Laffey Takes Commanding Lead in Republican U. S. Senate Primary

RHode Island College ^ | Date Posted: August 31, 2006 | Rhode Island College

[Torie]

My post caught my error a few seconds before you got your post up. :) The early bird gets the worm. :)

[Torie]

I should note, that I have bad feeling about Ohio, just like I have a bad feeling about Minnesota.

[AntiGuv]

Well, at least Pawlenty has shored things up in Minnesota, which should minimize the down-ballot fallout. Ohio, on the other hand, is still very much flirting with GOP disaster.

[staytrue]

Tell the idiots at NSRC to save their frickin' money for a real Republican in need, like Santorum, Talent

fyi, santorum has about 5 million more cash on hand than casey and talent has a 2 to 1 money advantage over mccaskill.

when checking for idiots, I suggest the mirror rather than the NSRC.

[Torie]

Come to think of it, if I forgot Ohio, my odds of a six seat gain should go up, not down. So make it 37%, rather than 33%. I'm losing it. The good news is that the more GOP seats in play, the more than chances are that the GOP will win some of them. :)

Think before you hit the post button is the lesson here.

[Torie]

You moved down the vacant Kennedy seat? You don't think this put Kennedy himself in serious play for the Senate seat do you?

[crasher]

I think there is some difference between what we might expect as the "mean" result and what me might expect as the "median" result. I think, even if you purposely downgrade GOP odds in every Senate race by a modest amount just to be safe, you still come up with a calculation for an average GOP loss of under 4 seats. And I bet tradesports caluclations, which look mostly close to right, would come up with a GOP loss right around 3.

But, at the same time, it is probably still fair to set the over/ under higher than that. Probably somewhere between 4 and 5.

[AntiGuv]

As of right now I think Klobucher is clearly in command of the Senate contest. In fact, I think that one is right on the cusp between Lean Dem and Likely Dem, but in such cases I generally default to the more competitive rating, which keeps it in Lean Dem.

[Torie]

The bottom of line of that point of view is that the bell curve tails are longer in the Dem direction than in the the GOP direction, which causes the mean to vary from the median. I agree with that. Good insight. The bell curve is not "normal" as stat folks would say - i.e., it is not symmetrical. It would by useful to distinguish between the two, but how many political pundits understand statistics, and think about mean versus median? :)

[Dolphy]

Here's an August 16, 2006 Rasmussen poll that has Stabenow up 49-45. The Democrats are vulnerable here. Stabenow has accomplished very, very little after barely winning the seat in 2000 and Michigan's economy is in horrible shape.

That poll also says that close to half of the voters here call the economy their top election issue, more than three quarters think a photo ID should be required to vote and two thirds think ballots should be printed in English only. I think the state is in play.

[crasher]

I do too.

[neutronsgalore]

"Yeah! It sure is a better use of resources to defeat RINOs than to defeat Democrats. Yep. That's the way to returning to the minority. Good thinking."

RINO's, Dems, no difference. Better an enemy you know than a back-stabbing ally.

[crasher]

I did a quick calculation of what tradesports would project as ab average result in terms of Dem gains. About 2.6 seats right now.

[Torie]

Sounds like it is time to bet. :) That combined with the lower of home prices in your neighborhood, should buy you a nice pad. :)

[Torie]

Low = decline of home prices.

[crasher]

I think for the most part they have done a good job calculating senate odds, reasonably good. But I agree with you that they are off by a decent margin right now. They have produced some really weird odds in Governor's races though.

[Torie]

Rather remote play at the moment, as to Michigan . I really don't think so, as to something that affects the odds of the overall result much. If this seat goes GOP, some of the others in play will as well. The tide will have changed, rather decisively. The attenuated end of the GOP end of the bell curve will have been realized. Of course, the play of campaigns as time goes on matters. Think Virginia. Think Rhode Island. Think maybe, we shall see, New Jersey. Luck is luck.

[crasher]

I agree with you on that. If we said the Dems have a 30 percent chance of taking over the Senate right now, and then if God told me right now that MI was definitely going to be held by the Dems, that piece of info. would probably not bump their odds up to as high as even 31 percent.

[Torie]

remote redux.

[grey_whiskers]

Chafee will pull a Lieberman, and run as an independant just to screw the party.

Screwing the party is what he does best.

Well, let's see if we can turn the tables...

Cheers!