About Last Night
UPDATE: No clue why the embedded videos aren't working, here's the direct link in case they don't come back up.
http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=210190
Bill O'Reilly went on the Daily Show last night, and behaved much as was to be expected. Rather than losing my mind over the asinine quality of most things leaving that man's mouth, I am going to focus on an argument that is time-tested among Republicans which is now starting to re-surface as a pre-emptive reason to fear/hate Obama: the "we haven't been attacked again" bit. It's at 3:50 or so in the video above, and mentioned so passingly that I was floored.
The argument goes as such: after 9/11, we've never seen another terrorist attack on our soil; thus, George W. Bush has protected us.
Let's take a look at this. On September 11, 2001, we were attacked on our own soil by Al Qaeda. It is now November 14, 2008, and they haven't come back here. This is, presumably, due to the valiant "fight-them-over-there-so-we-don't-fight-them-here" strategy of kicking ass in the war on terror. I don't buy it.
On February 26, 1993, we were attacked on our own soil by Al Qaeda. Does a single Republican give Clinton credit that we were never attacked again on our own soil under his watch? Didn't think so. In fact, they'll say that Clinton did nothing at all to stop 9/11 instead. That is, of course, despite having caught and brought to justice those responsible for the '93 attack as well as preventing the Millenium bombing as well as authorizing the assasination of Bin Laden. But I digress...
It took Al Qaeda eight and a half years to strike the same target twice when, according to the Republicans, nothing at all was being done to stop them (at least nothing on the scale of W.). Now, when we presumably are beating the piss out of these guys, the fact that they haven't come back in just over seven years is reason for jubilation on the right. If we did nothing at all it would take them longer to come back than it has. Why are they celebrating this as a Bush win? Still, I think there's a bit more to the argument that needs picking at.
There are terrorist attacks that go on all the time, against Americans, in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we first went into Iraq we even called them terrorist attacks, though now we've replaced that terminology with insurgency. We have more dead over there than they killed over here, and guess what? They killed us over there, too. In many cases, they killed us at our own military bases, which technically constitute our soil (not to mention any attack at all on our troops before sovreignty was handed back over to the Iraqis). So, in other words, we have been attacked since 9/11. A whole hell of a lot.
In short, this argument is not only historically misleading, but it's also complete bullshit.
One last thing, though I don't normally quote partisan sources, I want to point out a Mr. Michael Glitz over at the Huffington Post who has an interesting take on the likely hypocrisy of the Republican party should something happen on Obama's watch:
"The Democrats took 9-11 as a sign to rally around a President whose election victory was suspect at best and give him their full support. The Republicans are already signaling that the moment any disaster might strike they're going to attack Obama as 'weak' on defense and the good of the country be damned."
One more last thing, if you really want to see how far out of touch the right and FOXNews have become, take a look at the tail-end of O'Reilly's interview where he insists he's holding a stuffed panda that is clearly not a panda (5:50 mark).
UPDATE: The direct link.
http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=210191
Also, in one of those funny-because-it's-true moments, what does the GOP do when they need to figure out why people think they're out of touch? They go on a cruise.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Is it all about the ratings? Stay with CNN to find out.
CNN's Campbell Brown was on The Daily Show the other night promoting her new show (No Bias, No Bull), and during the interview described CNN as the new bastion of the middle ground in politics. FOX on the right, MSNBC on the left, and the neutral CNN right smack in between. If they don't owe allegience to the right or left, though, is it possible that they may owe it to the ratings? While most national polls still show an Obama lead from anywhere between 3 points (FOX) to 15 (Pew), CNN's "Poll of Polls" is showing what they are calling buyer's remorse for Obama. They now have him winning by only 5 points nationally, down from 8 just last week.
I commented (which, of course, did not make the moderator's cut since what I said wasn't incendiary or vacuous) that the buyer's remorse stipulation was used by Howard Wolfson after Super Tuesday, as well as by CNN during the closing primaries that Hillary Clinton won. In other words, CNN is recycling an old Clinton talking point that they already had lifted for the sake of fabricating a story of polling tension. It goes farther than this, of course, because that Poll of Polls they do (notoriously inaccurate, by the way) had to come from somewhere. Let's take a look, shall we? Here's their chart.
Polls used are: FOX, ARG, ABC/WaPo, Zogby, Gallup, Hotline, and IBD.
The first problem here, is that they don't specify which Gallup poll they are using. The "traditional" model for likely voter estimates will strike out any respondent who did not vote in 2004, which seems absolutely crazy to me considering the way in which Obama has gotten this far seems to have relied heavily on what CNN calls the "League of First Time Voters", yet this model still has Obama +5 today. However, if we look at the expanded model, which includes people who didn't vote in '04, but say they really swear they will this time, it becomes Obama +7.
Next problem, IBD/TIPP. They've been in a bit of hot water as of late (that's two links there) for having atrociously atrocious atrocities in their voter samples. Not to mention that they've had a relatively significant house-effect towards McCain this election cycle. In other words, I just wouldn't include them in my top 5 pollsters if I were, say, a political editor at a respectable news outlet like CNN. I might go with the pollster they decided to reject instead, like - oh... I dunno - Rassmussen. In fairness, they did snub Battleground as well, but that is deserved just like a snub of IBD would have been. In fairness to that fairness, they also snubbed CBS/NYTimes, whcih is actually even more deserved.
Let's take a peek at that FOX/Opinion Dynamics poll now. You may have read in previous postings how much respect I have for this pair, but allow me to give one more example of just why I feel that way. You'll need acrobat reader to view it (it's a .pdf), but here is the detailed poll they released. Notice anything a little strange? Apparently more Republicans are "extremely interested" in this election than Democrats, by eight freakin' points! How can that be, considering the widely reported-on enthusiasm gap in favor of the Dems this time around? The answer is actually pretty simple, if you scroll down to their sample. 41% Democrat, 39% Republican, 16% Independent. Problem with that is that the country looks more like 40/30 for Dems/Repubs this time around. In other words, FOX/OD fudged their numbers to make the race seem tighter.
That leaves us with ARG, Zogby, Hotline, ABC. Let's check out what Nate Silver thinks of these guys. Out of 32 ranked pollsters on fivethirtyeight.com, these 4 make up #16 (ABC/WaPo), #17 (Zogby), #23 (ARG), and Hotline doesn't even make it. CNN's own polling comes in at #21. The snubbed Rasmussen comes in at #3. Way to go on that one, CNN.
So CNN has the race to O+5, which is 3 points lower than they had it a week ago. Assuming CNN used the "traditional" Gallup poll, and excluded Rasmussen, Battleground, and CBS/NYT, we wind up at an average O+5.4. Using the "expanded" Gallup it comes to O+5.7. My guess is they chose to round down the 5.4 rather than the 5.7, which means they picked the traditional model despite it's seeming ridiculousness. To pre-empt anyone who might say "what if they used both?", that averages to O+5.6.
This means that they took a field of generally bad pollsters, and made them worse, then published the poll under a reused headline to try and show the race as tightening dramatically. Just what, exactly, was that O+8 just a week ago, then? As it turns out, there were some different pollsters in the field that cycle. Pew (O+15), Newsweek (O+12), ABC/Washington Post (O+7), Zogby (O+4.7), Gallup (O+7), Diageo/Hotline (O+7), and IBD/TIPP (O+3). Those Pew/Newsweek numbers are enough to get this out to an average O+7.9. In other words, CNN's Poll of Polls has been telling us more about the house-effect or slant that the pollsters in the field that day have more than they do about who is actually winning.
That being said, when even the right-leaning pollsters have Obama at +5, things look pretty grim for the Republicans. Never fear, though, folks like CNN will be insisting that there's a close race all the way to November 5th. In the mean time, all they ask is that you don't touch that dial.
CNN's Campbell Brown was on The Daily Show the other night promoting her new show (No Bias, No Bull), and during the interview described CNN as the new bastion of the middle ground in politics. FOX on the right, MSNBC on the left, and the neutral CNN right smack in between. If they don't owe allegience to the right or left, though, is it possible that they may owe it to the ratings? While most national polls still show an Obama lead from anywhere between 3 points (FOX) to 15 (Pew), CNN's "Poll of Polls" is showing what they are calling buyer's remorse for Obama. They now have him winning by only 5 points nationally, down from 8 just last week.
I commented (which, of course, did not make the moderator's cut since what I said wasn't incendiary or vacuous) that the buyer's remorse stipulation was used by Howard Wolfson after Super Tuesday, as well as by CNN during the closing primaries that Hillary Clinton won. In other words, CNN is recycling an old Clinton talking point that they already had lifted for the sake of fabricating a story of polling tension. It goes farther than this, of course, because that Poll of Polls they do (notoriously inaccurate, by the way) had to come from somewhere. Let's take a look, shall we? Here's their chart.
Polls used are: FOX, ARG, ABC/WaPo, Zogby, Gallup, Hotline, and IBD.
The first problem here, is that they don't specify which Gallup poll they are using. The "traditional" model for likely voter estimates will strike out any respondent who did not vote in 2004, which seems absolutely crazy to me considering the way in which Obama has gotten this far seems to have relied heavily on what CNN calls the "League of First Time Voters", yet this model still has Obama +5 today. However, if we look at the expanded model, which includes people who didn't vote in '04, but say they really swear they will this time, it becomes Obama +7.
Next problem, IBD/TIPP. They've been in a bit of hot water as of late (that's two links there) for having atrociously atrocious atrocities in their voter samples. Not to mention that they've had a relatively significant house-effect towards McCain this election cycle. In other words, I just wouldn't include them in my top 5 pollsters if I were, say, a political editor at a respectable news outlet like CNN. I might go with the pollster they decided to reject instead, like - oh... I dunno - Rassmussen. In fairness, they did snub Battleground as well, but that is deserved just like a snub of IBD would have been. In fairness to that fairness, they also snubbed CBS/NYTimes, whcih is actually even more deserved.
Let's take a peek at that FOX/Opinion Dynamics poll now. You may have read in previous postings how much respect I have for this pair, but allow me to give one more example of just why I feel that way. You'll need acrobat reader to view it (it's a .pdf), but here is the detailed poll they released. Notice anything a little strange? Apparently more Republicans are "extremely interested" in this election than Democrats, by eight freakin' points! How can that be, considering the widely reported-on enthusiasm gap in favor of the Dems this time around? The answer is actually pretty simple, if you scroll down to their sample. 41% Democrat, 39% Republican, 16% Independent. Problem with that is that the country looks more like 40/30 for Dems/Repubs this time around. In other words, FOX/OD fudged their numbers to make the race seem tighter.
That leaves us with ARG, Zogby, Hotline, ABC. Let's check out what Nate Silver thinks of these guys. Out of 32 ranked pollsters on fivethirtyeight.com, these 4 make up #16 (ABC/WaPo), #17 (Zogby), #23 (ARG), and Hotline doesn't even make it. CNN's own polling comes in at #21. The snubbed Rasmussen comes in at #3. Way to go on that one, CNN.
So CNN has the race to O+5, which is 3 points lower than they had it a week ago. Assuming CNN used the "traditional" Gallup poll, and excluded Rasmussen, Battleground, and CBS/NYT, we wind up at an average O+5.4. Using the "expanded" Gallup it comes to O+5.7. My guess is they chose to round down the 5.4 rather than the 5.7, which means they picked the traditional model despite it's seeming ridiculousness. To pre-empt anyone who might say "what if they used both?", that averages to O+5.6.
This means that they took a field of generally bad pollsters, and made them worse, then published the poll under a reused headline to try and show the race as tightening dramatically. Just what, exactly, was that O+8 just a week ago, then? As it turns out, there were some different pollsters in the field that cycle. Pew (O+15), Newsweek (O+12), ABC/Washington Post (O+7), Zogby (O+4.7), Gallup (O+7), Diageo/Hotline (O+7), and IBD/TIPP (O+3). Those Pew/Newsweek numbers are enough to get this out to an average O+7.9. In other words, CNN's Poll of Polls has been telling us more about the house-effect or slant that the pollsters in the field that day have more than they do about who is actually winning.
That being said, when even the right-leaning pollsters have Obama at +5, things look pretty grim for the Republicans. Never fear, though, folks like CNN will be insisting that there's a close race all the way to November 5th. In the mean time, all they ask is that you don't touch that dial.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
A Word of Caution: Electoral-Vote.com
I have been told by several different people lately, all of whom seem to be extremely confident in their sources, that this state or that will go this way or that regardless of whatever analysis I've been reading. That usually sounds like the sort of arrogant crap I'd be saying to people, not the other way around, so I went looking at just what sources provided such good information. In four of four people queried I received the same answer: electoral-vote.com. Well I've had it, let's take a look at just why the votemaster is running a bad site for electoral projections, shall we?
Let me start by saying that I may already be off on the wrong foot here. I enjoy e-v quite a bit, even have a little widget over on the sidebar there, but my browsing it is usually for quick access to the Political Wire as well as occasional analysis. That is to say decidedly not the projection itself. Why? A few reasons immediately jump to mind, but let's start with 2004. This was the projection on election day. Guess what, a lot is wrong with it. Here's a side-by-side of what was projected, and what actually happened:
Electoral-vote.com projection on November 2nd 2004:
Actual election outcome later that day:
Just to point out the obvious first: Hawaii was projected red. I'm going to repeat that. Ahem. Hawaii was projected red. This is the beginning of my opening argument. Hawaii was supposed to go red, according to the votemaster (that's the alias of the guy who runs the site in case you haven't gathered as much yet), because there was a poll done on October 20th, 2004 by SMS Research which showed Bush at +1 over Kerry. The most recent poll prior to this SMS poll was done on September, 11th, 2004 by more-well-known American Research Group (ARG). We'll hear more about ARG in a minute, but for the time being just know that their poll had Kerry +10. That means, according to Electoral-vote.com, that there was a shift of 11 points towards Bush in the closing months of the election without anyone even having to campaign there. There's more. The reason that this massive swing shows up on the site is because every poll is given equal weight; thus, if only one guy does a poll of your state this week, that guy's numbers are gospel to the votemaster.
Here's some more evidence of that being a flawed system. Let's go back to those two electoral maps, and take a look at some other states called incorrectly. Wisconsin and Florida are both wrong, with Florida being extra-wrong compared to Wisconsin. Guess what, both of those polls were done by Opinion Dynamics on October 31, 2004. Nice track record they built for themselves over at Opinion Dynamics. Let's put a little icing on the cake here, take a look at New Mexico, see how it's blue? Who called that? John Zogby, master of getting it wrong. Granted, the SUSA poll in Iowa was wrong, too, but they've gone and made up for that greatly this time around. Let's take a peek at how these others are doing thus far, shall we?
This is a link to Nate Silver's pollster ratings (when it comes to way-over-the-top analysis, like the kind needed to get an idea of a who's-who in polling, Nate's the guy to go to). The Pollster-Introduced Error score works like golf, the less Nate sees your numbers as needing adjustment the better you are at your job. Naturally, Ann Selzer (+.75) is the last word in polling, but by the time you get down into the PPP range you're really looking at blips on the radar as they are bound to be outliers most of the time. Let's see, who is ranked lower than PPP (+1.86).... hmm, oh! Why, look. It's John Zogby (+2.16) in the bottom half of pollsters, and in the bottom quarter are ARG (+2.32) and Opinion Dynamics (+2.36). If only there was some way of not weighting these guys the same as the better pollsters... oh that's right Nate does that.
This process has been going on this cycle as well, of course, and it's really starting to get pople misinformed. ARG put out a poll in West Virginia claiming Obama +8. Since this represented a sixteen point swing from Rasmussen not two weeks earlier, both campaigns as well as seven pollsters flocked to the state only to find out that it is not actually a toss-up. Electoral-vote, of course, kept the ARG numbers up on their projection for a full week.
Last example, it's what actually got me to finally sit down and write this, is today the votemaster's decided to label Florida as exactly tied. His reasoning is that four polls have been out in the past four days (he is slow to update his projections, which also annoys me) that all cancel each other out. In other words, two of the polls had Obama winning, and two had McCain winning, so the state is an exact tie. He doesn't mention that the polls having McCain up both only have him up +1, and that one of the polls is from FOX. He also doesn't mention that only one of the pro-Obama polls has a +1 for Obama (the PPP poll) while the other (the much-better rated Quinnipiac) has it as +5. Florida may go either way, who knows, but those four polls by no means give any sensible person reason to call things precisely dead-even. It's clearly leaning Obama if only by a couple of points.
To review: Electoral-vote.com is a great place to get some quick analysis, very prompt political wire updates (faster than fivethirtyeight for some reason), and last week's polls presented as a legitimate electoral projection. Those first two are great reasons to stop by, but leave that third one be - or at least keep it to yourself when we're talking about politics.
I have been told by several different people lately, all of whom seem to be extremely confident in their sources, that this state or that will go this way or that regardless of whatever analysis I've been reading. That usually sounds like the sort of arrogant crap I'd be saying to people, not the other way around, so I went looking at just what sources provided such good information. In four of four people queried I received the same answer: electoral-vote.com. Well I've had it, let's take a look at just why the votemaster is running a bad site for electoral projections, shall we?
Let me start by saying that I may already be off on the wrong foot here. I enjoy e-v quite a bit, even have a little widget over on the sidebar there, but my browsing it is usually for quick access to the Political Wire as well as occasional analysis. That is to say decidedly not the projection itself. Why? A few reasons immediately jump to mind, but let's start with 2004. This was the projection on election day. Guess what, a lot is wrong with it. Here's a side-by-side of what was projected, and what actually happened:
Electoral-vote.com projection on November 2nd 2004:
Actual election outcome later that day:
Just to point out the obvious first: Hawaii was projected red. I'm going to repeat that. Ahem. Hawaii was projected red. This is the beginning of my opening argument. Hawaii was supposed to go red, according to the votemaster (that's the alias of the guy who runs the site in case you haven't gathered as much yet), because there was a poll done on October 20th, 2004 by SMS Research which showed Bush at +1 over Kerry. The most recent poll prior to this SMS poll was done on September, 11th, 2004 by more-well-known American Research Group (ARG). We'll hear more about ARG in a minute, but for the time being just know that their poll had Kerry +10. That means, according to Electoral-vote.com, that there was a shift of 11 points towards Bush in the closing months of the election without anyone even having to campaign there. There's more. The reason that this massive swing shows up on the site is because every poll is given equal weight; thus, if only one guy does a poll of your state this week, that guy's numbers are gospel to the votemaster. Here's some more evidence of that being a flawed system. Let's go back to those two electoral maps, and take a look at some other states called incorrectly. Wisconsin and Florida are both wrong, with Florida being extra-wrong compared to Wisconsin. Guess what, both of those polls were done by Opinion Dynamics on October 31, 2004. Nice track record they built for themselves over at Opinion Dynamics. Let's put a little icing on the cake here, take a look at New Mexico, see how it's blue? Who called that? John Zogby, master of getting it wrong. Granted, the SUSA poll in Iowa was wrong, too, but they've gone and made up for that greatly this time around. Let's take a peek at how these others are doing thus far, shall we?
This is a link to Nate Silver's pollster ratings (when it comes to way-over-the-top analysis, like the kind needed to get an idea of a who's-who in polling, Nate's the guy to go to). The Pollster-Introduced Error score works like golf, the less Nate sees your numbers as needing adjustment the better you are at your job. Naturally, Ann Selzer (+.75) is the last word in polling, but by the time you get down into the PPP range you're really looking at blips on the radar as they are bound to be outliers most of the time. Let's see, who is ranked lower than PPP (+1.86).... hmm, oh! Why, look. It's John Zogby (+2.16) in the bottom half of pollsters, and in the bottom quarter are ARG (+2.32) and Opinion Dynamics (+2.36). If only there was some way of not weighting these guys the same as the better pollsters... oh that's right Nate does that.
This process has been going on this cycle as well, of course, and it's really starting to get pople misinformed. ARG put out a poll in West Virginia claiming Obama +8. Since this represented a sixteen point swing from Rasmussen not two weeks earlier, both campaigns as well as seven pollsters flocked to the state only to find out that it is not actually a toss-up. Electoral-vote, of course, kept the ARG numbers up on their projection for a full week.
Last example, it's what actually got me to finally sit down and write this, is today the votemaster's decided to label Florida as exactly tied. His reasoning is that four polls have been out in the past four days (he is slow to update his projections, which also annoys me) that all cancel each other out. In other words, two of the polls had Obama winning, and two had McCain winning, so the state is an exact tie. He doesn't mention that the polls having McCain up both only have him up +1, and that one of the polls is from FOX. He also doesn't mention that only one of the pro-Obama polls has a +1 for Obama (the PPP poll) while the other (the much-better rated Quinnipiac) has it as +5. Florida may go either way, who knows, but those four polls by no means give any sensible person reason to call things precisely dead-even. It's clearly leaning Obama if only by a couple of points.
To review: Electoral-vote.com is a great place to get some quick analysis, very prompt political wire updates (faster than fivethirtyeight for some reason), and last week's polls presented as a legitimate electoral projection. Those first two are great reasons to stop by, but leave that third one be - or at least keep it to yourself when we're talking about politics.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
How to make an elephant float
Since everyone else has decided to tell you either about Colin Powell, Joe the Plumber (who made a really great point in a really ironic setting towards the end of the article), or Sarah Palin on SNL, I am going to go ahead and take a look at the electoral map again. You may ask why, since I looked at it already today, and the day before, and even the day before that. You may ask why, since the guys over at fivethirtyeight took care of this for me already. Well, I want to take a slightly different perspective on the map today. One that will let me know how late I can expect to stay up on Election Night. That's a misnomer, I mean to say one that will let me know how early I can expect to start drinking and under what circumstances. The perspective I have in mind is this: what does an electoral win for McCain look like with Virginia off the table?
Right now, this is the electoral map I'm sitting with over at 270towin.com:
The actual numbers may be a bit hard to see as it turns out (large apparently does not mean full size in Blogger's composer wonderland of making this post take longer on the technical side than the writing). This projection gives the win to Obama at 364 electoral votes with 270 needed to win. McCain has been starting to sound somewhat defeated lately, and here's why. Axelrod pulled off a repeat. The guy that brought Obama Iowa's caucus had been out in Virginia forever with this goal in mind. As it turns out, if you give the man enough time, he can do just about anything to a place. Virginia went from being reliably red on election night to surprisingly vulnerable in 06 to now being a safe state for the Democratic Party. What's the big deal with Virginia? It's just one state, right? Hell, a third of it isn't even real. The problem is that Virginia is worth 13 electoral votes, and this year McCain needs every last one of those things that he can get. Without VA, it actually seems extremely difficult if not impossible for him to win. Here's the most realistic (though I say that snickering since this is never going to happen) scenario for McCain to win without VA in his column:
This shows a McCain win with exactly 270 electoral votes in having flipped Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, and New Hampshire. Let me catch my breath, that was a lot of flipping. That's 8 states that have to move significantly. Granted, McCain actually has a shot at taking Ohio, though I am inclined to think that Obama's ground game is going to turn up stronger as we get closer to Nov. 4. Quick summation: the Obama campaign hired 300 paid volunteers to work Ohio as opposed to the normal range of 10-40 (50 if you really want it). North Carolina also seems extremely close, but it is also a state where Obama overperformed his polling in the primaries thanks to the developing tech sector in the north of the state. Florida? Well, John McCain is very old. The rest here, Missouri just doesn't look like they're going to play nice with McCain this time around (Missouri has picked the president correctly every election since 1960).
He isn't going to flip the rest of these. This is why, I imagine, the punditry is still trying to talk about Pennsylvania as if it is a swing state. There's a silver bullet if I've ever seen one, PA has 21 electoral votes (and if he could add that on top of an Ohio win and a Florida win that only gives Obama a 1.18% chance to win the election according to fivethirtyeight!). The problem with this is that Pennsylvania has been in double digits for Obama since the end of September (by which I mean eternity), and Joe Biden is only helping that out. In other words, Pennsylvania is a quick and easy answer to give a soundbyte, or some talking head, but it is one of the blue-r states there is this time around.
Virginia polls close at 7:00pm EST, and North Carolina is just behind closing at 7:30 EST. If both of those states show up blue, this election is over, and possibly before people on the west coast have even had a chance to get out to the polls. That may have implications for Republican turnout, which may have implications for down-ticket races like Gordon Smith in Oregon and Ted Stevens in jail I mean Alaska. In other words, if we know who the president is by 8:00EST (and you may not need the TV to tell you, since they are going to try as hard as possible to keep you up all night tuned into their shows), we may be staring at a landslide across the board. Maybe even a 60 seat senate majority.
Since everyone else has decided to tell you either about Colin Powell, Joe the Plumber (who made a really great point in a really ironic setting towards the end of the article), or Sarah Palin on SNL, I am going to go ahead and take a look at the electoral map again. You may ask why, since I looked at it already today, and the day before, and even the day before that. You may ask why, since the guys over at fivethirtyeight took care of this for me already. Well, I want to take a slightly different perspective on the map today. One that will let me know how late I can expect to stay up on Election Night. That's a misnomer, I mean to say one that will let me know how early I can expect to start drinking and under what circumstances. The perspective I have in mind is this: what does an electoral win for McCain look like with Virginia off the table?
Right now, this is the electoral map I'm sitting with over at 270towin.com:
The actual numbers may be a bit hard to see as it turns out (large apparently does not mean full size in Blogger's composer wonderland of making this post take longer on the technical side than the writing). This projection gives the win to Obama at 364 electoral votes with 270 needed to win. McCain has been starting to sound somewhat defeated lately, and here's why. Axelrod pulled off a repeat. The guy that brought Obama Iowa's caucus had been out in Virginia forever with this goal in mind. As it turns out, if you give the man enough time, he can do just about anything to a place. Virginia went from being reliably red on election night to surprisingly vulnerable in 06 to now being a safe state for the Democratic Party. What's the big deal with Virginia? It's just one state, right? Hell, a third of it isn't even real. The problem is that Virginia is worth 13 electoral votes, and this year McCain needs every last one of those things that he can get. Without VA, it actually seems extremely difficult if not impossible for him to win. Here's the most realistic (though I say that snickering since this is never going to happen) scenario for McCain to win without VA in his column:
This shows a McCain win with exactly 270 electoral votes in having flipped Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, and New Hampshire. Let me catch my breath, that was a lot of flipping. That's 8 states that have to move significantly. Granted, McCain actually has a shot at taking Ohio, though I am inclined to think that Obama's ground game is going to turn up stronger as we get closer to Nov. 4. Quick summation: the Obama campaign hired 300 paid volunteers to work Ohio as opposed to the normal range of 10-40 (50 if you really want it). North Carolina also seems extremely close, but it is also a state where Obama overperformed his polling in the primaries thanks to the developing tech sector in the north of the state. Florida? Well, John McCain is very old. The rest here, Missouri just doesn't look like they're going to play nice with McCain this time around (Missouri has picked the president correctly every election since 1960).
He isn't going to flip the rest of these. This is why, I imagine, the punditry is still trying to talk about Pennsylvania as if it is a swing state. There's a silver bullet if I've ever seen one, PA has 21 electoral votes (and if he could add that on top of an Ohio win and a Florida win that only gives Obama a 1.18% chance to win the election according to fivethirtyeight!). The problem with this is that Pennsylvania has been in double digits for Obama since the end of September (by which I mean eternity), and Joe Biden is only helping that out. In other words, Pennsylvania is a quick and easy answer to give a soundbyte, or some talking head, but it is one of the blue-r states there is this time around.
Virginia polls close at 7:00pm EST, and North Carolina is just behind closing at 7:30 EST. If both of those states show up blue, this election is over, and possibly before people on the west coast have even had a chance to get out to the polls. That may have implications for Republican turnout, which may have implications for down-ticket races like Gordon Smith in Oregon and Ted Stevens in jail I mean Alaska. In other words, if we know who the president is by 8:00EST (and you may not need the TV to tell you, since they are going to try as hard as possible to keep you up all night tuned into their shows), we may be staring at a landslide across the board. Maybe even a 60 seat senate majority.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
The Blog is Back
I'm bringing the blog back today, and congratulations on being the only person to know about it! Obviously the layout on the sidebar sucks wookie at the moment, and I'm not too keen on these arrows all over the place, but that is all stuff that can be ironed out later.
Today, I want to talk about one man's brilliant maneuver aimed at landing himself airtime over at FOX-News for the post-election months. That man is Dick Morris. Let's not talk about all the slimy things he's done in the past, or how he's such a hack these days that the only airtime he gets is on FOX and the occasional Daily Show(at around the 3 minute mark), let's just focus on his Newsmax post. I've reproduced his electoral "projection" below.
Notice anything? It's got to be the smartest thing the guy has done in years. Arizona, Tennessee, Louisiana, South Carolina are all going to go red. Georgia is still looking six points up for McCain, and Arkansas hasn't really been polled too much lately; however, Mr. Morris has decided that all of these places are currently up in the air for the GOP at best. Example: Arkansas. Arkansas isn't getting polled (9/22 from Rasmussen at M+9, 9/21 from ARG at M+12, and 7/16 Rasmussen with M+13 are the only polls on the state this year), yet Dick Morris has decided that it is going solidly blue. Most people just scratch their heads and wonder, some just froth over and start making jokes about toe-sucking, but I think there's more to this map. It's a set before his spike.
If the election goes like everyone looking at actual polls feels it will go, Morris has basically called a whole bunch of really safe red states either as toss-ups or in the blue column. What does that mean for Morris when they go red on election day? It means he gets to trumpet his exclusive discovery of a massive McCain comeback effort that turned multiple states back over to the GOP. Presumably, in places like South Carolina, his efforts will have been so good that he won by ten points or so. That means that Morris is getting some FOX love, since the only story they're going to have is the faux-ACORN scandal. But wait, there's more, these two stories actually complement each other. See, the GOP wants to say that Obama stole the election via ACORN, and that, without all that fradulent fraud that the Democrats are fraudulently doing, McCain's real landslide support would have shown. It must have been landslide support, because it is not business feasible to run a network that caters to a shrinking constituency, so the argument will be that somewhere on the order of G.W.Bush's 2004 numbers are still Republicans. How do they know that's true? Because just look at Dick Morris' exclusive piece on the massive McCain comeback effort of the last three weeks of the election. This man just made himself so much freaking money assuming it is still worth anything by the time FOX-News makes the argument.
I'm bringing the blog back today, and congratulations on being the only person to know about it! Obviously the layout on the sidebar sucks wookie at the moment, and I'm not too keen on these arrows all over the place, but that is all stuff that can be ironed out later.
Today, I want to talk about one man's brilliant maneuver aimed at landing himself airtime over at FOX-News for the post-election months. That man is Dick Morris. Let's not talk about all the slimy things he's done in the past, or how he's such a hack these days that the only airtime he gets is on FOX and the occasional Daily Show(at around the 3 minute mark), let's just focus on his Newsmax post. I've reproduced his electoral "projection" below.
Notice anything? It's got to be the smartest thing the guy has done in years. Arizona, Tennessee, Louisiana, South Carolina are all going to go red. Georgia is still looking six points up for McCain, and Arkansas hasn't really been polled too much lately; however, Mr. Morris has decided that all of these places are currently up in the air for the GOP at best. Example: Arkansas. Arkansas isn't getting polled (9/22 from Rasmussen at M+9, 9/21 from ARG at M+12, and 7/16 Rasmussen with M+13 are the only polls on the state this year), yet Dick Morris has decided that it is going solidly blue. Most people just scratch their heads and wonder, some just froth over and start making jokes about toe-sucking, but I think there's more to this map. It's a set before his spike.
If the election goes like everyone looking at actual polls feels it will go, Morris has basically called a whole bunch of really safe red states either as toss-ups or in the blue column. What does that mean for Morris when they go red on election day? It means he gets to trumpet his exclusive discovery of a massive McCain comeback effort that turned multiple states back over to the GOP. Presumably, in places like South Carolina, his efforts will have been so good that he won by ten points or so. That means that Morris is getting some FOX love, since the only story they're going to have is the faux-ACORN scandal. But wait, there's more, these two stories actually complement each other. See, the GOP wants to say that Obama stole the election via ACORN, and that, without all that fradulent fraud that the Democrats are fraudulently doing, McCain's real landslide support would have shown. It must have been landslide support, because it is not business feasible to run a network that caters to a shrinking constituency, so the argument will be that somewhere on the order of G.W.Bush's 2004 numbers are still Republicans. How do they know that's true? Because just look at Dick Morris' exclusive piece on the massive McCain comeback effort of the last three weeks of the election. This man just made himself so much freaking money assuming it is still worth anything by the time FOX-News makes the argument.
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