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Don't just tut tut models that show Obamugabe winning ~ show the specific errors ~

You've got it backwards. Proving that the data models use isn't predictive isn't necessary. The models need to rigorously why the data they have constitutes a correlation.

This is no better than layman stock market technical analysis or data mining. Coming up with models is a hard science for quants getting paid 400K/year, one well beyond the means of polisci majors.

The only predictive power is sampling the actual votes (by the means of asking people who they will poll), and even then, there is a lot of art and error in sampling that.

Other than that? Unless some megabucks hedge fund firm is kind enough to open-source a model they spent millions and millions on, it's all bull. You are, quite seriously, no better off using the models cited in the article than using the "Halloween Mask Purchase" and "Cow Poops On An Obama/Romney Square" predictions.

the fact is the MSM is positivly ogasming at the start of the democrat convention. (even fox) Their personal partisanship is tangible. The MSM is a free multichannel partisan drive pushing Obama at all costs. There is no even pretense of journalism. MSNBC this morning was in full on communist pravda mode.

True enough your typical university or college doesn't have the resources to bring in the full blown mathematicians to come up with a statistically useful and predictive sampling system.

I know we spent millions every year on ours ~ and a monthly sample selection would have over 1.5 million elements.

The really big bucks were spent on the sampling universe ~ we pre-identified the destination types we wanted to include and they were always in a constant flux AND there'd be changes in mail classifications, and every time that happened the whole shebang had to be reworked.

There aren't even private sector marketing firms with the kind of money and personnel to do a job like that.

Our planning organization had a predictive system that would estimate, based on sample reports from the Cost Ascertainment System what mail volume might be the next month.

I could take the same information and make the same prediction using an algorithm I"d developed.

One day I noticed that not once in 100 months/accounting periods had the planning organization ever correctly predicted whether or not mail volume would increase or decline.

Thought that fascinating since the statistical group stood on their heads to get the basic information for them to come up with that particular notation ~ mightily important to postal management I"ll tell you!

My algorithm, ALWAYS predicted whether or not volume in each successive period was going up, or going down!

Others have seen this before ~ but for those of you who haven't, I submitted my algorithm as one of those BENEFICIAL EMPLOYEE SUGGESTIONS.

They (top management) didn't accept my suggestion ~ didn't even send me a note rejecting it ~ but they relieved the guys responsible for running the competition ~ the prediction system that was ALWAYS wrong.

That system was, as I understand it, designed by the former Chief Postal Economist, Charles Guy ~ here's an article by him; >http://www.lexingtoninstitute.org/post-office-may-not-last-forever-an-interview-with-charles-guy?a=1&c=1139

I've probably never agreed with him on anything ~