On the electoral count, so far it seems I was one state off -- Ohio. Assuming Indiana, Missouri, Montana, and North Carolina go R, which does not seem unreasonable.
I'm watching the Obama speech now, and it's generic. Minus the newfound emphasis on the racial dimension of politics. I like it, but given Obama's standard it's nothing exceptional.
I think I'm still on a life high from seeing my students on Franklin Street. Joe, we're old or are getting there. I notice myself moderating my views, from communist to socialist. But on Franklin Street, before the police blocked us off, I saw some of my students. And they were excited about democracy (note the small "d"), and hopefully it'll stick. You and I are political junkies, but I hope these kids stay political.
While watching the Obama speech, the people crying about his election, I finally get the pull of his candidacy. All day I've felt close to crying, and I started out as a Hillary supporter. (For no other reason than she could break a hold in the Senate.) But here I am, behind Obama and hoping nothing crazy happens in the next few days.
I finally get the "hope" message. It's not about policy but about how we, as a collective, can overcome the second dimension of politics, which is so trivial when you get right down to it (even though you are friends with Coggin and Locher who pay more attention to it than they should). As I was told last year, race has always been an issue in American politics that no one has handled well. It's not whether or not we actually overcome the problems, but that we're at least willign to tackle it head-on. One of the problems of growing up in El Paso is that you don't fully realize how much race still plays into American politics. Maybe America can be more like El Paso in that sense as a result of this election.
I also like that the results were called pre-midnight. Oh, newest prediction: stock markets rise world-wide tomorrow.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Senate
Whoops, forgot about that one.. Just copying and changing what Joe says as I see fit
- AK - D Beigich over Stevens. Jenn says scandal will dominate
- GA - Run-off, followed by D victory because of existing Obama infrastructure
- CO - D Udall
- KY - R McConnell. We won't know for a while though.
- LA - D Landrieu. That one's been over for a while.
- MN - D Franken. All I've learned from having an advisor who studies MN politics is they get wacky. Really wacky.
- NH - D Shaheen. Jenn says look at the vote in Dixville Notch to see NH is going to be a D blowout.
- NC - D Hagan. Took me a while to get to thinking she'll win, but the latest insider numbers I heard of have Hagan up 3.
- OR - D Merkeley. Obama coattails
- CT - Lieberman. Why did I once date a guy who worked for him, seriously? What was I thinking as a freshman?
- MS - R Wicker. Same with GA. Huge black turnout comes into play. Only difference is that with the lack of Obama infrastructure in MS, the R wins.
Some comments on Jenn's last one
OK, so I can't function at all today and just read her posts after saying I wasn't going to.. oy.
I think race is a factor as well, and I think that Jenn might be right about the undecideds. But I would also knock 3-5% off of Obama's numbers, depending on the state. But I don't think its a race thing as much as its just popular thing to go for the guy who is winning.
Also, the key to factor in is how much Obama looks establishment now and how, ironically, some people may actually see Mac as a Maverick. They see "underdog" and think "maverick." I could have pushed a few more swing states to Mac had his numbers been a bit stronger this week to really make an upset look like a closer chance. Americans love that story of a heroic comeback (see Bill Clinton circa 1992, all the Rocky movies, any sports movie, etc).
Finally, something tells me that Palin may be more of a factor. ENPR says that PA is only in play because of her and I think that's right. I think the numbers to watch here are her TV ratings. I don't think that many Americans are tuning in to her debate and appearance on SNL because they hate her. I don't consider her convention speech as a factor, as it was her intro... although pulling a Barry-like audience says something too.
But as we all know, Americans will vote for the people they want to see more of (see every reality TV show). Hence Barry's over-saturation could prove costly. If Palin has resonated at all, Mac can take it.
If they don't win, I want Newt Gingrich as RNC head until 2010, and Palin after that. (Newt if they win or lose)
I think race is a factor as well, and I think that Jenn might be right about the undecideds. But I would also knock 3-5% off of Obama's numbers, depending on the state. But I don't think its a race thing as much as its just popular thing to go for the guy who is winning.
Also, the key to factor in is how much Obama looks establishment now and how, ironically, some people may actually see Mac as a Maverick. They see "underdog" and think "maverick." I could have pushed a few more swing states to Mac had his numbers been a bit stronger this week to really make an upset look like a closer chance. Americans love that story of a heroic comeback (see Bill Clinton circa 1992, all the Rocky movies, any sports movie, etc).
Finally, something tells me that Palin may be more of a factor. ENPR says that PA is only in play because of her and I think that's right. I think the numbers to watch here are her TV ratings. I don't think that many Americans are tuning in to her debate and appearance on SNL because they hate her. I don't consider her convention speech as a factor, as it was her intro... although pulling a Barry-like audience says something too.
But as we all know, Americans will vote for the people they want to see more of (see every reality TV show). Hence Barry's over-saturation could prove costly. If Palin has resonated at all, Mac can take it.
If they don't win, I want Newt Gingrich as RNC head until 2010, and Palin after that. (Newt if they win or lose)
My predictions - terribly unscientific and relatively brief
The election is maddening, and I can't wait for it to be over. I'm going to post up my prediction that got me to 269-269... son of a bitch! And then also my Senate count.
Swing States (as stated by RCP):
Senate
Overall, I would be happy with a McCain win and less than 60 in the Senate, but no matter what, the right is going to need to take control of the Republican Party again, or jump ship for another. The worst part is (and Matt Beato agrees with this, so don't let him tell you otherwise) that if McCain loses, the biggest conservative victory of the year is Nichol's ouster. I brainstormed the other day and asked around and sadly, we can't find much of anything else besides that and a handful of other campus triumphs. Clearly, that means they shoudl put me in charge of this thing.
Am I losing my mind? Only slightly more than the usual pace. With my Adult ADD in full swing today, I shoudl be back to check for more posts from Jenn - and maybe I will actually take 10 minutes and read one of them and respond (sorry!)
Swing States (as stated by RCP):
- Virginia - McCain +2
- North Carolina - McCain +4
- Florida - McCain +2
- Missouri - McCain +1
- Indiana - McCain +1
- Georgia - McCain +5
- Montana - McCain +7
- Arizona - McCain +4
- Ohio - McCain +1
- Colorado - McCain +1
- Nevada - Obama +4
- Pennsylvania - Obama +5
- New Mexico - Obama +7
- South Dakota - McCain +8
- West Virginia - McCain +8
- Aransas - McCain +9
Senate
- AK - D Beigich over Stevens (idiots up there nominating that guy while he's facing charges - good call morons)
- GA - R Chambliss holds
- CO - D Udall
- KY - R McConnell holds
- LA - D Landrieu holds
- MN - R Coleman holds (they may be silly enough to vote for a wrestler for governor, but no way people walk into that both and pull the lever for Stuart Smiley)
- NH - D Shaheen takes out Sunnunu (sorry pal, you're not your dad. Get your shit together, come back for the next one)
- NC - R Dole holds (despite her inept, defeatist campaigning and seeming inability to function, people in NC will play it safe)
- OR - D Merkeley by a hair over Smith
- CT - Lieberman will grow a pair and caucus with the Republicans
Overall, I would be happy with a McCain win and less than 60 in the Senate, but no matter what, the right is going to need to take control of the Republican Party again, or jump ship for another. The worst part is (and Matt Beato agrees with this, so don't let him tell you otherwise) that if McCain loses, the biggest conservative victory of the year is Nichol's ouster. I brainstormed the other day and asked around and sadly, we can't find much of anything else besides that and a handful of other campus triumphs. Clearly, that means they shoudl put me in charge of this thing.
Am I losing my mind? Only slightly more than the usual pace. With my Adult ADD in full swing today, I shoudl be back to check for more posts from Jenn - and maybe I will actually take 10 minutes and read one of them and respond (sorry!)
Monday, November 3, 2008
Electoral Guesstimates
Cross-posted on my personal blog
I went conservative. I don't know the totals, but keep all the Kerry states (including PA because of GOTV in Philly barely countering the rural vote), and add on FL, VA, NV, NM, IA, and CO. NM, CO, VA, IA, and NV I'm confident on. FL I was torn between it or OH. Then decided against OH for the reason I almost put PA for McCain.
Last week I spent a lot of time reading about the question of a second dimension in American politics (based on NOMINATE scores). The conclusion is that if there is one, it involves race and only matters when race appears on the agenda. Guess what -- race is on the agenda right now.
All the talk on the Bradley Effect really is hype. The undecided numbers are about 7-9 percent in polls, which tells me these people aren't undecided but actually closest racists. Instead of whites reporting they'll vote for a black candidate, they just claim to be undecided. This is only a hypothesis, but I'm basing it on a mix of what I could expect from good old political science theory and some of what I've seen on the ground. And by on the ground I mean from my family.
That's why I'm so low on the electoral count. Everyone else is predicting a blowout for Obama, which would make sense if the racial dimension weren't active. That's why my moving swing states are the ones they are. NH is New England and I don't care what McCain thinks, it's just not going to go to him because it's New England. CO, NM, NV, and FL all have high minority populations that are going to break Obama. Even the Cubans in FL don't seem pleased with the Rs right now. My reasoning behind VA and IA going Obama explains my placement of PA as an Obama state -- high turnout in liberal areas counteracting the racist sections. Basically, Obama's got a superior ground game in those three states. And that will make all the difference.
What I didn't include for Obama were OH, NC, MT, the Dakotas, MO, GA, and IN. For starters, MT and the Dakotas are driven by Ron Paul pipe dreams. They think he'll play the Nader role but for some reason in the past decade voters have become incredibly sophisticated and when they see competition they go safe. For these states, especially MT, that means McCain. I'd have said the same thing for NV except for the minority population being greater than the rural Paultards. OH and GA have problems with voters being challenged in urban areas. Though the courts seem favorable to allowing more people to vote, something tells me that will be challenged and changed. OH and GA also face the same problems that I cite for NC, MO, and IN -- race. What role is it playing in these states? I'm assuming the white undecideds will break evenly between McCain and Obama, giving McCain the edge. Typically, they should break more towards Obama since the economic conditions favor the Dems.
In the end I still have an Obama victory. And I put the Senate at 59 caucusing with the Ds, assuming (quite confidently) that the inevitable GA runoff goes to the D and Liebermann stays D (less sure on that last assumption).Sunday, November 2, 2008
Polls, swings, and margins
So I could totally geek out on you and try to argue that polls are unit roots with drift or other fancy time-series buzzwords to explain why you're wrong Joe, but I have forgotten what most of those words mean since it's been two years since taking Prof. Moody's class. The point is that the polls do swing, but they have a stable mean even if the variance is rather high. In the end what matters is that mean. I'd guess (but have no actual proof) that the variance is actually shrinking at this point compared to October.
Wild swings are expected in polls. People respond to some stimuli that day that fades away in about a week (see Zaller's recent work on the decay factor on campaign ads). This means that variance in the polls can be expected. Besides, there's questions about how well-matched the samples always are, what the current events are, who was on the news more that day... in other words, a fair number of trite external events are driving how people respond to a poll. This is what generates that variance.
Polls involve knee-jerk reactions from members as well, whereas voting does not. Voting you sit in a booth, isolated, and can think without the noise from the outside at that moment. Polls demand instantaneous repsonses. There will be more fluctuation in the polls because of the reasons outlined above.
Plus, we're talking a number of different polling houses. Who knows what goes on under the hood in each one with sampling, timing, frequency, etc? Come on Joe -- we both took Rapoport's class, we should know this! (And hell, I took a class that talked about it in the spring, I should definitely know this, especially since I have a test on it in the fall.) Comparing different poll estimates to one another is a futile effort. That's why most serious polling analysts take averages using some algorithm to handle the differences in techniques used for questions, sampling, etc.
In other words, expect Obama to win. Once again I'm going to impersonate Paul Begala and say it's because of the economy. That's what drives people's voting decisions consistently, and should be especially true this year. The incumbent President's party (because people blame the President more than the Congress), will suffer for this.
Oh, and Joe, don't try to cite evidence of people blaming Congress. Those are strong Republicans and will view it that way anyway. What matters, as always, is that 10 to 20 percent of the population that acts truly independently. Those types do not get nearly as much coverage in the popular press (I hypothesize) because they are far less likely to attend political rallies and end up encountering the media types. So what the media shows is biased against giving us a picture of the independents who vote on the economy and vote against the current President's party when things are going badly.
And hey, I'm not in the wrong field. Oddly enough, most of the big academic work on political polls has come out of UNC -- check out one of the faculty member's websites, which tracks the polls and explains them. It was cited as a good source for our office pool because one of our tie-breakers is the popular vote breakdown (except we included Barr). Currently he's got Obama at about 54 percent and has had him there for the past week. And frankly, I'd trust Stimson's means of averaging the polls more than fivethirtyeight or Pollster -- he's been doing it for decades with another faculty member, MacKuen, and neither have messed up too badly. (Also, MacKuen is good friends with Rapoport, so you should read these guys anyway.)
Wild swings are expected in polls. People respond to some stimuli that day that fades away in about a week (see Zaller's recent work on the decay factor on campaign ads). This means that variance in the polls can be expected. Besides, there's questions about how well-matched the samples always are, what the current events are, who was on the news more that day... in other words, a fair number of trite external events are driving how people respond to a poll. This is what generates that variance.
Polls involve knee-jerk reactions from members as well, whereas voting does not. Voting you sit in a booth, isolated, and can think without the noise from the outside at that moment. Polls demand instantaneous repsonses. There will be more fluctuation in the polls because of the reasons outlined above.
Plus, we're talking a number of different polling houses. Who knows what goes on under the hood in each one with sampling, timing, frequency, etc? Come on Joe -- we both took Rapoport's class, we should know this! (And hell, I took a class that talked about it in the spring, I should definitely know this, especially since I have a test on it in the fall.) Comparing different poll estimates to one another is a futile effort. That's why most serious polling analysts take averages using some algorithm to handle the differences in techniques used for questions, sampling, etc.
In other words, expect Obama to win. Once again I'm going to impersonate Paul Begala and say it's because of the economy. That's what drives people's voting decisions consistently, and should be especially true this year. The incumbent President's party (because people blame the President more than the Congress), will suffer for this.
Oh, and Joe, don't try to cite evidence of people blaming Congress. Those are strong Republicans and will view it that way anyway. What matters, as always, is that 10 to 20 percent of the population that acts truly independently. Those types do not get nearly as much coverage in the popular press (I hypothesize) because they are far less likely to attend political rallies and end up encountering the media types. So what the media shows is biased against giving us a picture of the independents who vote on the economy and vote against the current President's party when things are going badly.
And hey, I'm not in the wrong field. Oddly enough, most of the big academic work on political polls has come out of UNC -- check out one of the faculty member's websites, which tracks the polls and explains them. It was cited as a good source for our office pool because one of our tie-breakers is the popular vote breakdown (except we included Barr). Currently he's got Obama at about 54 percent and has had him there for the past week. And frankly, I'd trust Stimson's means of averaging the polls more than fivethirtyeight or Pollster -- he's been doing it for decades with another faculty member, MacKuen, and neither have messed up too badly. (Also, MacKuen is good friends with Rapoport, so you should read these guys anyway.)
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Polling, exit polls, turnouts etc
I think its all a bunch of bull. How can one poll give Barry 11 points and another give McCain 1? With margin of error, that could be a swing of 16-18 points. That's nonsensical.
The cynic/hater of the leftist media in me wants to say that CBS News and NY Times are so shameless that they would outright lie about their numbers in order to pump up Obama, which could mean that outlier is bull and the range of Barry +3-7 is accurate.
But once again, on the other hand, Gallup's traditional and expanded are both showing Barry +10 which makes ZERO sense. Either youth and minorities are matching up with the mainstream or none of these pollsters have a clue.
Which begs the question: Jenn-- do you think maybe you got into the wrong field?
The cynic/hater of the leftist media in me wants to say that CBS News and NY Times are so shameless that they would outright lie about their numbers in order to pump up Obama, which could mean that outlier is bull and the range of Barry +3-7 is accurate.
But once again, on the other hand, Gallup's traditional and expanded are both showing Barry +10 which makes ZERO sense. Either youth and minorities are matching up with the mainstream or none of these pollsters have a clue.
Which begs the question: Jenn-- do you think maybe you got into the wrong field?
NC Turnout Models
Semi-final info on NC turnout. Apparently 40 percent of the (expanded?) likely electorate has voted in this state. The semi-final numbers show that early voting turnout equated 70 percent of the 2004 turnout.
Is this good or bad for McCain? Probably bad. The Obama GOTV machine is crazy, at least in the fake OC.
Plus, I think Joe and I need to make some predictions about final outcomes.
Is this good or bad for McCain? Probably bad. The Obama GOTV machine is crazy, at least in the fake OC.
Plus, I think Joe and I need to make some predictions about final outcomes.
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