Posted on 10/29/2012 9:20:57 AM PDT by SoftwareEngineer
In the history of presidential elections, has there ever been such an effort by one side to poll their way to victory? While the Republicans have spoken this season about jobs and debt – willing themselves to a moral victory – the Democrats have talked constantly about how well their guy is polling in one or two states. The goal is to create a sense of inevitability, to convince the public to vote for Obama because he’s a winner and who wouldn’t want to vote for the winner? We’ve witnessed the evolution of polling from an objective gauge of the public mood to a propaganda tool: partisan and inaccurate.
Step forward Nate Silver of the New York Times. Nate has been an open supporter of the President and his newspaper just endorsed Obama (although it also went for Dukakis, so it ain’t that good at picking winners). But context doesn’t matter because maths is maths and maths can’t lie – and Nate says that, according to his model, Obama has a 74.6 per cent chance of winning.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
Of course this is not new to us Freepers, but good to see it in one of the most circulated newspapers in the UK
ping
Very decent analysis. Links to analysis by others too
Nate Silver is overrated - and Rasmussen out of OH just blew his theory out of the water that state polls matter - well we have a state poll out now that shows Romney ahead there!
So what is he going to say now? I was wrong and the state polls are right? Not a chance! There is a general trend to this election Silver doesn’t want to see. And all the reliable polls say it has one outcome: an outcome Silver doesn’t like.
Who is Nate Silver of the New York Times and why are so many FReepers panicking over him?
I’ve never heard of him before this week, but I understand he has some sort of accuracy in predicting election results?
And that has Free Republic (Breaking News - really??) all in a tizzy?
While this is a good article I think this one is better at getting to the actual nuts and bolts of why Silver is dreaming. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/331192/nate-silver-s-flawed-model-josh-jordan
Early voting 08: 10,440
Early voting 12: 14,798
Breakdown=D 5600, R 1100, I 3300
I did the following breakdown, assuming Ds=.95% intensity (i.e., Ds vote for Obama), Rs=.95% intensity; Is split for Romney by a mere 6 points.
Those numbers are 5152D , 1023R. Add 1452 Is to Ds and 1848 to Rs.
This is a 56-44 split. I don't know the split for county's numbers for early voters in 08, but this seems like a win for us if statewide Zero won early voting by 20 and he only won the state by 6, meaning Romney is sitting on an 8 point lead over the 08 ev levels. Obama won by 6.
Anecdotal evidence from people who are in the election HQ every day say that the D voters are NOT the "low propensity" types who were basically herded to the polls in 08, bussed in, etc., but rather seem to be the high propensity voters who won't be voting on election day. In short, to GET that 12-point EV lead, they have cannibalized their election day turnout. As one observer told me, "I see an awful lot of white men in business suits, and I don't think those are Obama voters."
Karl Rove discovered that 57% of the absentee voters had not voted in one of the three previous elections . . . but of the Rs who are early voting, 72% had not voted before.
In other words, we are getting most of our voters from people who are new to elections, the Ds---getting 40% of theirs from "regulars."
Finally, just today there appears to be a pretty big surge of R voters---some estimate "hundreds," so these numbers may be well obsolete already.
I second that. Nate Silver is an obamabot and his opinions are irrelevant.
He is giving the libs a false sense of comfort and that is good. Their jubilation is about to come to an abrupt end but at least they felt good for a couple of weeks. Feeling good is what it’s all about. Then they’ll claim that the election was stolen. So predictable... They are already saying that one of the companies associated with Romney is in charge of the voting machines in Ohio...
Early voting 08: 10,440
Early voting 12: 14,798
Breakdown=D 5600, R 1100, I 3300
I did the following breakdown, assuming Ds=.95% intensity (i.e., Ds vote for Obama), Rs=.95% intensity; Is split for Romney by a mere 6 points.
Those numbers are 5152D , 1023R. Add 1452 Is to Ds and 1848 to Rs.
This is a 56-44 split. I don't know the split for county's numbers for early voters in 08, but this seems like a win for us if statewide Zero won early voting by 20 and he only won the state by 6, meaning Romney is sitting on an 8 point lead over the 08 ev levels. Obama won by 6.
Anecdotal evidence from people who are in the election HQ every day say that the D voters are NOT the "low propensity" types who were basically herded to the polls in 08, bussed in, etc., but rather seem to be the high propensity voters who won't be voting on election day. In short, to GET that 12-point EV lead, they have cannibalized their election day turnout. As one observer told me, "I see an awful lot of white men in business suits, and I don't think those are Obama voters."
Karl Rove discovered that 57% of the absentee voters had not voted in one of the three previous elections . . . but of the Rs who are early voting, 72% had not voted before.
In other words, we are getting most of our voters from people who are new to elections, the Ds---getting 40% of theirs from "regulars."
Finally, just today there appears to be a pretty big surge of R voters---some estimate "hundreds," so these numbers may be well obsolete already.
No-one’s panicking over him: they are reporting gleefully on how wrong he is.
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