NY-20 Special Election

[Franzl]

what would you say the current probability is for Tedisco to win, Lunar?

[Rowan]

RowanBrandon's Election Rule #1:
Once a candidate starts commenting on public polls, said candidate will lose.

[Holmes]

RowanBrandon's Election Rule #1:
Once a candidate starts commenting on public polls, said candidate will lose.

That reminds me of... "We may be down by 8 in the polls, but we got 'em right where we want 'em!"

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Rememeber that Sienna is a crap uni poll. Not that the overall picture looks good for Tedisco.

[Franzl]

Isn't that one of J.J.'s rules, Rowan?

[Lunar]

Rememeber that Sienna is a crap uni poll. Not that the overall picture looks good for Tedisco.

True, and even the best of the best polls suck at predicting special elections (remember Georgia's runoff?).

They're not as crappy as a lot of university polls. However, if Sienna can't poll the district right next to their university...

[Rowan]

Isn't that one of J.J.'s rules, Rowan?

It might be. But it fits perfectly.

[Lunar]

what would you say the current probability is for Tedisco to win, Lunar?

Crap, I don't know.  I'm hearing a lot more about what the Democrats are doing (Labor is going crazy dropping big bucks on getting out the vote and advertising, Obama's email listserve contacted 50,000 members in Upstate New York to push for volunteers, increasing White House involvement) than what the Republicans are doing on-the-ground. 

Tedisco is doing his best to lose the race while Murphy is doing everything perfectly that he needs to do, but I don't have a better guess than 50% at this point. 

[Holmes]

Times Union endorses Murphy.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=784795&category=OPINION

[Franzl]

Is the Times Union usually liberal? Or is this actually surprising?

[Verily]

Is the Times Union usually liberal? Or is this actually surprising?

A quick search reveals that the Albany Times Union endorsed Kerry in 2004 and Obama in 2008. So not too surprising. The Albany Democrat Herald would be more interesting, having endorsed Bush and McCain, but I assume they will endorse Tedisco if anyone.

[Eraserhead]

Now if the Poughkeepsie Journal endorsed Murphy, that would be a bit of a surprise. Hurm.

[Lunar]

http://www.scottmurphy09.com/

That's a rather hilarious splash page, although this comes from someone who once cataloged all of the splash pages from competitive races in 2008.  The Obama connection is really laying it on thick

[Lunar]

I was re-watching this ad video, I never noticed how hilarious it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-rMv4oBY70&eurl

First, Gillibrand sounds like she's just adding false intonations at the end of each sentence of the teleprompter, and then Scott Murphy has this black and white deadpanned "I approve of this message" thing that sounds almost sad.  On the latter, it may be intentional to make people remember Gillibrand's endorsement instead of Who's-that-guy-with-the-red-hair.

I don't think I could read the teleprompter better, but I'm just amused

[Lunar]

Also, while this article points out the closeness of the entire race, it points out a number of endorsements, ad spending, etc. which have gone significantly underreported in this thread:
http://newmajority.com/ShowScroll.aspx?ID=1dad94a3-07b9-4b47-99cd-fd56d6a7a1c5

[CARLHAYDEN]

Murphy's campaign peaked out about a week ago, while Tedisco has belatedly gotten his act together (somewhat).

Prediction:

Tedisco           52%
Murphy           48

[Tender Branson]

Prediction:

Murphy - 52.3%
Tedisco - 47.7%

[Lunar]

I predict whoever wins, wins by more than 5%

but not really

[JohnnyLongtorso]

I'll say Murphy by 0.4%.

[Hash]

Murphy wins narrowly.

[Eraserhead]

Obama/Murphy ads seem to all over the interweb today.

Should we have a seperate final predictions thread?

[Holmes]

[Franzl]

Tedisco is really tanking on Intrade. He's down to 35.0 at the moment. Any particular reason?

[Holmes]

I dunno. According to the sites I go to, he's just gaff'ing like he always does. Maybe it's just that, since the election is tomorrow, more people think Murphy will win. There was a bad encounter with a reporter that might help last minute wafflers.

Also I would totally buy some "overturn prop 8" stocks. $$$$$

[Lunar]

Tedisco is really tanking on Intrade. He's down to 35.0 at the moment. Any particular reason?

His team is panicking, makes for poor publicity for internet dudes who read random articles.

Also, there has been an above-averagely-weird-tendency among the media to ignore pro-Tedisco news.  He's really sabotaged his own campaign, but all of the Gillibrand robocalls and third-party campaigns and stuff have been really over-covered while Guiliani robocalls and Tedisco's strong third party support have been fairly under-covered.  Outside of generic "liberal media" claims, I think the media stories have a strong distaste for Tedisco's mega-triangulating-politician image (as should everyone, but they are especially cynical) and they expect him to win anyway.  Thus every Murphy edge gets golden treatment.  

If I had an Intrade account, I'd put a few dollars (not more than $50) for Tedisco with those odds.  If someone actually made me put some money on my prediction instead of simply making a hopeful prediction, I'd probably give Tedisco a slightly lead.  But since Murphy has done everything flawlessly and Tedisco has run an utterly flawed campaign, I'm just basically in Sam's boat at this point.  I have no idea who will win, but I'll make a serious prediction that I can hope for instead of making a pessimistic prediction I'd hope against.