I am beginning to become scared that Romney/Ryan will win. Can smart people please post here and say reassuring things to convince me that he won't?

Unfortunately, I think Romney is competent enough to avoid punching himself in the nuts for another couple of weeks, especially if he can make it thought Tuesday night. That note he slipped onto his podium during the last debate. "Don't punch yourself in the nuts."

I like my narrative that this is where romney shoulda been post-convention and this was basically convention take 2 w/r/t getting the normal 'ya prob not gonna vote for the democrats' ppl fully on board

― iatee, Friday, October 12, 2012 6:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i agree w/this but honestly im im getting a lil queasy just thinking abt the election/seeing this thread/reading 538

wish romney would start punching himself in the nuts again

i feel like Romney still pretty consistently says something horribly ill-advised on a daily basis, the "big bird" thing just ended up too silly to be damaging (partly because of Obama's stupid ad) and other things happened at the debate that made that not the main takeaway from it. no matter how safe he tries to play it at the next debate, he'll say some dumb shit that'll probably blow back on him more.

Z S a few months ago, forecasting the election: September Mitt looks admiringly at October Mitt.

http://dellioandwoods.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/mitts1-e1329447740242.jpg?w=590

tax cuts for sex offenders
retirees sent to work in prisons
walks on stage slung w/guitar on which to imitate hendrix' star spangled banner cover for opening statement
xp

He punches himself by insisting on taking any little thing and twisting it and making an issue out of it even if it seems out of character or unrelated to his interests. His *tough stance on Benghazi* just sounds petulant.

And shallow and not very tough, actually.

As sure as night follows day (Silver):

Yet some of the plausible arguments that Democrats were making earlier in the week about Mr. Obama’s standing — like that his position would be more robust in the swing states — are looking weaker now.

I don't know anything about Silver's predictive numbers, but obviously you can't use math to judge the probability of how well either candidate might perform in a campaign.

Anyway, looking at the current TPM electoral map, Obama wins Ohio and it's over. That's currently assuming he also wins Iowa, but he gets to 270 in this scenario without New Hampshire, Nevada, Colorado, Virginia, and North Carolina.

haha nap time

Nate Silver ‏@fivethirtyeight
Arizona poll showing Obama leading reminds me a bit of Hawaii polls showing Bush leading Gore late in 2004.

yeah, but really gore had no chance in 2004 regardless

America's not ready for a bearded president

i'll grant you that

America's not ready for a bearded president

As proven in 1984:

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3558/3495755012_ca2ce7b8c9_z.jpg

America wasn't ready for our last bearded president: he served one term

http://www.historyplace.com/specials/calendar/docs-pix/ben-harrison.jpg

one of my high school teachers made a point about how you never see bearded republicans esp in congress. it's a good tell.

Repulicans who use Beards are another kettle of fish...

"Republicans", even.

http://cinemanostalgia.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/faye-dunaway-network.jpg

It would be a disaster to let this go on another week. By then he’ll be down points and the trend irreversible, if it isn’t already.

We’ve got rumbles from the agencies. Another couple of weeks of this and the sponsors will be bailing out!

Ha! Nice analogy.

This is something else that's no big deal, right?

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/usa-today-gallup-romney-has-5-point-edge

obviously being behind by 5 points in 12 swing states is not a great thing, but...why did gallup average the results from the 12 states?? that would make sense if we didn't have an electoral collage system, but by averaging them together they ruined about 90% of the informational value.

why did gallup average the results from the 12 states??

because they're polling...our leg!

*bows*

gallup's been doing a lot of shameless "but if you turn the number thiiiiis way" stuff lately

that's a poll of 10/5 to 10/11 fwiw

i'm going to charitably assume that gallup disaggregated the results,state by state,and have it on their website, and the USA Today totally botched the story because they're a USA Today reporter

Wouldn't an average help Obama? I thought the largest lead out of any of those would be Obama in Michigan or Pennsylvania...I'm not sure.

And the ABC/WashPost poll had Obama up by 5 in the swing states this morning...so who knows???

you could speculate one way or another, but that's the problem - there's a state-by-state polling and somehow we're forced to speculate as to what the state-by-state results could be

that would make sense if we didn't have an electoral collage system

Would totally support a collage over this bullshit.

overall an average would help obama w/ those particular states, but we don't know 'how much of each state' is in that number

xpost
lol, typos of yore

Maybe this will make you feel better?

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/15/us-usa-campaign-poll-ipsos-idUSBRE89E1BH20121015

There were some good polls today too, I know. Is it pretty much a foregone conclusion at this point that whoever wins, it's going to be with under 300 electoral votes?

Are these broken down by parties for those of us who dont care to crack into the numbers? I wonder how many super pissed off dems affect the polls of the last 10 days or so, if any.

romney would have to swing things quite a bit to get 300 but that's still well within the realm of possibilities for obama

It's certainly NOT a foregone conclusion that Obama will be under 300.

xp

Likeliest scenario for that is if he wins both Ohio and Florida.

Ohio yes, Florida not so sure.

considering how close florida was last time - during a relative landslide - I'm not very optimistic. I guess a lot of old people have died since then (not enough, but some) - and lotsa hispanics arrived. but still iirc 300 is possibile sans florida.

It would be running the table with the rest of the states to get to 300 if he loses Florida.

Not including North Carolina, that is.

those two seem the least likely of the swing states, tho

Obama has 265 right now if he wins Ohio. Every single state now in play except for New Hampshire is six electoral votes or more. Romney has to win every single one of them.

mr. silver re:above

Nate Silver ‏@fivethirtyeight

Looking at breakouts of "swing states" from national polls is just dumb when there are dozens of actual swing state polls out every week.

Nate Silver ‏@fivethirtyeight

It's basically a choice between looking at a few hundred interviews vs. thousands of them. Not a close call.

Nate Silver ‏@fivethirtyeight

Also, (i) everybody defines swing states differently and (ii) not all swing states are equally important.

Nate Silver ‏@fivethirtyeight

Rasmussen's tracker of swing states is marginally interesting since the sample size is OK. But better IMO if they ran a tracker of OH or VA.

This Morgan Freeman ad is really good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nUDg-O93GU