Obama wins if he wins either Ohio (and Wisconsin) or Florida. Romney needs both.
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United States Election: Nov 6, 2012 |OT| - Barack Obama Re-elected
- Thread starter Amir0x
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Obama wins if he wins either Ohio (and Wisconsin) or Florida. Romney needs both.
Something Wicked
Member
2008 Presidential Election was on the easiest elections to predict. Once the housing bubble began to pop, nearly everyone knew Obama had won the election and would win by a sizable margin.
Another former Baseball Prospectus statistician gave quite skeptical look on Silver's model last week: http://www.pointoflaw.com/archives/2012/10/2012-election-why-nate-silver-might-be-wrong-and-romney-might-be-more-ahead-than-silver-thinks.php
Add in that Silver had Team Obama's internal polling data, his prediction becomes even less extraordinary.
Silver tries to prove the worth of his model through past election results, yet the 2000 election throws a bit of a wrench into its "objectivity:"
Another guy demonstrates how Silver's predictions have been above average, due to people remembering just Silver's final predictions, which use polling data right before the elections, instead of the predictions weeks/months before it.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/10/if-nate-silver-cannot-be-wrong-how-can-he-be-right/
Agent Icebeezy
Welcome beautful toddler, Madison Elizabeth, to the horde!
ElectricBlue187
Member
He got it right when so many other news media were calling it a 'tie'
Also, he did it again in 2010 when the republicans won. I don't care if he's an asshole or not objective or partisan. I only care if he is right.
Anoregon
The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
Yeah, that's the key thing. Obama really only needs one of those 3 (four if you count Colorado), but Romney really needs some combination to have a solid shot.
ReadingRambo
Member
And they all know good and well that pop. vote means fuck all. It's wrapped up but they need people tuning in.
Delusibeta
Banned
AFAIK Romney has to win literally every other swing state if Obama takes Florida. He might have to flip a traditionally blue state as well. Then again, if Romney takes Florida and Obama takes Ohio, Obama really only needs two of the remaining five or so swing states to win, while Romney again needs almost all of them. It's a case of if Obama wins either Ohio or Florida, it's time to declare GG.
Let me just point out a concrete example:
With healthcare reform a "really good policy" from the left that far left ideologues would want is a single payer system. That's the ideal. Now, when the dems took control and Obama won is that what they tried to force the Republicans into doing? No, because Obama wanted to be a compromise president. So, for the most part they started with a compromise. And what we got, the ACA was something modeled after ideas endorsed by the heritage foundation and put into place by a conservative governor, Mitt Romney. What did the Republican party do during this? They scoffed and every single one of them voted against it what was once absolutely considered "good policy" by them.
Now, what Reid is saying is exactly what someone on the right would probably say in the beginning if Obama really was dead set on a single payer system, that they're not going to cooperate with that far left of an agenda. That's fine. I may hate that, but they're going to do that. Now their job would be to find some sort of middle ground afterwards to fix the problems we are having.
Now, in attacking that they have absolutely thrown the American people under the bus. They've thrown those who have cried for health reform under the bus. Again, they're attacking a proposal that really is a compromise at its very core, something which, again, they called good policy. Now they've turned their base against it and are running against it.
Aside form that we have people on the right flat out rejecting 10 to 1 spending cuts to revenue deals. These are compromises. Hell, they're not even middle of the fucking road anymore, they're right wing goddamned ideas. But, the right bristles at every fucking one of them because they can't make Obama or the dems look good in any way shape or form. It's deplorable. We have good job proposals sitting there and nothing's being done because the Republicans signed a pledge to that piece of shit Norquist and refuse to make Obama look good for even a fraction of a second.
And, sure, if Romney wins obstructionism isn't the sole reason. Racism seems to be playing pretty heavily, too. But yeah, obstructionism and the inability to move to the center on anything in the last 4 years is the main reason for him winning.
Polling aggregation is what it is, I have no opinion save to say that there are clearly instances where polls are wrong. Conducted wrong, biased somehow, weights, sampling, people lying to pollers... dont know or really care.
But let's say they are right for arguments sake. What makes 538 anything special? What is in his model that is making it more or less valid than a basic aggregate of all the polls?
The Lamonster
Member
Fenderputty
Banned
This is basically what I told her. I told her that nationally the polls are close and the media is running with that. I also told her how CNN will report "O+4 in OH but within margin of error .... IT'S A TIE"
Basically ... the fact that R has NEVER lead in any OH poll combined with the early voting has some pretty cold ice running through my veins right now.
My wife dosn't follow politics like I do though. She's more likely to hear CNN blurt out "Tie" and believe it. I doubt most voters have a clue what 538 even is.
ElectricBlue187
Member
read his blog? its pretty much the only thing he ever talks about in every post.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytime...-course/?gwh=E4A579BF117BAD180CF0FA1DD96355D5
If Obama wins Florida, the election is over. There is no realistic path for Romney to win.
That's a generous electoral map for Romney to show just how hard it'd be for him to win without Florida
EDIT: Ok believe it or not, I actually didn't see that post by Piecake before I made mine
ReadingRambo
Member
Aggregation mitigates the damage caused by bad polling by having a shit ton of polls. Don't simply write it off as "is what it is".
The media and Silver have pretty much the same numbers. The only difference is that Silver translates it into a chance to win. Most people consider a 3% lead to be pretty small and a tight race, while they consider someone having an 87% chance to win to be almost a done deal.
The media either doesn't know that's what a 3% lead translates into it, or more likely they purposefully don't mention that to make it look close.
The media either doesn't know that's what a 3% lead translates into it, or more likely they purposefully don't mention that to make it look close.
Black Republican
Member
buzzfeed confirms Romney is also going to Pittsburgh tomorrow as well
BertramCooper
Banned
If Obama wins Florida, the election is over. There is no realistic path for Romney to win.
That's a generous electoral map for Romney to show just how hard it'd be for him to win without Florida
EDIT: Ok believe it or not, I actually didn't see that post by Piecake before I made mine
That's the thing.
Even if Romney does the slightest bit worse than his best case scenario, he loses.
I can't wait until this election over so I can stop doing my favourite election habit, finding the most credible arguments that the side I don't want to win will win and thus, scaring the bejezus out of myself.
The Ted Frank article Something Wicked linked to is a good start, even Nate Silver said it's a credible argument against him. Then I moved onto this article which even though I think Cosh is a douche, makes a few good points. Then finally I've sank down to the hard stuff, following conservatives on twitter who argue that the polls this year are over sampling democrats and that Romney is doing well with independents, which leads to tweets like...
"Rasmussen party ID survey had D+7 in 2008 (was D+7), D+3 in 2010 (was even). Now the survey shows R+6. If its only even Romney will win big."
Which hey, I know Rasmussen is a republican poll but their track record on this stat has been ok the last two elections.
and finally I just read stuff like
"CNN national poll tied at 49%. Romney up 22 with independents. Sample is D+11 (was D+7 in 08, even in 2004/2010). Taken 11/2-4."
Then I just scream AHHHH OBAMA IS GONNA LOSE and then I drink and then I pass out and soil myself. Someone take the computer away from me.
The Ted Frank article Something Wicked linked to is a good start, even Nate Silver said it's a credible argument against him. Then I moved onto this article which even though I think Cosh is a douche, makes a few good points. Then finally I've sank down to the hard stuff, following conservatives on twitter who argue that the polls this year are over sampling democrats and that Romney is doing well with independents, which leads to tweets like...
"Rasmussen party ID survey had D+7 in 2008 (was D+7), D+3 in 2010 (was even). Now the survey shows R+6. If its only even Romney will win big."
Which hey, I know Rasmussen is a republican poll but their track record on this stat has been ok the last two elections.
and finally I just read stuff like
"CNN national poll tied at 49%. Romney up 22 with independents. Sample is D+11 (was D+7 in 08, even in 2004/2010). Taken 11/2-4."
Then I just scream AHHHH OBAMA IS GONNA LOSE and then I drink and then I pass out and soil myself. Someone take the computer away from me.
BertramCooper
Banned
The oversampling argument can be deflated by simply looking at the breakdown from a PPP poll.
From yesterday's Ohio poll (which is O+5):
How would you describe yourself?
Very liberal: 13%
Somewhat liberal: 17%
Moderate: 29%
Somewhat conservative: 23%
Very conservative: 18%
If you are a Democrat, press 1. If a Republican, press 2. If you are an independent or identify with another party, press 3.
Democrat: 43%
Republican: 35%
Independent/Other: 22%
The idea that conservatives are being underpolled is horseshit. There's just a very large number of them identifying as independent.
Obama
Nate Silver.
BobTheFork
Member
Go to FiveThirtyEight.com for the best 'collection' of polling results. It's showing Obama with a slight lead nationally but a major lead going by a state to state basis.
The real issue IMO is the heavy EC vote lead Obama has as the 'firewall'. Romney has to take near all of the toss up's to win. Not a very likely situation.
Sure. The error in the polling aggregate is generally quite low and getting lower, but it's definitely not zero.
Well, it's pretty simple, really. He just observes a few things:
* some pollsters are consistently biased in a specific direction and that we can account for that in the averaging
* some polls are more accurate than others (and thus deserve more weight in the average), and that turns out to correlate well with specific standards and practices, as well as having larger sample sizes, etc.; it can also just be measured the same way bias can be
* all of the individual state races tend to correlate with each other and with the national polling, as long as you account for the individual lean of each state relative to the national race; therefore any piece of data you get about one state is really a piece of data about every state and the national polling
* similarly, outperforming the polls in one state correlates well with outperforming them in all the other states
This last one accounts for pretty much the entire (about 10%) chance Romney has to win; he has to outperform all the polling aggregates by a little over three points. That's really the big thing that differentiates Nate's model from, say, Sam Wang's, or RCP's no tossups map, all of which are showing basically the same thing but more likely -- 538 just assumes a much greater chance of systematic error than other prognosticators.
So I guess what I would say 538 adds is "caution." Nate pretty much bends over backwards every day to explain how his model still shows Romney with a solid chance to win -- or at least he did up til about a week ago when it more or less stopped doing that. Since then he's mostly switched over to explaining how even a common-sense view of the polls shows that Obama is a strong favorite. Given his unwillingness to commit, it's actually pretty funny that everybody keeps attacking him for being too sure of himself.
Other than the chance of systematic error, 538 doesn't do much that any aggregate doesn't do, although it's nice to have a clear look at the correlation between moves in various swing states. I think he's mainly popular because he produces a lot of pretty reasonable writing explaining why what's obviously likely to happen is very likely to happen. But that's pretty good given his competition.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
If Obama wins Florida, the election is over. There is no realistic path for Romney to win.
That's a generous electoral map for Romney to show just how hard it'd be for him to win without Florida
EDIT: Ok believe it or not, I actually didn't see that post by Piecake before I made mine
Florida is far less likely to go blue than Virginia is. People just assume Virginia is red because historically speaking its a southern state.
Admittedly not wanting to officially affiliate with either party even if you strongly agree with one of them is hardly a conservative stand point. Though I guess many Tea Party members could've changed to independent between 2008 and now given I recall hearing most independent voters were liberal leaning before.
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
I think you're giving 90's Heritage and then governor of Mass. Romney more influence over the entire Republican party than is due. The members and philosophy of the Republican party back then isn't the same as it is now. It's not the same "them".
Yes, Reid is saying that because he has to say that. Just like the Democrats say that the Ryan plan pushes grandma off a cliff and Republicans say death panels.
The Republican idea of health reform is as anathema to Democrats as the Democrats's idea of health reform is to Republicans. It's part philosophy, part power-grab, part reelection strategy, part stubbornness.
When you think of an opposition's base motives as so crass as to be "can't make Obama or Dems look good at all", then you start off the debate in bad faith. Googling conservative arguments for that deal gives a lot of unreasonable and reasonable objections, but none that are as unreasonable as "can't make Obama look good".
http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci_21908684
http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiswo...ending-cuts-for-1-in-tax-increases-no-thanks/
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/08/...-increases-question-is-a-policy-non-sequitur/
I can't fully get behind the "racism" argument, because if that really was the case, then Obama wouldn't have gotten elected in the first place, as Obama himself even acknowledges.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN787sis4Ec
Fenderputty
Banned
I am definitely ready for this to be over.
Something Wicked
Member
I'd like to know what your mathematics and science background is?
Seriously, people who use say vague shit like "IT'S SCIENCE!" are usually trying to compensate for their own ineptitude of many branches of science.
I'm annoyed with the religion rhetoric of the scientifically uneducated section of the right, but I even more annoyed with the pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-scientific hypocrisy of the hardly scientifically educated left (and as an engineer, I'll use adverbs all I want). Then again, I grew up in Massachusetts and not the Bible Belt. Perhaps, if I grew up in rural Alabama, I'd want to vote against Republicans out of spite as well.
Eh, by "housing bubble popped" I was referring to to the Lehman liquidation. Anyways, my point that the election was already decided in early/mid October in 2008, and that predicting which states a candidate would win were easier than most previous elections. Nate Silver is no oracle and his model isn't anything special.
BertramCooper
Banned
It's not the Tea Partiers who are identifying as independent.
It's the moderate conservatives whose influence has been suppressed by the Tea Party.
If the Republicans want to blame anyone for the low numbers of people identifying as Republicans in polls, it's themselves.
ErasureAcer
Banned
Takamura-San
Member
You mean the current democrats in office?
Yeah but I wasn't going for a realistic map there.
Rentahamster
Rodent Whores
Actually, I thought the main criticism was the opposite - that while many pundits are making flat out predictions of what they think will happen, Silver is "hedging his bets", so to speak, by giving him an out if by chance Romney does win, so that he wasn't necessarily "wrong", and you can dismiss the naysayers as science hating fools who don't understand math.
But that's just the nature of what each person is trying to do. It's not exactly fair to equate what Silver is doing to what some other random pundit is doing who makes a prediction of what he or she thinks will happen. It's just that the latter will have to eat more crow, if their predictions aren't right after all. There is less potential crow for Silver, since a Romney win would just be falling into that small percentage of chance that it was possible.
The merits of these two different approaches can be debated, sure.
Just look at the Wyden - Bennett plan. Sure it's not exactly the same as what we ended up with, but the basic premise is there, and that's still a recent bipartisan plan.
You can say, again, that it's not the same "them" since Bennett was beaten in a primary simply because he authored legislation with an individual mandate, but I'd say that's a result of the obstructionism of the current Republican party. They rail against something they themselves didn't find to be bad policy before so much and froth up their base to the point that it eats their own and they just move further right and into less compromise.
And that's what I'm saying. The democrat's idea of health reform in an ideal setting is single payer. The Republican idea of health reform in an ideal setting is a more free market approach. The compromise that's still weighted toward the republican ideal is basically what we got. So now that we got what they had pushed for as a compromise their actual ideal is... well, I guess it's just letting people die at the mercy of the free market.
If Virginia goes Obama's way, I'm fairly confident we'll know who won tomorrow night. If Obama wins Florida by a big enough margin for it to be called at anything resembling a reasonable hour, then we'll definitely know. If neither of those comes through, though, we may be waiting on Ohio to come in, which might be totally fine and straightforward or might have all kinds of shenanigans going on.
(Note: Obama can still win even if he loses Virginia and Florida AND Ohio, but it requires him to win every single other swing state...other than North Carolina, which he's not going to win if he doesn't sweep those other states anyway.)
Yup. Lots and lots of paths! I love it!
Virginia'll do it. Ohio'll do it. Heck, even CO+IA+NV+WI+NH will do it.
I'm betting that if we don't know by 11PM, EST tomorrow night, we'll at least have a good idea. Instead of the whole race hinging on one specific state, Obama has too many different paths for us to not know this time around.
It's worth noting that if Florida comes in too close to call that's a good sign for Obama -- the polling averages that show Obama winning 303 EV or so predict a recount there.
Gary Whitta
Member
Are there any recent polls that favor Obama in FL? All the ones I've been seeing favor Romney. The fact that Obama didn't really campaign there in the final days seems to suggest their internals are telling them it's gone.
darkside31337
Tomodachi wa Mahou
Obama was here in Orlando just last week (and boy was it obvious which hotel his campaign was staying at since secret service blocked off 3 entire roads!). It was supposed to be his last event before Sandy but he decided to bail on it for obvious reasons. And he was just in Hollywood yesterday.
Public Policy Polling O+1 11/4
Ipsos tie 11/4
Mellman O+2 11/2
Marist O+2 11/1
The polling average is more like tied or Romney by half a point.
Obama was in Florida on Sunday. It's worth noting that he's travelling with Springsteen today (which presumably means by bus) and so probably forced to stay within the pretty small Rust Belt triangle he's in.
Ah right... wouldn't really surprise if Republicans had much better support (or at least less resentment) if they did pursue the moderate angle rather than a fringe movement kicking most of those out.
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