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[The Librarian]

I'm going to fucking shoot myself.

pure gold. i'm still laughing..

I'm lost here.

 

[Tendo]

If it concerns you so much, head to your local democrat /Obama office and canvas/make calls/donate money

If you guys are so upset over polls, go do something instead of crying on the Internet.

And it is super easy to do it from home with the phone call tool on Obama's volunteer site. No excuses.

I get so annoyed with people that want to complain about something but not do anything to make it better. GET INVOLVED. The race depends on people like us.

 

[TacticalFox88]

Ive spent the last day or so trying to convince a friend to go Obama over Romney. He seems to be going Nobama. Wanta change. Doesnt think Romney will be anything like Bush. Etc etc etc

Wtf do I tell him?

Tell him that the stock market has surged under Obama and it's almost doubled.

When he says "That doesn't help me out."

Then tell him he just admitted trickle down economics doesn't work, which Romney supports, and therefore he should vote Obama.

 

[Tim-E]

Yep. If you're going to whine about Romney making gains with women, pick up the phone and start reminding people of why he's an awful candidate in that regard.

I'm lost here.

I post about doing something about polls and cartoon_soldier posts about Romney's gains with women.

 

[norinrad]

Why are these polls so close? Do people really want Romney as the president? I honestly hate us.

Morman, evil business man, liar....

I could go on and on. The fuck is wrong with people?

President is half black, seriously that is probably why some people are blindly voting for Mitt

 

[Clevinger]

Ive spent the last day or so trying to convince a friend to go Obama over Romney. He seems to be going Nobama. Wanta change. Doesnt think Romney will be anything like Bush. Etc etc etc

Wtf do I tell him?

Tell him his foreign policy advisers are warmongers from Bush, his tax plan is the same as Bush (YOU get a tax cut, YOU get a tax cut, EVERYBODY GETS A TAX CUT), only I think it's even worse than Bush's because Romney is promising his to be revenue neutral and the math doesn't work so he'll be cutting deductions on the middle class, and Romney is now promising the same sort of compassionate conservatism bullshit that Bush did.

And tell him that he'll be even worse than Bush, because Bush never tried to turn Medicare into a voucher program.

 

[Y2Kev]

Molly Ball on the shift women towards Romney

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/the-revenge-of-the-soccer-moms/263898/

Sort of Sullivanesque panic, don't you think?

Then suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, Obama's edge with women began to melt away. More than any other group, women have accounted for Romney's surge in the polls, which has now given him a slim lead in the national popular vote and in some calculations of the electoral college.

Which calculations have him ahead in the electoral college? Isn't this sort of lazy in getting people engaged?

And a lot of her interviews are with "Christian school" moms?

 

[Red Blaster]

Obama not leading in some national poll? Time to walk back to the ledge.

 

[Slime]

Which calculations have him ahead in the electoral college? Isn't this sort of lazy in getting people engaged?

FL/NC/VA/CO/NH + anything else or FL/NC/VA/OH + anything else. Was crazy a week or two ago, but if things continue to tighten up I don't think either is outside the realm of possibility. Neither is all that credible at the moment, though.

 

[XenodudeX]

3 more weeks. 3 MORE WEEKS..

 

[Y2Kev]

FL/NC/VA/CO/NH + anything else or FL/NC/VA/OH + anything else. Was crazy a week or two ago, but if things continue to tighten up I don't think either is outside the realm of possibility. Neither is all that credible at the moment, though.

That's meaningless. You could have made that "calculation" at any time. She's not saying, "There have been scenarios in which Romney could win the presidency."

 

[Red Blaster]

Still not sure about the collective pant shitting by cartoon_soldier and Diablos about Ohio when Obama has made considerable gains in Florida at the same time

 

[pigeon]

Ive spent the last day or so trying to convince a friend to go Obama over Romney. He seems to be going Nobama. Wanta change. Doesnt think Romney will be anything like Bush. Etc etc etc

Wtf do I tell him?

The New Yorker says that voters of this nature almost always vote on feeling, not logic. So start by telling him you understand why he's disappointed and in his position you'd vote for change too if you thought Romney would provide it. Then say that the problem is that you just don't trust him and don't think he will provide change. Remember not to get tied down in policy questions your friend pretends to care about -- look for the emotional resistance behind them.

 

[kirblar]

Still not sure about the collective pant shitting by cartoon_soldier and Diablos about Ohio when Obama has made considerable gains in Florida at the same time

Playing M:TG has taught me a ton about how bad people are at analyzing which margins are important at any given time.

The New Yorker says that voters of this nature almost always vote on feeling, not logic.

Correct - you've got to play on their emotions.

 

[Drek]

Let's not start doing this, please.

Why not? Because then you have no scoreboard to check? Even if that scoreboard is broken?

Fact is, the biggest deviation from the norm we've seen this election has been Gallup. Gallup happens to currently be getting sued by the federal government.

Maybe that's just spurious correlation. But it sure casts one hell of a dark shadow on Gallup.

The assumption that the various sources of media covering the election are all honest actors is something I don't get. It took literally months for any major media outlet to legitimately talk about the electoral college distribution and instead they beat the drums of tight national polling. When that national polling started to diverge they began digging into state polls and the like trying to find a new talking point. Now that national numbers are closing again it's back to the national numbers as the all important narrative.

If you think this doesn't impact the pollsters who are getting paid by the media for their polls you're being naive.

 

[kirblar]

Gallup's methedology is the problem. They're finding data that makes sense (Obama ahead everywhere but the South, where he's massively behind) but aren't compiling it in a sensible manner.

 

[The Librarian]

Yes, there's some sort of massive conspiracy among pollsters to keep Obama down. That is a completely sensible position.

 

[Tim-E]

Now is it time for the left to start unskewing the polls?

 

[CoffeeJanitor]

The New Yorker says that voters of this nature almost always vote on feeling, not logic. So start by telling him you understand why he's disappointed and in his position you'd vote for change too if you thought Romney would provide it. Then say that the problem is that you just don't trust him and don't think he will provide change. Remember not to get tied down in policy questions your friend pretends to care about -- look for the emotional resistance behind them.

It's weird because he's a very smart guy. But he also seems to be at that age where he is tired of both parties, thinks both are shit, etc.

For the record, I told him that Romney has the same war advisers, that the tax plan simply won't work (he agrees), and other stuff, but I think he's shifting toward the "Romney was a businessman so he'll know how to create jobs". I don't know. I think he'll eventually sway back to the left if we keep conversing.

 

[Drek]

Gallup's methedology is the problem. They're finding data that makes sense (Obama ahead everywhere but the South, where he's massively behind) but aren't compiling it in a sensible manner.

And why is that?

Do you think Gallup doesn't see these same issues? If so why didn't they sample in a more neutral fashion or run additional sampling to improve the data pool?

It's painfully easy to skew numbers and plead honesty. Think about the recent tightening of women. How hard is it to do land lines only and weight your sample to the middle of the day when you will get a falsely high number thanks to stay at home wives? Add that sample skew to an over sample of the south and you could quite easily push numbers in a certain direction.

 

[Forever]

This thread has turned into an insane asylum.

Or maybe a zoo.

 

[Slime]

That's meaningless. You could have made that "calculation" at any time. She's not saying, "There have been scenarios in which Romney could win the presidency."

I think she probably is, actually. Just trying to make her assessment sound more meaningful by alluding to her 270towin calculations vaguely. There haven't been any pro-Romney EV calculations that line up with any polls, ever.

 

[Red Blaster]

We can toss out polls with garbage crosstabs but let's not get all Dick Morris here right now

 

[Tim-E]

Drek, maybe you could make a website unskewing the polls for us.

 

[Drek]

Yes, there's some sort of massive conspiracy among pollsters to keep Obama down. That is a completely sensible position.

It isn't to keep Obama down. Its to keep the narrative of a tight race.

And if this is such an irrational position why do we see such a heavy handed effort by the media to do the exact same thing?

People on here bitch all the time about how many media outlets are victims of false equivalency. Ever think that maybe they're less a victim of it and more a manipulator of it?

It has after all served David Brooks surprisingly well.

 

[The Librarian]

lol

 

[Chumly]

I dont necessarily think Gallup is purposely skewing their polls but I dont think their methodology is completely 100% screwed up. Proof lies in that every other poll believes they are wrong.

 

[Sirpopopop]

It's weird because he's a very smart guy. But he also seems to be at that age where he is tired of both parties, thinks both are shit, etc.

For the record, I told him that Romney has the same war advisers, that the tax plan simply won't work (he agrees), and other stuff, but I think he's shifting toward the "Romney was a businessman so he'll know how to create jobs". I don't know. I think he'll eventually sway back to the left if we keep conversing.

Both candidates intend to create jobs through Keynesian economic policy.

One is going to do that through a war machine (Romney).

The other intends on doing that through civilian programs (Obama).

 

[pigeon]

Why not? Because then you have no scoreboard to check? Even if that scoreboard is broken?

Fact is, the biggest deviation from the norm we've seen this election has been Gallup. Gallup happens to currently be getting sued by the federal government.

Maybe that's just spurious correlation.

Maybe, since the same thing happened in 2000 and nobody was getting sued.

Honestly, the more you believe that the media is intentionally controlling the narrative and swinging the election, the more confident you should be, because you know that none of them want to go to bed knowing it's their fault we got President Romney. Even Fox News knows their popularity is inextricably tied to Democratic leadership -- harder to get people mad when there isn't a black guy in the White House. So if your theory is right, we should see a big narrative swing towards Obama right before Election Day. Nothing to worry about!

 

[iamshadowlark]

I wonder why the voting machine thread got closed? There certainly seems to be some legit links to Romney and Co.

 

[Drek]

We can toss out polls with garbage crosstabs but let's not get all Dick Morris here right now

And this is my point.

We have people throwing hissy fits over PPP Iowa polls that have Obama up with a 2:1 margin in early voters. All the crosstabs make the rest of the data look questionable. Add that a poll ran just shortly before had vastly different results that actually matched up with it's crosstabs.

I'm not saying we have to just stick our heads in the sand and ignore all the polls, but people need to stop panicking over every sloppily sampled poll. If the pollster is unwilling to follow up on major crosstab incongruities then there's no reason to trust any part of that poll.

I don't know how many polls in the last few weeks I've seen with Obama's approval number running higher than his head to head number versus Romney. How absurd is that?

 

[pigeon]

It's weird because he's a very smart guy. But he also seems to be at that age where he is tired of both parties, thinks both are shit, etc.

For the record, I told him that Romney has the same war advisers, that the tax plan simply won't work (he agrees), and other stuff, but I think he's shifting toward the "Romney was a businessman so he'll know how to create jobs". I don't know. I think he'll eventually sway back to the left if we keep conversing.

What kind of jobs has he or his family had?

Talk to him about how Romney represents the new era of businessmen who get rich destroying jobs (through leveraged buyouts and outsourcing), not creating them. Show him "Stage," maybe. if you know anybody who lost a job from a takeover or merger, remember, that's what Mitt Romney did every single day. The goal is to explain why Romney is literally the mythical figure of hatred among all workers. It has the advantage of being true so there's lots of evidence.

 

[kirblar]

And why is that?

Do you think Gallup doesn't see these same issues? If so why didn't they sample in a more neutral fashion or run additional sampling to improve the data pool?

It's painfully easy to skew numbers and plead honesty. Think about the recent tightening of women. How hard is it to do land lines only and weight your sample to the middle of the day when you will get a falsely high number thanks to stay at home wives? Add that sample skew to an over sample of the south and you could quite easily push numbers in a certain direction.

They're doing things like lumping together 12 swing states in a collective poll and pretending the data means something. It doesn't. It means absolutely nothing because that combined data is relevant to exactly zero electoral outcomes. (You can also massage the selection of states to get whatever outcome you desire.)

You have to make sure the data lines up with the relevant margins, and they're failing miserably at that this cycle. This isn't a partisan thing, this is a "they're being really dumb" thing.

 

[Drek]

Maybe, since the same thing happened in 2000 and nobody was getting sued.

Honestly, the more you believe that the media is intentionally controlling the narrative and swinging the election, the more confident you should be, because you know that none of them want to go to bed knowing it's their fault we got President Romney. Even Fox News knows their popularity is inextricably tied to Democratic leadership -- harder to get people mad when there isn't a black guy in the White House. So if your theory is right, we should see a big narrative swing towards Obama right before Election Day. Nothing to worry about!

I'm extremely confident. I expect Obama to win decisively.

But look at the various media outlets and tell me they aren't angling the coverage to present a less than true facet of the race.

Consider Joe Scarsborough. A few months ago Joe always presented himself as a moderate conservative who gets accused by his own party of being a RINO.

After the first debate he was a leading champion of Romney, refused to acknowledge any of his lies, and pushed the "Obama asleep at the wheel" narrative.

After the last debate he thought Romney did well and claimed repeatedly that the only talking point the Dems had was the "binders full of women" deal. Like the entire rest of the debate simply didn't exist.

So either Scarsborough just had something snap in his brain or he understands that the media legitimately covering all of Romney's multitude of lies would be a death knell to Romney's campaign and end the 4 year election cycle meal ticket far too early.

I find it amusing that we frequently see complaints in this thread about the media not calling Romney out on his bullshit, yet no one sees why they're incapable of doing so. Do you think the national media is too dumb to put it together? Or is there another reason why an entire industry is looking the other way when just 8 years ago they lambasted John Kerry on "for it before I was against it"?

A colleague of mine claims that MSNBC is the same as Fox News, just on the opposite side of the spectrum. I always remind him that for Fox News being extremely right wing is by dictate of Rupert Murdoch, for MSNBC being extremely left is just a marketing angle.

 

[Frank the Great]

I wonder why the voting machine thread got closed? There certainly seems to be some legit links to Romney and Co.

tagg romney just bought neogaf

 

[Tim-E]

Here's Drek's electoral map post-unskewing:

 

[Slime]

I'm fairly confident that NV/CO/IA/WI will hold, and if Obama fears he's losing OH, he'll be sure to have one or all of NH/VA/FL locked up. The tightening polls and demographic shit is probably going to make me nervous until election day, but his paths to victory are just too many to get too worried.

 

[Drek]

They're doing things like lumping together 12 swing states in a collective poll and pretending the data means something. It doesn't. It means absolutely nothing because that combined data is relevant to exactly zero electoral outcomes.

You have to make sure the data lines up with the relevant margins, and they're failing miserably at that this cycle. This isn't a partisan thing, this is a "they're being really dumb" thing.

So you seriously believe that a bunch of highly educated statisticians are incapable of spotting the errors they're baking into the cake when all us armchair politicos can spot them at a glance?

Or that they're just incapable of taking it out of the poll?

I'm not saying its partisan. In fact, it's extremely bi-partisan. We saw the same with Bush V. Kerry. Early fall numbers had Bush up by anywhere from high single to even double digits with a decisive lead in battle ground states. By the end of the first debate some polls were claiming that Kerry was ahead. How did that pan out on election night?

A blow out election is in no one's best interests for those covering the election. So before you panic about every new poll ask "why does this poll show this, and is the background data worth a damn, or is it a flimsy poll that matches a desired outcome?"

 

[giga]

3 more weeks. 3 MORE WEEKS..

Two…

 

[Y2Kev]

Two weeks, thank god. my productivity has plummeted. I spend most of my day refreshing this thread now on my phone for no reason except to read the same posters saying the same thing! oh little comfort familiarity is these days...

 

[Slime]

^Same. First thing I've been doing every day for the past few weeks is picking up my tablet the second I wake up and reading through all the latest posts while my heart beats out of my chest. Can't wait for this shit to be over.

 

[RDreamer]

Two weeks, thank god. my productivity has plummeted. I spend most of my day refreshing this thread now on my phone for no reason except to read the same posters saying the same thing! oh little comfort familiarity is these days...

Same here. I'm getting way too into politics and following this thing and worrying. I need to get into a video game or something. Too bad nothing of real interest seems to be coming out for me...

 

[Half and half]

Two weeks, thank god. my productivity has plummeted. I spend most of my day refreshing this thread now on my phone for no reason except to read the same posters saying the same thing! oh little comfort familiarity is these days...

heh, I hit that F5 a lot too. I need to attend some NeoGaf Anonymous for my addiction.

 

[kirblar]

So you seriously believe that a bunch of highly educated statisticians are incapable of spotting the errors they're baking into the cake when all us armchair politicos can spot them at a glance?

Or that they're just incapable of taking it out of the poll?

I'm not saying its partisan. In fact, it's extremely bi-partisan. We saw the same with Bush V. Kerry. Early fall numbers had Bush up by anywhere from high single to even double digits with a decisive lead in battle ground states. By the end of the first debate some polls were claiming that Kerry was ahead. How did that pan out on election night?

A blow out election is in no one's best interests for those covering the election. So before you panic about every new poll ask "why does this poll show this, and is the background data worth a damn, or is it a flimsy poll that matches a desired outcome?"

There are plenty of pollsters putting out data that's actually good for more than good headline soundbites. They've chosen not to be one of those pollsters.

 

[HylianTom]

My answer has been what it always is: overtime at work. I've been doing 60 hours per week over the past month, along with crazy amounts of emergency neuro call.

Working my way up into that higher tax bracket will be a bit more rewarding with President Romney in place!

~~~

NBC poll looks expectedly tight. The good news? The LV numbers will be more accurate in non-swingy states, while the RV numbers will look good in states with GOTV machines.

 

[speculawyer]

Here's Drek's electoral map post-unskewing:

Political analyst extraordinaire? LOL The guy is is a total idiot. Any PoliGAFer can produce better maps than that idiot.

 

[pigeon]

I'm extremely confident. I expect Obama to win decisively.

But look at the various media outlets and tell me they aren't angling the coverage to present a less than true facet of the race.

You're rolling together a lot of different things here.

The media absolutely has trouble presenting the race honestly, mostly because they hate actual journalism. That's why I don't watch television news.

I'm happy to agree that false equivalencies are a big part of why.

But you need more evidence to prove malice than "it makes sense!"

A blow out election is in no one's best interests for those covering the election. So before you panic about every new poll ask "why does this poll show this, and is the background data worth a damn, or is it a flimsy poll that matches a desired outcome?"

This is literally a statement that we should ignore polls that don't fit with our preexisting theories about the election, because as Silver notes, there's no poll that you can't find a problem with if you dig aggressively enough into the crosstabs. I feel like PoliGAF already does too much of that (in both directions -- some people have a lot of trouble with polls that show Obama likely to win).

 

[Godslay]

I'm extremely confident. I expect Obama to win decisively.

But look at the various media outlets and tell me they aren't angling the coverage to present a less than true facet of the race.

Consider Joe Scarsborough. A few months ago Joe always presented himself as a moderate conservative who gets accused by his own party of being a RINO.

After the first debate he was a leading champion of Romney, refused to acknowledge any of his lies, and pushed the "Obama asleep at the wheel" narrative.

After the last debate he thought Romney did well and claimed repeatedly that the only talking point the Dems had was the "binders full of women" deal. Like the entire rest of the debate simply didn't exist.

So either Scarsborough just had something snap in his brain or he understands that the media legitimately covering all of Romney's multitude of lies would be a death knell to Romney's campaign and end the 4 year election cycle meal ticket far too early.

I find it amusing that we frequently see complaints in this thread about the media not calling Romney out on his bullshit, yet no one sees why they're incapable of doing so. Do you think the national media is too dumb to put it together? Or is there another reason why an entire industry is looking the other way when just 8 years ago they lambasted John Kerry on "for it before I was against it"?

A colleague of mine claims that MSNBC is the same as Fox News, just on the opposite side of the spectrum. I always remind him that for Fox News being extremely right wing is by dictate of Rupert Murdoch, for MSNBC being extremely left is just a marketing angle.

This was mentioned (although in a more abstract way) on Charlie Rose after the first debate. All the panelists agreed that the media would now be able to paint the race as a very close neck and neck race. All agreed that it was in their interests to do so. Given the chance the media will alter the narrative to what garners the most attention. It's what drives their business, so it makes sense for them to paint a close race. If you dig down into the finer details, it's fairly easy to establish a trend that Romney has a uphill climb to win, and things might not be that close.

 

[RDreamer]

Working my way up into that higher tax bracket will be a bit more rewarding with President Romney in place!

Hah, yeah I try to comfort myself that I'm slowly getting into a really good position when it comes to my resume and trajectory in my life that a president Romney probably wouldn't be too terrible for me individually. Still, I fucking hate what it'd likely do to this country as a whole.

 

[Amir0x]

To me even if the poll is 'tied', it's a likely win for Obama. What makes a difference in cases like that? Epic Get out the Vote campaigns, field offices and volunteers. And Obama literally dwarfs Romney in all cases.

But I'm still not the least bit concerned. The race is tightening up as we all knew it would, but the advantage is still decidedly with the incumbent. Now if he starts consistently polling 2 or 3 points behind in Ohio or Wisconsin, I'll be concerned.