re citing?
Haha, forgot to mention a REALLY FRIGGIN GOOD point about this election that I read last night. I think it was at baseball crank, but my recollection might be faulty.
All these people basing their pick on the “statistical models” need to remember the folly of chaining themselves to these models. That’s what caused the real estate meltdown and sent the economy into the shitter. “Everybody” knew the numbers don’t lie. Everybody hitched their wagon to the same stars. A daisy chain of numbers that all depended on one another, and when the first one went, they all went. And everybody got screwed as a result.
In short, GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. If Romney takes this election, it will be conventional wisdom over the coming months and years to tie together these two “black swans” or whatever you want to call them; thematically joined at the hip.
Depends on which part of the poll you’re talking about; they all contradict one another. I see the top line of a poll as a sort of quick summation of all the data they got in from (and/or published; all debatable) the poll.
That’s why I don’t think it’s fair or accurate to say “what the polls say is” and then quote the top lines when the numbers don’t add up. Polling’s already at least as much art as science in a good year for the pollsters (the opposite of which is, say, Reagan over Carter by a landslide; IIRC, the pollsters had Carter up leading up to and going into the election – in any event, the average was waaay off, by like 7 points or something). But when they don’t add up at all, you’ve got to throw the whole thing on the table and sort through it, not just quote the top line.
Speaking of the real estate bubble, here is reason #672(A)(1)(c)(ii) why Romney is not going to win.
Everyone with a brain (the only possible Romney voters) is just getting their feet back under them after the crash. Things are getting somewhat normalized. If Romney represents anything, he represents another round of “buy-ins.” People don’t want another round of “buy-ins.” Most at this point are thankful to have food on the table, let alone do they want to roll the dice again.
Sorry, should have written, “they all contradict themselves,” not each other.
If you were asking me if a photo finish belies my overall position on the election outcome, no: I said the best 0 can hope for is a photo finish. But the best Romney can hope for is 300+ EVs. I think he’ll win by a comfortable margin.
RCP has 191 votes for Romney (solid, lean, and likely). I think Romney’s going to win with comfortable leads in North Carolina (15), Virginia (13), and Florida (29). They’re all “likely Romney” IMO. That’s 57 more votes, for a total of 248. I think Colorado (9), Iowa (6), and Ohio (18) are all “lean Romney,” and he’ll take them all, but by smaller margins.
That’s why I think he gets at least 281 electoral votes, and the White House.
P.S., Ohio usually votes for the Republican, and this is an R year.
My campaign themed-joke: 0bama’s “firewall” was nothing more than a Maginot Line, and Field Marshall Romney is going around it.
I think Field Marshall Romney stepped in something on his way around. Because something doesn’t smell right over there.
Everyone with a brain (the only possible Romney voters) is just getting their feet back under them after the crash. Things are getting somewhat normalized. If Romney represents anything, he represents another round of “buy-ins.” People don’t want another round of “buy-ins.” Most at this point are thankful to have food on the table, let alone do they want to roll the dice again.
That’s not a reason, that’s spin. If you hired a contractor and he fucked up the job for 4 years and spent ten times as much money as he said he would, and his only excuse (after promising he’d fix it before taking the contract, and even going so far as saying in year 1 that if he didn’t have it fixed within 3 years, he knew he’d be out of a job), and when you looked at his qualifications they said “community organizer/designated messiah,” you’d fire his ass in a heartbeat and hire the clean-cut guy with impeccable credentials who’s been asking for the job.
What you’re describing is the incumbent advantage, and it fell into the maw of the “economic gap” a month ago.
That should be “and his only excuse was the last guy screwed it up” somewhere in there.
And then there’s the 0’s campaign. Have you looked at it lately? It’s shit.
Most at this point are thankful to have food on the table, let alone do they want to roll the dice again.
But a vote for Romney doesn’t look like a roll of the dice to anyone to the right of Chris Matthews. It looks like a sure bet. Loser vs. lifelong Winner. Where do dice come into it?
“If you hired a contractor and he fucked up the job for 4 years and spent ten times as much money as he said he would, and his only excuse (after promising he’d fix it before taking the contract, and even going so far as saying in year 1 that if he didn’t have it fixed within 3 years, he knew he’d be out of a job), and when you looked at his qualifications they said “community organizer/designated messiah,” you’d fire his ass in a heartbeat.”
Not if I was a union member, or anyone in any way connected with the spigot of money that comes from DC (more than half the population), or anyone tired of war, or anyone who hates what the Bush neocons did to our country, or anyone who hates whitey or anyone tired of being set in motion by Straussian politics.
Romney’s neocons are going to set this place in motion. We all know that. Americans are sick of being set in motion.
Where do dice come into it? After Bush, it’s all dice.
Sorry if I posted this one already, memory ain’t what it used to be:
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/11/romney-could-sweep-ohio/
I voted A3P.
Svigor, you need to post more.