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United States Election: Nov 6, 2012 |OT| - Barack Obama Re-elected

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I

Izayoi

Banned
teruterubozu said:
I'm leery about MN, ME and WA on Same Sex Marriage. Those states all have huge tracts of rural areas that detest their urban counterparts.
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Washington is going to pass gay marriage (and marijuana). Seattle basically controls the state when it comes to politics, and it's awesome.
 
I

ivysaur12

Banned
teruterubozu said:
I live in Maine, and it's definitely concerning. LOTS of No on Prop 1 commercials and posters. Plus it's been going back & forth for 6 yrs now.
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There hasn't been one poll this year where Yes has been losing in Maine. It's been up by 5-6% points. It's going to pass, stop Diablosing. The only shaky one is in Maryland, mostly because we haven't seen a poll for it in a while.
 
Y

Yen

Member
Paddy Power Politics ‏@pppolitics
PADDY POWER PAYS OUT ON OBAMA VICTORY, says 'America‘s sticking with black and cool' #EarlyPayout #Obama
 
P

PhoenixDawn

Member
Here in Minneapolis there are loads of Vote No signs for both amendments, but the second you get about 15-20 minutes away from the cities it shifts to almost exclusively Vote Yes signs. Hopefully the city's population + the few rural opponents of the amendments are enough to overcome the overwhelmingly supportive (of removing civil rights) populations of the rural areas.

The gay marriage ammendment has a pretty good chance of getting shot down, but there's still a lot of doubt. The voter ID amendment however I feel has a pretty high chance of passing because most of the voters don't care to read what the amendment even does (and the amendment itself doesn't even know what it does).
 
M

mclem

Member
Snowden's Secret said:
I got a robo-call a month back for a local congressional race. It was disguised as a "survey" but the questions were like:

"Would you be more or less likely to vote for Candidate X if you knew that he was convicted of tax fraud?'

"Would you be more or less likely to vote for Candidate X if you knew that he had a restraining order against him?"
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It amuses me that there's an implication in those questions that some people would answer 'more'.
 
Y

Yen

Member
How do these polls on specific issues like gay marriage or maryjane legalization work? Just a straight up, each state decides individually? Every state?
 
D

Duffyside

Banned
How many seats in the Senate/House are up for grabs, and what do the potential swings look like? What's the most probable outcome right now?
 
M

Marvie_3

Banned
PhoenixDawn said:
Here in Minneapolis there are loads of Vote No signs for both amendments, but the second you get about 15-20 minutes away from the cities it shifts to almost exclusively Vote Yes signs. Hopefully the city's population + the few rural opponents of the amendments are enough to overcome the overwhelmingly supportive (of removing civil rights) populations of the rural areas.

The gay marriage ammendment has a pretty good chance of getting shot down, but there's still a lot of doubt. The voter ID amendment however I feel has a pretty high chance of passing because most of the voters don't care to read what the amendment even does (and the amendment itself doesn't even know what it does).
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PublicPolicyPolling ‏@ppppolls

The biggest surprise on our Minnesota poll- 46% of voters support the voter ID amendment, 51% of voters oppose it
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:D
 
T

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
Duffyside said:
How many seats in the Senate/House are up for grabs, and what do the potential swings look like? What's the most probable outcome right now?
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Dems are likely to gain a seat in the Senate.

House is unknown.
 
T

tirant

Member
The whole world is paying attention to this election. And we cannot even understand how romney can stand a chance. Obama is not flawless, but romney is such a joke of a guy that is not even fun.
 
M

Magni

Member
Is that blank map correct? Washington definitely has 12 electoral votes, since we just had a new WA-10 district created.
 
A

Amir0x

Banned
MagniHarvald said:
Is that blank map correct? Washington definitely has 12 electoral votes, since we just had a new WA-10 district created.
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oops you're correct. I didn't look at every single state particularly closely, I just went to a page that claimed to have a 2012 Electoral Map and utilized that. I've updated with a new map that should reflect reality now.
 
F

Frankfurter

Member
Does anybody know why the election is on a Tuesday? I mean, unless that day is a national holiday (I guess it isn't?) most people actually have to work. I guess this made sense 200 years ago, but why not change it already to a Sunday?
 
N

NihonTiger90

Member
Frankfurter said:
Does anybody know why the election is on a Tuesday? I mean, unless that day is a national holiday (I guess it isn't?) most people actually have to work. I guess this made sense 200 years ago, but why not change it already to a Sunday?
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Because some religions have Sunday as a day of rest/worship only and they wouldn't vote.
 
P

pigeon

Banned
Duffyside said:
How many seats in the Senate/House are up for grabs, and what do the potential swings look like? What's the most probable outcome right now?
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Nate silver gives the Democrats a 91% chance of retaining Senate control, including the chance of a deadlocked chamber with Biden presiding. There are 33 seats up, of which maybe half are at all competitive. The GOP has frittered away their chance at control by nominating crazies and talking about rape all the time.

As always, every seat in the House is up for reelection. Maybe 60 seats or so are really in play, but there's so little public polling it's hard to tell anything. Sam Wang proposes that the House makeup correlates well with the generic Congressional poll, which today is tied; however Wang shows about a point of GOP bias in the correlation from the 2010 redistricting. Combined with the general tendency of House incumbents to win, the median result his methods suggest is about an 18-seat majority for the GOP -- that represents the Dems picking up most of the in-play seats. We'll see...

http://election.princeton.edu/2012/10/04/quantifying-the-effect-of-redistricting/

http://elections.huffingtonpost.com...tom&hiddenpollsters=yougoveconomist,rasmussen
 
T

teruterubozu

Member
Frankfurter said:
Does anybody know why the election is on a Tuesday? I mean, unless that day is a national holiday (I guess it isn't?) most people actually have to work. I guess this made sense 200 years ago, but why not change it already to a Sunday?
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Because people do things on weekends and if we made a holiday, people will probably take off rather than vote.
 
F

Frankfurter

Member
teruterubozu said:
Because people do things on weekends and if we made a holiday, people will probably take off rather than vote.
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So people don't do things when they have to work? Don't get me wrong, but I don't get your point.

Also concerning religious people not voting on Sunday, because you should rest: wow.
 
P

PhoenixDawn

Member
Frankfurter said:
So people don't do things when they have to work? Don't get me wrong, but I don't get your point.

Also concerning religious people not voting on Sunday, because you should rest: wow.
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Places of employment are legally required to allow workers to have time to vote (to a reasonable extent). It just works out better to have the election on a weekday I'd say.

EDIT: Yeah, the link above does a pretty good job of explaining it.
 
H

HylianTom

Banned
RDreamer said:
They do? Seemed like they thought the world was ending the other day and were blaming it all on Christie.
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There are cracks related to Christie, but they're usually conditional. "If Obummer wins.."

Otherwise, a lot are still cherry picking the one poll out of twenty that shows Romney tied in PA, OH, etc.
 
F

Frankfurter

Member
teruterubozu said:
eh, it's super complicated. You might as well read about it:

http://www.policymic.com/articles/1...y-why-america-will-vote-on-tuesday-november-6
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It's really not that complicated. The article you posted seems to agree with me that voting during the week isn't a great idea to begin with. Yet it somehow comes to the conclusion that voting on the weekend isn't possible because religious people wouldn't vote. Personally I'm not super religious, but I definitely do know quite a few people from all ages that are religious and none of those has any issues at all with voting on a Sunday.

Also I think the point "Americans love their weekend" is ridiculous. It takes like 30 minutes to vote and it's once every 2 years for the federal elections. Once out of 104 weekends.
 
T

teruterubozu

Member
Frankfurter said:
It's really not that complicated. The article you posted seems to agree with me that voting during the week isn't a great idea to begin with. Yet it somehow comes to the conclusion that voting on the weekend isn't possible because religious people wouldn't vote. Personally I'm not super religious, but I definitely do know quite a few people from all ages that are religious and none of those has any issues at all with voting on a Sunday.

Also I think the point "Americans love their weekend" is ridiculous. It takes like 30 minutes to vote and it's once every 2 years for the federal elections. Once out of 104 weekends.
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Sorry I guess it wasn't complicated. Just trying to help your question, man.
 
Emerson

Emerson

May contain jokes =>
Frankfurter said:
It's really not that complicated. The article you posted seems to agree with me that voting during the week isn't a great idea to begin with. Yet it somehow comes to the conclusion that voting on the weekend isn't possible because religious people wouldn't vote. Personally I'm not super religious, but I definitely do know quite a few people from all ages that are religious and none of those has any issues at all with voting on a Sunday.

Also I think the point "Americans love their weekend" is ridiculous. It takes like 30 minutes to vote and it's once every 2 years for the federal elections. Once out of 104 weekends.
Click to expand...

Just because you don't know any religious people with strict Sabbath beliefs doesn't mean there aren't any. There are, and there's a lot. And not just Sundays.
 
P

pigeon

Banned
Frankfurter said:
It's really not that complicated. The article you posted seems to agree with me that voting during the week isn't a great idea to begin with. Yet it somehow comes to the conclusion that voting on the weekend isn't possible because religious people wouldn't vote. Personally I'm not super religious, but I definitely do know quite a few people from all ages that are religious and none of those has any issues at all with voting on a Sunday.

Also I think the point "Americans love their weekend" is ridiculous. It takes like 30 minutes to vote and it's once every 2 years for the federal elections. Once out of 104 weekends.
Click to expand...

Squirrel killer will no doubt be along to argue this point -- Congress did actually do a study that showed inconclusive results on whether a weekend election would have higher turnout.

Frankly, the whole idea of having a single election day for 300 million people is silly. We should federally mandate early voting periods and just let people vote any time in October.
 
Link

Link

The Autumn Wind
Frankfurter said:
Also I think the point "Americans love their weekend" is ridiculous. It takes like 30 minutes to vote and it's once every 2 years for the federal elections. Once out of 104 weekends.
Click to expand...
Im in Florida, and I went to early vote last Saturday first thing in the morning and was met with a line that wrapped around the block. I left and found out later that people waited 4-6 hours all across the state. I went again first thing Tuesday and still had to wait an hour and a half. People waited until 1am last night because it was the last day of early voting.
 
F

Frankfurter

Member
Link said:
Im in Florida, and I went to early vote last Saturday first thing in the morning and was met with a line that wrapped around the block. I left and found out later that people waited 4-6 hours all across the state. I went again first thing Tuesday and still had to wait an hour and a half. People waited until 1am last night because it was the last day of early voting.
Click to expand...


Wow, I guess things are different over here. I've never had to wait longer than a ~minute to vote.
 
J

Juice

Member
I don't have a ton of substance to add, but I love the OT title.

I want Obama to win decisively for myriad reasons, but this Nate Silver thing makes it even more personal. I want Joe Scarborough to look like a fucking dumbass.

Loved Andrew Sullivan's take on the NYT's bullshit public editor's comments:

Nate Silver @fivethirtyeight said:
.@JoeNBC: If you think it's a toss-up, let's bet. If Obama wins, you donate $1,000 to the American Red Cross. If Romney wins, I do. Deal?
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NYT public editor Margaret Sullivan tsk tsks Silver for the above tweet:

Margaret Sullivan said:
When he came to work at The Times, Mr. Silver gained a lot more visibility and the credibility associated with a prominent institution. But he lost something, too: the right to act like a free agent with responsibilities to nobody’s standards but his own.
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Sullivan's piece is almost a parody of smug old media. She actually believes that Nate Silver gained "credibility" because of an association with an "institution." No wonder she's on the Pulitzer board. She represents all that is brain-dead about the legacy MSM. To their credit, the NYT has moved on, and their reputation has benefited from Nate's presence there - as, I'm sure, has their traffic. But bow down to smell the jealousy:

Margaret Sullivan said:
Silver is closely associated with The Times and its journalism – in fact, he’s probably (and please know that I use the p-word loosely) its most high-profile writer at this particular moment.
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And he came from the blogosphere! The horror! Josh Marshall defends Silver:

Josh Marshall said:
Silver is not really reliant on the Times at all. He’s his own brand. In the political realm he built it in the 2008 cycle (he obviously had a baseball sabermetrics rep before that). I don’t think there’s any question the Times gained considerably more than he did in the bargain. That’s why I suspect they’re paying him quite a lot of money and he was able to negotiate a deal in which the entire 538 franchise is still his. He’s just leasing it to them.
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Amen. At the Beast, as at every other institution I have blogged at, I insist on total editorial independence in every respect. It's in my contract. And notice the Sullivan assumption - again - that writers for the NYT cannot have opinions outside the op-ed page. Why not? In some ways, it's refreshing that Nate told Scarborough to put his money where his mouth is - for charity. Alex argues that "the NYTimes should require that Silver, and other pundits, bet their beliefs":

Alex Tabarrok said:
Overall, I am for betting because I am against bullshit. Bullshit is polluting our discourse and drowning the facts. A bet costs the bullshitter more than the non-bullshitter so the willingness to bet signals honest belief. A bet is a tax on bullshit; and it is a just tax, tribute paid by the bullshitters to those with genuine knowledge.
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Amen. Nate fights back against his critics here. Presumably Ms Sullivan will approve.
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http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/11/putting-his-money-where-his-model-is.html

So fucking sick of the NYT's hubris. They lost their high horse with Judith Miller and their pandering to Bush/Cheney on their coverage of US torture policy. Most of the NYT's organs are vestigial and prime for excision.
 
Journeywalker

Journeywalker

Member
pigeon said:
Squirrel killer will no doubt be along to argue this point -- Congress did actually do a study that showed inconclusive results on whether a weekend election would have higher turnout.

Frankly, the whole idea of having a single election day for 300 million people is silly. We should federally mandate early voting periods and just let people vote any time in October.
Click to expand...

I guess some people are worried that early voting results may affect turnout for later voters, but I'd like to see a quantitative measurement of this affect (if it exists at all).

A voting week or a voting weekend (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) might condense it enough to retain the sense of common simultaneous civic duty that a single voting day is supposed to evoke.
 
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