Before I go further, let me re-state that Obama has a pretty safe path to victory and it's OK for those of you hyperventilating about his re-election and sweating every poll to just calm down a bit. Chill out. He's got this. However...
Others of you need to play it a little closer to you chest. I respect Silver and his calculus (
my 270towin map is largely based on his {I'm giving FL to Obama},) but his model does show Romney as having a chance to win, however slight, and sure he was 49 of 50 last time, but a blind duck in France could've called about 25 of those. And yeah, it would call for some big swings, but that's not outside the realm of possibility. On a much smaller scale, I've seen a +5% polling average turn into a -9% deficit on Election Day in a weekend (the firm I was with at the time did their first IVR poll in the middle of the weekend to see if it was having an effect, and we threw out the poll as invalid because it showed such a huge swing.) For all the tie jokes, +/-3%
is within most MoEs and is a statistical tie. Sure the aggregating helps gives a little more confidence, but we talking small enough margins that if there's some systemic factor that's causing them to have an unforeseen skew, it would turn the election on its head. It's possible, although highly unlikely, that Romney could win - without voter fraud/suppression/etc... (easy worrywarts, it's
highly unlikely.) Don't be so ready with the Republican salty tear catching jugs lest they catch your own.
Stay frosty, vote if you haven't already, encourage your family, friends, and strangers you suspect will vote for your guy to vote, and relax, tune out even. Unless you're a political professional, the only thing (politically) more worthless than obsessing over daily polling is obsessing over incoming poll results (i.e. "We're up 20% with 2% of precincts reporting! We're going win!!")
