Rove had the right model, but he was about an hour or two behind the curve. Those of us who were running speadsheets at home as the county numbers came in knew it was over.
Rove had the same numbers you did at the same time you did. He just wanted them held back for P.R. purposes.
Right model with wrong results? How does that work? LOL
My MOE has always been less than 0.5% using a somewhat modified formula of the 18.4% rule. It is a simple modification to account for regional biases-- candidates from this part of the state always run ahead of those from elsewhere regardless of party label. It correctly forecast that Toomey's U.S. senate election in 2010 would be a squeaker and that he would win by a considerably smaller margin than Corbett for governor.
It showed other amazingly accurate tracking results dating back to 2004, when we first volunteered to be poll watchers and I first begin checking data in our precinct vs. statewide.
In 2012, everything still tracked quite closely for the statewide races except one: the top of the ticket and it was way off . . . so far off that the chances of massive unprecedented fraud were very nearly 100%.
Our precinct is very well run and the Judge of Elections whom I am replacing ran a very good show. So the problem aren't the stats we generated, they are what went on statewide.