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PoliGAF 2012 |OT4|: Your job is not to worry about 47% of these posts.

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When are the new polls dropping?

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Must have more polls!

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I need polls of SPIDER-MAN.
 

pigeon

Banned
i even their site and stuff and still need help

Okay, sorry. Predicted winner doesn't factor into the horse race at all -- it's just an interesting tidbit. Intention to vote isn't really trending in either direction -- Romney supporters obviously are more likely to vote than Obama supporters, that's well known, and that's still true. (So you can deduce, as always, that there are more Democratic supporters in the sample to counteract their lower enthusiasm, which is appropriately representative of the country.) There are some really weird intention spikes in that graph, and they're always downward, and they're always at times that don't seem to correlate to any actual events, so I'm not sure what the deal is there, but all that info is already factored into the horse race so we don't need to worry about it.

Shifts between candidates is a little more interesting. The correct way to look at this graph is to note that when the two lines are close to each other and deep within the MoE that's archetypal churn -- from the current positions, it's hard to really conclude anything and probably safe to assume that whatever change we're seeing is extremely minor. There are several points in the graph where the difference between the two lines is similarly tight. There are two points where the shift lines break apart -- one is right after the RNC, the other starts with the DNC and proceeds through September. These periods represent long-term shifts of opinion. If you colored in blue all the bits where the blue line is above the red line, and did the same with red for the other way*, you would see that overall, there's still a hell of a lot more blue than red -- because the aftereffects of 47% is still seriously hurting Romney in this particular sample at least. So this chart should help explain why Obama still has a significant national lead in the RAND poll -- though it doesn't really explain the uptick in the horse race, so await future events on that.

Last point from me for awhile. (I got shit to do)

The Democrats can't control what the Republicans are doing; they can only control what they do.

You wanna win this election? STFU, stop crying (no one is gonna feel sorry for you) organize, register and vote.

You know what your candidate stays for so stand with him. One bad debate and less than desirable polling numbers of late shouldn't be discouraging you but rather emboldening you.

One thing is for sure--if you don't show (as a party) you guys want this, than the Republicans will be more than happy to take it from you.

2010 should have proven that to you--complacency kills, not bad debates.

I literally have no idea how this post responds to my post.


* Calculus!
 
For what it's worth, Larry Sabato officially predicts an Obama victory, ranged anywhere from 277 to 303 electoral votes. The toss-up states being Virginia, Colorado, and New Hampshire.

Sabato points out that Romney could still win if he lands decisive wins in the next two debates, but if he doesn't, nothing will change.

These debates are critical. For right now though, let's all take a breath. Sabato is something of a centrist Democrat (his close relationship with Jim Matheson implies a political philosophy close to that), and has been pretty conservative in estimating Dems' chances. Only recently did he come around to saying Democrats could still hold the Senate for example, and he only sees Democrats picking up a few seats in the House. That he's already calling it for Obama (barring something major of course) is pretty good.
 

AniHawk

Member
Okay, sorry. Predicted winner doesn't factor into the horse race at all -- it's just an interesting tidbit. Intention to vote isn't really trending in either direction -- Romney supporters obviously are more likely to vote than Obama supporters, that's well known, and that's still true. (So you can deduce, as always, that there are more Democratic supporters in the sample to counteract their lower enthusiasm, which is appropriately representative of the country.) There are some really weird intention spikes in that graph, and they're always downward, and they're always at times that don't seem to correlate to any actual events, so I'm not sure what the deal is there, but all that info is already factored into the horse race so we don't need to worry about it.

Shifts between candidates is a little more interesting. The correct way to look at this graph is to note that when the two lines are close to each other and deep within the MoE that's archetypal churn -- from the current positions, it's hard to really conclude anything and probably safe to assume that whatever change we're seeing is extremely minor. There are several points in the graph where the difference between the two lines is similarly tight. There are two points where the shift lines break apart -- one is right after the RNC, the other starts with the DNC and proceeds through September. These periods represent long-term shifts of opinion. If you colored in blue all the bits where the blue line is above the red line, and did the same with red for the other way*, you would see that overall, there's still a hell of a lot more blue than red -- because the aftereffects of 47% is still seriously hurting Romney in this particular sample at least. So this chart should help explain why Obama still has a significant national lead in the RAND poll -- though it doesn't really explain the uptick in the horse race, so await future events on that.

makes sense. thanks.

have they been accurate in the past? did they focus on the last two election cycles at all?
 

pigeon

Banned
Has he ever been wrong at this point?

wikipedia said:
Prior to the 2002 midterm elections, where the Republican Party saw gains in both branches of Congress, Sabato's Crystal Ball website accurately predicted the outcome in 433 of the 435 contests for the House of Representatives and 32 of 34 Senate races.[8]
In 2004, which saw Republicans retain the White House and gain seats in the House and Senate, Crystal Ball correctly predicted the outcome of 525 of the 530 political races (99% accuracy), missing only one House race, one Senate race, one governor's race and two states in the Electoral College.[9]
In August 2006, Crystal Ball predicted that the Democrats would gain 29 seats in the House of Representatives and 6 seats in the Senate, providing them with a majority in both chambers. Sabato's predictions proved correct: each of his 33 Senate predictions were accurate, and in the House, Democrats gained 29 seats on election night, the precise total predicted by the Crystal Ball (Democrats would go on to pick up a 30th seat in the December 12, 2006 run-off in Texas' 23rd district).[10]
In July 2008, Crystal Ball correctly projected that Barack Obama would win the presidency in a near-landslide.[11] Sabato predicted a 364-174 margin in the Electoral College, as well as the popular vote percentages.[12] The prediction was merely one point off the mark, with the actual result on November 4, 2008 being Obama 365 and McCain 173. Crystal Ball also accurately predicted 100% of all 35 Senate races, and 11 gubernatorial races correctly.[13]
In 2006 Sabato was named the most accurate prognosticator by MSNBC, CNBC, and Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism. In 2006, Sabato was the only national analyst who correctly predicted the exact Democratic gains in Senate and House contests.[10]

Sabato's actually hedging a little -- the article says, basically in PoliGAF style, that Obama needs to do better in the next two debates, but if he does, Sabato expects the race to pop back to a steady Obama lead.

makes sense. thanks.

have they been accurate in the past? did they focus on the last two election cycles at all?

I believe this is the first year for the RAND poll to do politics, though they have a lot of experience at doing other surveys. Nate Silver and Cohn seem to like it and think it's relatively solid.
 

Particle Physicist

between a quark and a baryon
I believe this is the first year for the RAND poll to do politics, though they have a lot of experience at doing other surveys. Nate Silver and Cohn seem to like it and think it's relatively solid.


At the same time, it uses a different methodology that has yet to be proven, so at this moment, I think it should be taken with a grain of salt.
 

Diablos

Member
Sabato's track record is impressive. But I wonder if there's anything he didn't predict correctly, i.e. 2000.

btw I am drinking coffee right now. No cigs.
 
I think if Mr. Obama rigorously defends his policies as much as Ryan did in the VP debates, he'll be fine. I don't expect him to lie as much, obviously. But just go in with a little more passion. Interrupt a little, demands the last word at times, etc.

I think he shouldn't go anywhere near Biden-level, heh. Biden was a little too unchained. Just a little :)
 
I have no doubt Obama will wipe the floor with Romney in a town hall style debate, especially on topics relating to foreign policy as Romney and co can barely form a coherent message on that. Of course if it all becomes about Libya, Obama will be in a bit of trouble as their message on that has been terrible.

I think he shouldn't go anywhere near Biden-level,

He should go completely to Biden's level without the laughing, since this a town hall you have to be more relatable. He should however completely call Romney on his flip flopping and lying everytime he does it. Hell Biden even missed a few opportunities to do it.
 

Jackson50

Member
The number will likely be the same this year. Romney's ground game is far better than McCain's, who literally had no ground game; at the time his camp was arguing that Obama was wasting money on an unproven strategy. The GOP is still behind in this area, but will do better than last time having acknowledged what happened in 2008.

And let's not forget unions aren't doing as much work for democrats this as they were in 2008.
That number should not be considered incontrovertible. It probably underestimated the effect. But I'll not belabor the point because everyone acknowledges the effect is positive. However, your second point is erroneous. McCain's ground game was typical of most presidential campaigns. The problem was the Obama campaign's considerable numeric and qualitative advantage. They not only had a larger organization, they leveraged their field offices to target specific constituencies. And Romney's organization is not far better than McCain's. Based on a cursory review, they are roughly comparable. What is evident, though, is Obama's advantage.

My mistake. I forgot that. Could you provide the data on this? I admit my perspective on union activity is skewed by my family. So I'm curious as to what the data indicates.
 
Sabato's track record is impressive. But I wonder if there's anything he didn't predict correctly, i.e. 2000.

btw I am drinking coffee right now. No cigs.

Hey what a coincidence. I'm drinking some coffee too.

I'm all amped up now. My heart is set to explode if someone posts a bad poll here.
 
Of course that's just a sign of things to come when Arizona and Texas go blue there will be no viable for way to the GOP presidency. I'd say what about 15 more years before this happens? Of course I expect Republicans explode and rebuild before that because there positions will lose them the presidency anyway as their older base begins to die off.
 
That number should not be considered incontrovertible. It probably underestimated the effect. But I'll not belabor the point because everyone acknowledges the effect is positive. However, your second point is erroneous. McCain's ground game was typical of most presidential campaigns. The problem was the Obama campaign's considerable numeric and qualitative advantage. They not only had a larger organization, they leveraged their field offices to target specific constituencies. And Romney's organization is not far better than McCain's. Based on a cursory review, they are roughly comparable. What is evident, though, is Obama's advantage.

My mistake. I forgot that. Could you provide the data on this? I admit my perspective on union activity is skewed by my family. So I'm curious as to what the data indicates.

I'm on my iPod right now but unions aren't doing as much early work as they did in 2008. I'd imagine Trumpka and company will get the boots on the ground on Election Day but overall the involvement hasn't been large thanks to grumbling over trade agreements and Wisconsin
 

Amir0x

Banned
imagine if on election day the bizarro trumpet sounds and obama loses iowa and ohio and wisconsin but wins texas and arizona

and then, after that, a line of flying pigs soared pleasantly across the sky as obama proceeds to announce that biden is stepping down to be replaced as romney for vice president
 
Of course that's just a sign of things to come when Arizona and Texas go blue there will be no viable for way to the GOP presidency. I'd say what about 15 more years before this happens? Of course I expect Republicans explode and rebuild before that because there positions will lose them the presidency anyway as their older base begins to die off.
In 2016 we might see Arizona as a purple state. Texas probably not quite yet.

Anecdote from a volunteer in OFA's AZ offices - there are motivational posters EVERYWHERE saying AZ in 2012 = NC in 2008. It's not really considered in play by either campaign, but if any non-swing state were to flip from Romney's column to Obama's, it'd have to be Arizona.

Diablos said:
We need more AZ polling. Must. have. more.

Anyone know how accurate these Rocky Mountain folks are? AZ gaffers?
I'm not from Arizona and never will be. I'm not believing this until I see another pollster back it up but it's still nice to see another state on TPM's map move from Romney to toss-up. I want more polls of Florida that aren't from right-wing shills.
 

ivysaur12

Banned
@fivethirtyeight
Arizona poll showing Obama leading reminds me a bit of Hawaii polls showing Bush leading Gore late in 2000.

‏@fivethirtyeight
Sorry -- keep messing this up. It was 2004 when some Hawaii polls showed Bush leading Kerry (not Gore):

Basically: Calm the fuck down liberals
 

Amir0x

Banned
Basically: Calm the fuck down liberals

"Calm the fuck down liberals" should basically be the Democratic Parties slogan, because I've never seen as many undisciplined children gathered into one group. absolutely no self-control or understanding of political gamesmanship whatsoever

obama has a bad debate

liberals meltdown, making it a catastrophic debate

obama has a bad poll

liberals meltdown, feeding the media narrative and making it a worse poll

obama makes a political mistake

liberals meltdown, making the mistake irreversible
 

Paches

Member
"Calm the fuck down liberals" should basically be the Democratic Parties slogan, because I've never seen as many undisciplined children gathered into one group. absolutely no self-control or understanding of political gamesmanship whatsoever

obama has a bad debate

liberals meltdown, making it a catastrophic debate

obama has a bad poll

liberals meltdown, feeding the media narrative and making it a worse poll

obama makes a political mistake

liberals meltdown, making the mistake irreversible

I blame Chris Matthews if Obama loses.
 
arizona going blue would completely change the game . . . obama wouldn't need ohio, virginia, colorado, or even new hampshire.

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not gonna put much stock in that poll though, could easily be an outlier and way too many undecideds to mean anything. fun to think about though.
 
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