Posted on 09/13/2008 10:21:03 PM PDT by TomEwall
I considered the states that Rasmussen has listed as leaning or toss-ups and used the "Last" values for Intrade to determine the probability of a given state being won. Doing a weighted average, I came with McCain's expected value to be 268.74, which is just under 269, a tie.
Doing a Monte Carlo simulation I came up with the probability of a McCain win being 49.4%, a similar result to the weighted average.
I used the probabilities from Intrade and did Monte Carlo simulations, a million trials at a time, which showed a 49.4% chance of winning, based on the 12 states I used.
Intrade is just what people’s expectations are, so can be wrong. For example, for a long time they had Obama as a favorite to win in Ohio, even by over 60%. That never made any sense to me. If I were a betting man, I would have taken that, because at no time, in my opinion, did McCain ever have less than a 40% chance of winning Ohio.
“Honestly...I’m a union guy....there are alot of union people they are counting on that wont vote for a black man....ever....for any reason...they all yell “hell yea”...until they get in the voting booth...”
Crim - SO interesting that you said that - just tonight, I heard a panel on a CNN panel special with Roland Martin about how people feel about “issues” such as gender, race, age, etc. - and there was a union person saying that he felt certain many union members will undoubtedly, despite what they say - in the booth, vote for Obama.
Not to ruin your calculations but a new poll out of MN has them tied
I think the election will be close. I’m more optimistic than I was, but Obama could easily win. It’s been a good last couple of months though, so hopefully the trend will continue.
Palin has helped so much, it’s unbelievable. Even if McCain lost, she still would have helped the party by making the situation in the Congressional races much better.
Even though I’m still a newbie here, I think you should just ask Jim Robinson to help you with that.
However, it’s not such a bad screen name. W is one of the Good Guys.
The Bradley effect has little to do with race. It is not that a voter won’t vote for a black candidate, but rather they wont tell a pollster if they plan not to vote for the black candidate.
It’s not even going to be close. Obama won’t win more than 10 states.
This doesn’t have anything to do with my calculations, which were taken from Intrade, not from polls.
Anyway, that’s great news! You saw a couple of days ago there was a Michigan poll that had McCain ahead by 1?
Can you say, "Pwned"? I knew you could!!
the infowarrior
” hope it has to do more with the fact that he is a very scary candidate more than his race.”
Oh, AMEN to that. Not his race - it’s about all the other things he is, stands for, and plans for this country.
I think the actually number of people who would “never vote for a black guy” is actually very low.
But I do think there are a certain number of people who only needs one good reason to not vote for the black guy. The don’t want to be racist, so they need that one good reason with which they can rationalize to themselves that the reason they aren’t voting for the black guy is something other than racism.
How big this group of people are differs depending on whom you talk to.
I agree too. Mostly the plans to raise taxes and increase the size of Government concerns me.
I think that union rep is delusional.
As for the Intrade, I trust that more than MSM opinion polls. Before Palin, no one could have predicted the swing McCain has taken. To be fair thought, it isn't over yet, and anything can still happen. I think the closer we get to the election, the less likely we are to see a major shift.
Now I can vote
I could have made a fortune on Intrade voting for McCain and against Romney.
Well...he said he was in it to win it.
Lord love the ATTACK pilot!*
*Attack...as in what McCain actually did.
He wasn’t a fighter pilot.
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