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?

and frankly w/o the benefit of hindsight all presidents are ciphers,no?

in terms of daddy issues, romney is in the mold of gw bush trying to eclipse politically powerful fathers while obama is in the clinton absentee dad boat. al gore is in the powerful dad boat as well and it's interesting to see how his life changed (and seems more self-actualized) once the expectation of the presidency was off the table.

Wow--Romney's moved ahead on the RCP electoral college map:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/2012_elections_electoral_college_map.html

And he's almost pulled even on TPM's:

http://core.talkingpointsmemo.com/election/scoreboard

surprised he ever trailed on RCP

Something's going on, because that first debate can't be responsible for shifts like this.

sorry bam, america just isn't that into you

i'm guessing the latest polls don't take into account the second presidential debate.

but yeah, i'm not in panic mode but as usual i'm baffled, feel 0% connection to half the country

Chait and Silver have already speculated: Obama's bump (which always looked baffling to me) was inflated and coming down anyway, a move which coincided with the first debate.

"Something's going on, because that first debate can't be responsible for shifts like this."

I wonder if they are oversampling Republicans </conspiracy>. I think I'll start a website and adjust all the numbers back to Obama by oh let's say 7%.

shit is gonna bounce around, and probably revert to something like the pre-october mean, though probably a little closer than that.

i'm not an old political eye or anything but i don't think romney wants to peak in mid-october

Obama's bump

INSIDE: SEE whose bump's NOT showing!!!

Nate Silver ‏@fivethirtyeight
Gallup poll real bad for Obama. Marquette poll (WI) pretty bad for Obama. Other polls pretty good for Obama. Canceled out in forecast.

ok then

Why are you looking at colors on an RCP map? AFAICT all they signify is whether a particular candidate is more or less than 5% ahead of the other guy in a given state's polling average. The distinction between a "toss up" and a "lean" is an arbitrary cutoff. Pennsylvania slipped down exactly to +5 Obama, so it became a "toss up", and North Carolina went +5.6 Romney so it became "lean Romney". It's crazy to think Romney's going to win Pennsylvania, and it doesn't matter if he wins NC, so it's all moot. If you want to feel a little better, go to "create your own map" and click "no toss ups" to fill in the states where no candidate leads more than +5 in the polling averages.

shit is gonna bounce around

street poll

Starting to join Morbz in "annoyed with the horserace shit" zone.

(xpost) I just looked at the totals and was taken aback. Good point about Pennsylvania, though.

Okay, this looks good:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/158060/unadjusted-unemployment-mid-october.aspx

Very good, even, although hopefully the good won't be adjusted out of existence.

barry lost 3.2% today on intrade

http://www.intrade.com/v4/markets/contract/?contractId=743474

i was expecting (wrongly) that strong second debate performance would halt the slide

dudes it's been less than 48 hours

until a couple days ago we were STILL getting data about the first one. Let's watch "The Cosby Show" reruns instead.

intrade was all but convinced the health care act was going down by the supreme court. like 70-80%. they dont know shit.

" feel 0% connection to half the country"

ditto except raise that to 95% of the country

i can confirm 0% connection to half. i strongly suspect 0% with most others but am waiting for more data.

*BOOP BEEP BOOP B-B-B-BEEP BOOP B-B-BEEP BEEP*

intrade is interesting in certain circumstances. w/ a supreme court decision there are 9 people or really 2-3 people and you are just trying to predict what those people are gonna do. there's no reason to think that a betting market in something like that would do anything but put a numerical value on conventional wisdom. which is sorta interesting in its own right but not very fortune-telling.

I read a blog post this morning that talked about how closely intrade matches nate silver's model - maybe not because it's a good market so much as because people are just betting w/ one source of information, nate silver.

but there are other times when there might be some information out there that can be discovered by the market - like when paul ryan was rumored as the vp pick I looked @ intrade and the number was pretty much at 'sure thing' long before the media was. and in other cases it's just useful to have a benchmark for conventional wisdom.

this is pretty interesting:

A USA Today/Gallup poll of registered voters in 12 swing states found that more women considered abortion the most important election issue over jobs and the economy.

I think those kinda things need context because the women most likely to be 100% voting for obama - and would be voting democrat regardless - are presumably the women who consider abortion the most important election issue. vs how many of those women are swing voters and might actually vote on that issue.

Strength of a person's motivation is dependent on the strength of their emotion. That is why the words motive, motion and emotion all share the same root. Offhand, I can think of many reasons why women might be more emotionally involved, on average, with the issue of abortion than men would be, but mainly just one big reason.

i don't know, it's such a polarized issue that it seems like whoever would count it as their most important issue would already have made up their mind on romney vs. obama. i.e., there are also tons of women who vehemently OPPOSE abortion and also consider it to be the most important issue, and they would be 100% voting for romney, i'm assuming. so i'm not sure how much of a "swing voter" issue it is because there's little chance for obama to bring women who deeply oppose abortion over to his side.

salon had an interview with the woman who asked about equal pay, noted Undecided Voter:

I asked her to clarify how she defined feminism, given that she’d told me she was passionate about “women’s equality in the workforce” and had said, “I’m very protective of my reproductive rights.” Fenton said, “I’m not only concerned with women.”

Did she think that one candidate would be better for women? “That’s hard to say,” she said. “I can only speculate, but if I had to guess, gosh, my gut says President Obama. Based on the fact that he has said, I know he has two daughters so the cause is close to him. Governor Romney has granddaughters, that might help."

i wonder if she's ever tried to do any research on romney's and obama's positions? probably not. why would she? she's an undecided voter

gosh!

genghis khan had a ton of daughters

I can only speculate.

(needless to say tho the right has been hysterically ugly to her for viciously promulgating the liberal myth of wage disparity)

Are Zogby polls pretty well done? They've got Obama up in Florida.

I think they/he were/was considered a bit of a joke in '08.

An impression I likely got from Silver.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/07/math-fight-nate-silver-vs-john-zogby

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/gallup-vs-the-world/?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-thecaucus

"gosh"

That statement tells you all you need to know about the electorate at large

Actually thought Romney had the "gosh" vote locked up (alone with the "golly" and "gee" vote). Good sign for Obama.

"jeepers"

http://thehill.com/blogs/twitter-room/other-news/262729-dennis-miller-endorses-romney-as-the-gosh-president

I reaaaaaaaaaally wish pols and Beltway pundits -- mostly but not exclusively men -- would stop separating "abortion" from "economic issues."

being an undecided voter & actually getting to ask the two candidates a question & still being unable to gauge who might be superior with relevance to the question's answer, i feel like this tells us a lot about why undecided voters are undecided

in this woman's case i think it might be an aversion to politics itself. i mean, saying you care very much about gender equality and reproductive rights but don't consider yourself a feminist says to me you keep most the contemporary discourse at arms' length

This kinda stuff just reminds me of why we have to reinforce the teaching of social studies/civics/&c.

Also, look how terrible most people's access to political news is. Effin' cable news or the top of the hour headlines on your local radio station.

good news ilxors!

http://i48.tinypic.com/qnahjt.png

The national forecast is almost exactly the same as the Ohio forecast (no surprise there).

He seems to have never had much doubt about Ohio - boost seems related to Virginia and Colorado tipping blue once again.

matt stoller said the high debate ratings reflected an electorate starved of info, watchu think abt that