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?

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

Word

Morgan Freeman for president, obviously

I actually wish all political ads could be this classy

Freeman might have trouble overcoming the "boinking his step-granddaughter" hurdle that has stopped so many other presidential campaigns in their tracks.

but he sounds good! reminds me of someone else, i can't quite recall who...

I don't want Candy Crowley in there tomorrow night. I've seen enough of her to know that she is fairly neutral. I want a moderator who's in the tank for Obama.

lol

conv upthread made me think of ways the debate could be improved and I realized the best debate would be no moderator + no prepared subjects, just throw em up there and let the yelling begin

wait maybe it was another politics thread, anyway whatever

ideal debate would be four rounds of rock, paper, scissors

rock paper zing

for 'zing' you make a z with your hands, zing beats paper but not rock

conv upthread made me think of ways the debate could be improved and I realized the best debate would be no moderator + no prepared subjects, just throw em up there and let the yelling begin

how about a series of escalating uncomfortable situations? romney and obama just have to stand there and deal with whatever comes however they see fit. first some lady walks up to obama and starts calling him a muslim or whatever. then you find an extremist who hates mormons with a visceral passion and throw him at romney. this Religious Confrontation portion of the debate should actually be pretty easy for them as they'll make appeals to tolerance and support each other. but then there's a staged event where someone in the audience is assaulted and it initially appears that one of romney's sons did it. obama is somehow the only eyewitness to the event and is required to testify on stage, but every time he starts to speak his microphone gives off crazy feedback and jim lehrer covers his ears in disgust. then everyone in the auditorium starts making out for a few minutes and the candidates have to figure out what to do with THAT. someone turns the heat up to 84. the clocks are adjusted so that it appears that the 90 minutes have elapsed, which causes confusion because obviously it's only been about 20 minutes or so - or has it?! the debate concludes with a real life fire in the auditorium, and the doors are locked. there's a key that sits in a locked box between obama and romney, but the only way to open it is to answer some sort of trivia question that only one of them would know the answer to. but it's a really hard question so it takes a few minutes and meanwhile people are dying. something along those lines.

or, you know, maybe there's a bit where obama realizes that one entire section of the audience is made up of friends and family of innocent civilians he killed

Z S otm, great TV at the very least

This hypothetical debate is only available on Russian P2P websites.

and meanwhile people are dying.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qdtG0oiJnJU/0.jpg

Ryan and Biden are watching this debate together behind a one-way mirror glass booth.

ZS is a genius

CNN instant poll reactions coming from audience comprised entirely of bestial brony ex-convicts

i.e. Congress