NYT Nate Silver Doubles Down: 75% Chance Obama Wins

You don't get it Major, jopatmc feels it. There is nothing you can say to convince him otherwise.

Faith over Fact

 

So, explain something to me since that's the way it is Major. Why is it so difficult to get disclosure on sampling from the polling companies? Why don't they clearly state on each poll results the party id breakdowns of the responders and disclose what percentage of voters came from what counties? And why don't they provide a 3-pronged poll, showing voter split 3 different ways, one D+5, one neutral, and one R+2? That way the public can make their own deductions concerning turnout. Why isn't there transparency in them??? It would really be very simple to do that. You attach the caveats as bullet points at the bottom of the polls.

And lastly, why does each campaign do their own internal private polling that is not released to the general public?

You're a smart guy. Why isn't there transparency in the polls?

 

Well then to each their own. A lot more factors have to align for Romney to win, let alone a mini-landslide as you call it. It doesn't mean it can't or won't happen. Realistically Obama needs 4 battle ground states and Romney needs 7 battleground states according some polls of polls. Of course this observation does not take into account electoral votes of said states. As it stands right now I think it's fair to say Obama has roughly 220 electoral votes and Romney has roughly 190 (of course there are states that lean one way or another and are just in the margin of error, but for the time being let's discount them). Obama needs roughly 50 electoral votes and Romney needs 80. Yet again, we have a path in which Obama needs half the votes/states that Romney does. My cursory math makes me believe this whole Obama 75 Romney 25 percent chance seems flawed. I would say a more fair estimate is Obama 66% chance Romney 33%. Obama needs half of what Romney needs, or roughly 1/3 of the battleground left. Is my model perfect? No. It relies on data from other people, I didn't carry out the experiment or even design it myself, I'm just the math guy behind the scenes. Silver is also of a like position, so while I cannot confirm his analysis I can easily say it's a fair analysis.

 

And my point is they have already aligned. This is the worst economy since the great depression and the sitting president has presided over it. He has mushroomed our debt. He hasn't presented a budget that got a single vote from either his own or the other party. He has been an economic disaster. He has failed his original campaign promises. Remember, he made those promises. Remember the words, "No new taxes." Remember what those words and the lie they became did to that sitting president. Everything is already aligned. Obama is done.

 

If that is what you believe then so be it. I think the problem we are having here is that you are addressing the mechanism and I am addressing the data. You're right, those factors are quite damning, but you are assuming those damning factors will lead to higher voter turnout in one way or another. No algorithm (I still struggle spelling this word, I want to put a y in it for some reason) can incorporate that. What you are discussing isn't scientifically probe-able. I can't really factor in that dissatisfaction into the data I am handed. The people who have voiced their opinions and have shown where they stand do not appear to fall in line with your mechanism. Does this mean your mechanism is wrong? No, of course not. In science, there are many times where you run into a completely reasonable or even correct mechanism that just cannot be confirmed by certain methods. I will not be so bold to say you are wrong, but I will be bold enough to say the numbers out right now do not validate your reasoning. The science is lacking in your argument, but that does not make your argument more or less valid than mine.

 

you are aware thats only 1 out 7 steps in Nate's methodology right? I mean you have read and fully understand the methodology used right?

 

They aren't going to disclose counties because they aren't statistically significant. If you take a poll of 1000 people in the US and there are thousands of counties, then having 1 from Travis County means nothing.

They DO generally break down the other stuff. You just have to look for it - it's not going to be in the news articles or tweets you find. Here's an example:

Survey USA Poll of Ohio: http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=11cca51d-06ab-40f5-8ba1-0c8ddc33d855

Breakdowns by race, age, political party, etc. And they DO state party ID's of their samples - that's exactly what you keep b****ing about because they don't show what you want.

Again, BECAUSE THEY DON'T ADJUST FOR PARTY ID. What part of it being an output instead of an input don't you understand? You don't adjust for outputs. It would be like adjusting for Obama winning 50% of the vote. It's dumb, stupid, and irrelevant. The only people that do it are people like you.

Uhh, because campaigns want their own polling conducted on their own terms. If you were investing a billion dollars in winning an election, wouldn't you spend a little of that to get your own data? If you think the campaigns *only* rely on their internal polls, then in addition to polling, you know nothing about campaigns.

There is. You just choose to ignore it because you live in lala land.

 

Honestly I am hoping Obama wins, but the main reason why would be to see jopatmc's complete meltdown.

He wouldn't be able to show his face on here anymore. Would be amazing the amount of pwnage an Obama win would lead to.

 

The problem with your argument is that Minnesota is not competitive. All the major polls range from Obama +3 to Obama +10 in the last 3 weeks alone. That's razor thin for Romney to pull it out.

I'll even list them for you:
10/28 Survey USA Obama +7
10/25 Mason-Dixon Obama +3
10/21 St. Cloud State Obama +8
10/21 Rasmussen Obama +5
10/14 Survey USA Obama +10
10/11 YouGov Obama +8
10/8 PPP Obama +10

Romney is praying for a 2 outer with only the river to go here.

 

I don't follow this stuff as closely as you, but Nate Silver seems to be basing his view mostly on historical trends of how well all the polls taken together predict the final result. Seems to me to be a logical approach. You're arguing that all the polls across the country, in aggregate, are getting it wrong to a significantly greater degree than they have historically? Maybe you're right, in which case its not the model itself that is flawed but rather the input data. Has Silver offered as response to this critique?

 

And the day after you post this, he bumped it up from 72% to 77%.

Acknowledgement of fail from you forthcoming, right?

 

jopat just curious did you study statistics in college?

 

I can't wait for this election to be over.

 

Obama has money to burn.. I wouldn't read too much into it. Then again you know that.

 

He would still post on here. He would come up with some lame excuse and move on to his next prediction.

 

One must look at Party ID to judge the sample. You are correct in that you can't adjust a poll after it's taken for Party ID, but when you see a Party ID for Ohio that is D+9, like the most recent NYT/Quinnipiac poll, you know right there that the sample polled was flawed. In the 2008 wave election, where we were in the middle of a financial crisis (backlash against incumbent party) AND libs were foaming at the mouth to vote against Bush's party, you had a D+8 Party ID in Ohio. In 2010, when the tea partiers were foaming at the mouth to vote out Democrats, you had a Party ID of R+5 in Ohio. Most people think that the Party ID will fall somewhere in between 2008 and 2010 levels this time around.

Obviously for most Obama voters, this is waaaaaay over their heads. They have no chance of understanding this.

By the way, Major, after 13 years and 23,000 posts, you can't find it within yourself to donate a signal penny to this website? Shame. SHAME.

 

Shame. SHAME.

 

Signal pennies are very valuable seeing as there are only 8 of them still in circulation. I don't blame Major for not wanting to give that up.

 

On that note, $50 to Planned Parenthood in Major's name and $100 to Planned Parenthood in Trader_Jorge's name.

 

Have you considered it's because Minnesota borders two battleground states? I live in Minneapolis and about a third of the political ads I see are for WI races.