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The CDC says Michigan is 34th in vaccine doses per 100k
But Carnegie Mellon does say Michigan has higher than average mask wearing

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations

https://delphi.cmu.edu/covidcast/indicator/?signalType=value&mode=overview&region=MI&sensor=fb-survey-smoothed_wearing_mask_7d&date=20210209

I suspect there is a reason this isn’t already done. Planes are MASSIVE. Did a quick calculation based on numbers at Wikipedia. If you took a fully loaded 737-300 Southwest airlines plane (so, no first class section to reduce the number of passengers) and filled every single single seat with the average adult American male, the mass of the passengers would be about 25% the total mass of everything. All machines have some start-up inefficiencies — doubling the weight isn’t going to double the fuel consumption because some of that fuel is going to overcoming inefficiencies that are already overcome (friction in the engines, wind resistance — all things that cause fuel consumption but aren’t related to weight), etc. Fuel is not the only cost of operating a plane.

Long story short, the fact that airlines AREN’T doing this already suggests that the increased cost of transporting an overweight flier is less than the cost of implementing such a policy.

Silly article. A Democratic woman who could barely win with piles of money, during a Democratic wave election in MASSACHUSETTS is not going to be a serious contender for President without even finishing a single term in any sort of elective office of any kind.

Condi Rice has made it clear on many occasions that she does not want to be Prez or VP. Her personality isn’t suited for it. She’d hate it and she knows it.

Sarah Palin knows she’s a lot more influential in her current role as Mama Spokesgrizzly. After getting sold out by the McCain campaign in 2008, she hasn’t shown any interest in putting up with the formal electoral bureaucratic BS. Running for Prez would decrease her freedom, decrease her influence, increase the stress on her and her family.

Hillary is a reasonable choice (but nobody needed an article to tell them that). I’m not convinced, though. A President Romney was the best thing that could happen to Hillary’s chances. I don’t think she and Bill really acted like folks setting her up for a 2016 run.

So, 3 of 5 are highly unlikely and a fourth is somewhat unlikely. Susanna Martinez I’d agree with: If she gets re-elected as Gov of NM, she’ll be pressured to run and will probably at least explore.

If Nikki Haley is re-elected, I think she’s far more likely to run than either Condi or Palin.

Heh, I was just about to say, “The White House won’t release pictures of Obama in the Situation Room on the night of the Benghazi attack for the same reason I won’t release any photos of ME in the Situation Room that night.”

I don’t know if I agree. At one point, she talks about how she wanted a President who was smart and didn’t govern by partisan politics.

That’s not a concession speech; she’s endorsing Mitt Romney!

GOP turnout was 32% in 2008. They are modeling 31%. They are predicting GOP turnout will be lower than it was in 2008 and only three points higher than 1980, right in the wake of Watergate. I’m surprised with that assumption that Obama is only up a little more than 1%.

Silver cherry picks data to serve his goals. In the linked article, he posts a “Probit Regression” which shows the probability of a candidate winning a state vs the polling average. OK, I don’t know what a Probit Regression is, nor do I know his raw data. But, I do know that his plot claims that if the state polls show a tied race, there is a 50-50 chance of that candidate winning the state on Election Day.

Makes sense... unless you’ve been following his data prior to today. Because in the Spring, he crunched the numbers and showed that the challenger tends to outperform the October polls relative to the incumbent. So, according to his own data in the Spring, if a state is tied in the October polls, the challenger has greater than 50-50 odds of winning. But his plot says the opposite.

[Please note who is at the bottom: News Organizations. Their polls SUCK.]

Yeah. Good polling is very expensive. The news organizations just can’t afford it. They CAN afford mediocre or bad polling, though. And mediocre quality polling has the added benefit of giving them something to talk about.

The crosstabs, for once, aren’t crazy.
39% Dem is high, but in the range of normal. The last time Dems were more than 39% of the electorate was 1980, but they hit 39% in 1996, 2000 and 2008.

36% GOP is also in the range of normal. 2004 (38%) and 2008 (32%) are the only elections I could find since 1980 where GOP didn’t make up either 35% or 36% of the electorate. It’s quite remarkable how stable GOP turnout has been over the last three decades.

What I found most interesting is that PPP found only 46% with a favorable opinion vs 50% unfavorable. A candidate with a poor job approval rating can still win if people like him. PPP is suggesting Obama doesn’t even have that. Voters don’t like him and think he’s doing a bad job.

2008, Oregon was 36/27/37 (D/R/I)
2004, Oregon was 32/34/34 (D/R/I)

Independents backed Kerry 58-40 in 2004. In Portland, most unaffiliated voters register that way because they think the Democratic Party is too conservative.

The accuracy of your prediction depends on WHY early voting changed. If the patterns of who votes early hasn’t changed, but Republicans are doing better than in 2008, it suggests as you say — that Republicans are just doing better across the board.

It is possible that Republicans are doing better in early voting because the ground game is better and Republicans are getting a higher percentage of those who are going to vote Republican to vote early. All else held equal, that would predict a worse showing for Republicans on Election Day.

Sadly for the purpose of analysis, both are probably partially right, meaning early voting will not be quite as predictive as we’d like to think.

The one undeniable benefit of increased early voting is that it means fewer voters the GOTV folks need to contact on Election Day to make sure they voted, freeing up time to contact softer support.

Exactly. According to this article, Romney didn't testify under oath in an attempt to undervalue her divorce settlement. She got a divorce settlement. She sold too early. She then tried to renegotiate the divorce settlement AFTER everyone knew what actually happened with Staples. THIS is the point that Romney got called in to testify. The only story here is that Gloria Allred is a hack who is trying to distract everyone.

The argument doesn’t even make sense. If he’s trying to get nice fat contracts from the GOP next time around to publish rigged polls, he needs to publish polls this time that are super accurate or slightly Dem.

If it turns out that he really is an overly Republican firm, no Republican is going to want to hire him because his polls will only be taken seriously when they show BAD numbers for the GOP. Kinda like how we ignore PPP unless they have bad news for O, when we say, “Holy cow, even PPP has Obama losing Florida!”

Thus, if Gravis is intentionally rigging their polls for future marketing purposes, the target most likely would be the Dems (who could then point to his polls and say, “look, in 2012, he proved he had a R+2 house effect and despite that, he STILL has our guy up 110%!).

Of course, in reality, like pretty much every other independent, non-media poll, he’s just trying out a different model that makes sense on paper.

[I’d point to Zogby as a perfect example. He developed a new likely voter screen that gave him “bad” results until Election Day. Then everyone realized his likely voter screen was RIGHT and he could use that reputation to get clients to hire him for push polls. But, he didn’t do the push polls until AFTER he got the good reputation. That model won’t work anymore for Zogby because now his reputation is shot. He HAD to do the push polls AFTER he had some great legit polls to showcase.]

NC was D+11 in ‘08. 42%D/31%R/27%I according to CNN exit polls. 39/40/21 in ‘04

Rasmussen has to consider his own business, as well. He’s been producing the most Republican numbers of national polls. Most other polls are using D+6 or greater. So, with a D+3, Rasmussen will be closest as long as turnout is more Republican than D+4.5... which would be the second biggest D wave since Reagan.

Second, we have yet to hold an election where Ras showed more Rs than Ds the month before the election. November 2010 was the very first time Ras ever showed Rs outnumbering Ds. So, he doesn’t really have any data to guide him on what will happen on Election Day under that situation. He DOES know, though, that since Reagan got elected, turnout has been between even and D+4 every single election except 2008, with an average of D+2.5. That gives him a nice, safe model that is easy to defend. I don’t blame Ras one bit for that.

I agree; based on my experiences with other types of scientists, I don’t think many pollsters are intentionally tipping the scales. It is well known that the entire population of people who will answer a pollster’s phone call is NOT the same as the entire population of people who will vote on Election Day. So, they have to model things to correct for that. Nobody is going to use a model unless it makes sense to them. This is where bias can come in.

Now, hopefully they are also heavily relying on data. That data is flawed for the same reasons the raw data they are collecting now is flawed, which leads to some complicated situations.

It doesn’t make sense at this point to rig the polls to make Romney look stronger than he really is in order to depress turnout. For one, there is no evidence that it will do that — a significant number of voters have sheep-like tendencies and will support the eventual winner. You can see this in polls taken shortly after an election asking for whom they voted. The actual winner nearly always polls much higher than he actually performed on election day.

Plus, it is bad business for a pollster to start intentionally producing fake numbers close to the election if they ever want to get business next election.

Finally, you get Suffolk University polling pulling out of Florida, NC and VA claiming they are seeing the same thing. Along the same lines, most of the reporting I’m seeing is focusing on Ohio and the smaller swing states. From my perspective, it sure looks like everyone with private information thinks Romney is going to win Florida and North Carolina — the campaigns are still going strong because they are such big prizes neither can afford the risk of coasting — Romney is going to win Virginia, at least if he’s doing well enough to have a shot at winning the whole thing and the same for Colorado, making Ohio the key state that will probably decide the election.

Don’t believe this for a minute. Our Nevada Paulbots are a special breed that would vote for anyone besides Romney.

Huh, see, that's exactly what I thought to explain why PPP's trend is correct. There are two types of third party voters in my experience: the die-hard supporters who will vote for their preferred third party no matter what and will write-in someone if there is no candidate. Those voters are irrelevant in any analysis of major party vote predictions.

The other type are protest voters who are dissatisfied with the candidate from the party they'd normally support. So, libertarians mostly concerned with economic issues (such as yours truly) are going to back Romney almost no question this time around. Libertarians mostly concerned with foreign policy -- most of the Paulestinians this time around seem to fit in this category -- aren't going to be thrilled at all voting for Mr. Drone Strike. I'd expect them to be more interested in "protest voting" than economic libertarians. Neither party appeals to libertarians primarily focused on social issues, so I think that's a draw.

The other advantage Johnson provides is a "non-partisan" focus on issues of liberty. Ross Perot ended Poppy Bush's changes not because he "stole" Republican voters but because he brought the budget to the forefront of the discussion in a way a partisan couldn't. That helped Clinton (as the major party non-incumbent). In my purely anecdotal observations, I think that is the bigger impact third party candidates have on elections as opposed to "stealing" votes.

In-trade isn’t as good as they make themselves out to be. From their own rules, “Settlement will be based on the outcome of the 2012 United States Presidential election, as reported by three independent and reliable media sources.”

So, when two media outlets call a race, the market is still open and you can sell your shares of the guy who lost. That’s how they have a 100% success rate in calling elections.

“Okay, but why does erring in the side of caution always mean erring on the side of Democrats? “

I think there are two reasons. First is that what history says. Since and including 1984, the average partisan breakdown for all elections was D+2.5. Ras is just using the historical average, which is a reasonable assumption.

I think the second is credibility. He’s a businessman. Being unusually wrong in this business is far more damaging than being unusually correct is beneficial. And, let’s face it, the Dems are better at pressuring media outlets, so being unusually wrong in favor of Republicans is even MORE damaging.

Ras is using a D+2.5 model while everyone else is using a D+7 or more model. There is zero evidence suggesting a historic Democratic wave, so Scott Rasmussen can be very confident that the turnout will be no more D than D+4 (2008 is the only time that EVER happened since Reagan was elected). Which means he’s pretty much guaranteed to have the closest turnout model. If he’s right, he’s the King of the Pollsters for nailing it. If he’s wrong and this election is even or has more Rs, he’s still far and away the closest and he’s STILL the King of the Pollsters. If he’s wrong and turnout equals the most Democratic it ever was other than 2008, he’s STILL the closest and is STILL the King of the Pollsters.

Basically, with a D+2.5 split, he’s guaranteed to be the closest under any normal circumstances AND has rock solid non-partisan justification for his model. If he models on an R+4, he opens himself up to risk of being a partisan hack and lowers his chances of being the closest. It’s kinda like the Price is Right strategy of betting one dollar more than the previous person.

Exactly! Sheesh, who needs the media to depress Republicans when we'll do it ourselves?

The reality is that turnout after 1980 has ALWAYS ranged from even to D+4, except for 2008. There is some evidence that this could be an usual outlier year where Rs outnumber Ds, but that WILL be an outlier.

We also know that the polls USUALLY shift towards the challenger down the final stretch. We also know that those who are say they are undecided down the final stretch USUALLY break 2:1 for the challenger. We know that Romney is adopting a late "daisy cutter" strategy designed to maximize those effects. With the Ras interview, we also now know that there is room for a more Republican electorate than Ras predicts RIGHT NOW without being unusual.

Long story short, Scott Rasmussen is a pollster, not a cheerleader. However, what he has to say is pretty good news for Romney. It makes no sense to pile on him because he doesn't draw a conclusion that MIGHT be true but for which there is no evidence to indicate WILL be true. Republican turnout has never exceeded Dem, so he can't say that any data he has indicate it will this time.