Talk Elections

At FiveThirtyEight/NY Times, Nate's model now has Romney winning IN, NC, FL, VA, and CO and trailing Obama by only 29 Electoral Votes:   254 vs 283 and trailing by less than 1% in the popular vote 49.1% vs 49.8%.
Obama is ahead because he still is the predicted winner in OH.  So no surprise Romney is all over Ohio this week.
Shades of 2004, the election may hinge on OH

If we go strictly by 538, OH is superfluous for Romney -- Obama's three most tenuous states are Iowa, Nevada, and Ohio, in that order, and Romney only needs Iowa and Nevada to win. (Actually, send it to the House, but he'll win there).

Can we panic now!?!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! It's over. I can't believe Obama is going to lose to freaking Mitt Romney! WTF?

At least wait to after the second debate. 

If the race is tied or slight Romney lead then it makes sense for Romney to be ahead in FL, VA, CO. It just took a few days since the debate for enough state polls to feed into nate's model. Romney may be ahead in IA too but there has only been one poll since debate.

I KNOW MAN!!! THE HORRORRRRRR!!!! PRESIDENT MITT ROMNEY!!!!!!!!!
RUN FOR THE HILLS DAMNNIT!!!!

Peoples... find a grip... then get one... this is NOT surprising. Silver projected this would happen earlier in the week if the trackers didn't close up.

Also, can I say how wonderful it is that the right, who has been dismissing Silver all year... now think he's getting things right.

this is getting crazy it all started because obama 1st debate. We still have 2 more debates

i'm pretty sure that was the point i was making, or were you agreeing with me?

I am agreeing with you, lol

1. Nobody cares about the other two debates. Only the first debate has the biggest effect

2. What makes you think Obama is suddenly going to do better this time around?

We don't even know how much of an impact the VP debate had. Take a chill pill. There's still much more of this election to come...

I remember reading a quote though I can't remember who it was that said "when conservatives get bad news on polls they want to kill you, when liberals get bad news on polls they want to kill themselves." Chill out everyone. There is a good reason why my prediction has been unchanged since July.

Also, don't forget that Silver's been putting most if not all of the polls into his tracking method, including the comically useless We Ask America and a few of the more terrible Rasmussen ones. That might be skewing things a bit.

Get a grip people, Im sure Obama will come back around roaring and attacking Romney with deceit, spin and interuption like Biden.

Or you know... explain Romney's positions and inconsistencies perhaps?

Romney has positions?

Hundreds

Varying by audience.

ITT:


()()()

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsx2vdn7gpY

Or the third.

A position for any voter.

Looks like Biden was a big boost for the Romney ticket.
Survey USA results:
 Tampa/St. Pete… Ryan wins debate 42-38

       Change vote? yes: 73% to Romney 27% to Obama!

In New York area, Biden wins debate 54-30

But vote switchers still went 54%-38% in favor of Romney…

CA Biden wins debate  48% to 41%
but vote switchers favor Romney  59% to 40%
http://www.surveyusa.com/

Biden won only to those that wanted him to. His comments about Libya, contraception mandates and more will not go away. More damage than help in the long run.


A lot has changed since July, only someone living in denial would even claim this is close to the race we saw in the summer. Polls are only one aspect of the race, but If all those backing Obama are as stubborn as you and fail to see the reality of Obama's collapse then maybe it is time for you to do like the one guy & panic:

Its not often I agree 100% with Eraserhead, but this is one of those times.

None, none at all. Just like every other year. No big bumps for either party as both have something to celebrate.

Silver's models weights polls based on their reliability and includes adjustments for house effects, IIRC.

Did Silver include the NYT/WaPo polls of Virginia and Ohio? Neither of those appeared in his list of polls that got factored into the model, but the (R)asmussen polls and ARG ones did.

I'm actually very disappointed that the Atlas allows ARG polls in, they are clearly beyond crap and it screws up the poll map.

Plenty of Republican leaning polls were out this week, so this is no surprise. Republicans flood the polling averages with favorable polls when they have an excuse to do so.

The 2nd debate is critical.  I thought the jobs numbers would have negated Mitt's bounce from his great debate performance.  I was completely wrong on that. 

I'm trying to understand this race but I just can't. 

62.7% chance for Obama in Nevada,
63.5% chance in Ohio

Very close there.   One wonders if Silver's model takes into account that Ohio is 81% non-Hispanic white while Nevada is only 53.6% this type - it seems to me that taking this into account, and given both the nature of Romney's momentum (entirely confined to white swing voters), and the famed and fairly unique polling bias of Nevada... this ranking of NV as more Romney than OH could be considered a very minor inexactitude of his overall quite good model.

Aggregating polls is wacky because some polls just aren't reliable.  I also think Obama's poll numbers are skewed because of the "Hollywood media bump" which enhances his public popularity image among "soft/unreliable younger voters" who enthusiastically support Obama to pollsters, but are too fickle to actually vote on election day.  Its this "Hollywood echo chamber" that represents "pop culture" more than the "actual voting population." 

I think the "Hollywood media bump" give Obama at least a 1-2% bump in the polls. 

At least with Romney's poll numbers, it represents a more stable and reliable voting population.

I also don't trust the Political Gambling markets.  They are most lagging indicators because betters will go where the "safe money is" and follow the crowds, rather than taking risks with changing factors.  Its also very easy to manipulate with rumors and gossip.  But basically the gambling markets are a reaction to news; but also a reaction to a market reaction.  If more gamblers move on a position, then the crowd follows even if stock market reality does not resemble reality.  Just like the actual stock market, investors will gamble based on emotional market fluctuations. 

I agree that actual polls are sometimes reflective of enthusiastic Republicans or enthusiastic Democrats.  But that would mean that poll readers should understand that the poll is not just showing "likely voters" but the general momentum and enthusiasm of that polling population.  If Democrats are depressed and not answering polls, then that could indicate that some Democrats have also decided not to vote at all because they are expecting to lose. 

Some swing voters are "Frontrunners" who basically follow the Yankees, Lebron James, and the Dallas Cowboys.  Its not really about economic numbers or social issues, these swing voters turnout because they want to be part of a winning ticket or a historical moment.  So, in that situation, momentum in the polls is far more important to "Frontrunning voters" than the issues.

The state-by-state margins seem off; Mississippi statistically almost cannot be >60% Romney for the sole reason of the black vote. Alabama being 64% Romney is also highly implausible. In fact, his model seems to be of all states having roughly the same % swing, factoring into my theory that hunches can often be better than statistical models (you know what 14 year-old got only one Senate race wrong when Nate got 3 wrong? This guy!).

Nate, I recall, only got 2 wrong (Colorado & Nevada)...what was the third?

Any chance Romney takes the popular vote today?
Obama leads 49.9-49 in the Nov. 6 Forecast and 49.7-49.1 in the Now-Cast. 3 out of the 4 trackers showed movement towards Obama, with only Rasmussen showing Romney and Obama gaining a point.

Obama improved for the first time in eight days today, up marginally to 62.9% from 61.1%. Hallelujah!

It had to stop eventually. How many polls are entirely post VP debate now?

This may be a situation where the debate does two semi-contradictory things at the same time.

I "suspect" Obama may be a brief micro-bump in the polls because Democrats will have LOVED what Biden did, and hence will be more enthusiastic, and a few more Dems will thus be deemed "likely" in the voter screening models.

On the other hand, Independents likely views him as a rude idiot buffoon, which at the margins may help Romney with that group.

Mind you, very, very few voters actually vote on the VP choice, so the net positive may be pretty small.

To Bidens credit, for at least a bit the story line has changed from how Romney thrashed Obama to how Biden is a crude buffoon, so while both are negative story lines for the Dems, one is abut the VP (thus doesn't really matter) the other about the President (relevant to their vote), so in that sense it's a better story for the Dems, in that the negative story is about something irrelevant rather than an issue the impacts the actual voting decision.

Besides, how much MORE of an idiot can Biden be considered by most folks?

lol, stop watching fox news

The Biden Bump!

He had Joe Miller beating Murkowski in Alaska.