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?

he's talking about cherry-picking the examples for that one blog post, not the data for his model

"(flawed)" was only intended to modify the baseball part of the sentence, it was poorly phrased and i apologize

This should be renamed to the Nate Silver thread.

he casts a shadow like pitchfork on ilm threads

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/15/a-bayesian-take-on-julian-assange/ seems legit

haha someone linked to that the other day. wtf nate.

OBAMANIA: THE GATHERING

i.e. man this thread got weird

only on the internet: "to make this more understandable to the common man, imagine rolling a d10..."

On intuition vs probability, my favorite illustration is the Monty Hall Problem. You can make people do the math themselves, and they still won't believe it.

Obama hasn't tapped enough mana to be able to bring out his Wall of Dem GOTV, and his Biden artifact hasn't done much to stop Romney's endless supply of Rethuglican Imps. He should have used a different deck, IMO...

No surprise that Obama is using a rainbow deck, nor Romney sticking to a straight red one. His Rovian Dragon was surprisingly ineffective though...

Now, if we want to examine this from a GURPS lens....

ok I'll stop now.

GURPS ironically well suited to simulating political fights.

I'm not especially math-geeky, but Silver's probabilities make great sense to me in that he's not really stating the probability of a win or a loss for each candidate so much as he is evaluating the probability that the state-by-state polls are exactly correct, or if the actual voting outcome will fall to one side or the other of the polls' margins of error, then he is synthesizing all these probabilities in terms of electoral college outcomes, and finally correlating these electoral college outcomes with the win for either candidate.

So long as the polling margins of error allow a way for Romney to amass 270+ electoral college votes, there is a non-zero chance for Romney to win. At this time, that non-zero chance is roughly 22.6%, according to Silver's models. iow, that would be the quantum state of the election, if the election were Schrodinger's Cat.

did the numbers move apart dramatically in '08 (or '10 I guess)? I would assume that the percentages snowball as you get closer without any movement towards the underdog.

Obama basically never lost a 4+ (at least) point lead after September.

I mean in nate's model did it go from like 80 to 95% in the last week or so?

As I understand it, because the announced margins of error of the polls do not change as the election nears, if the polls theoretically kept producing unchanged results week after week, Nate's "win percentages" probably would stay static, too.

fwiw both votamatic and the princeton guy have obama at 90%+ to win, kinda curious where nates 25% is coming from, theres def not that much chance the polls will move to romney win in the next week, a lot of it has to be mistrusting the polls or some other mysterious thing

he hides behind flowers

nate's model includes non-poll economic measurements that 'predict the future' but that is slowly removed from the model as the election approaches. so even if the polls stay the same his numbers would be changing.

xp

but that is = but that are

ya but theres a week to go so that stuff shouldnt factor anymore

I mean the economy is not going to shift between now and the election

is that last job report supposed to come out friday? will nate silver have time to cook those numbers too?

just put the numbers in a pot nate

btw we are on a first name basis w this guy now

Nate Silver ‏@fivethirtyeight
7 polls released in Ohio in past 48 hours: Obama +2, Obama +3, Obama +3, Obama +3, Obama +5, Obama +5, Obama +5. #notthatcomplicated

lol

I know this will be shot down immediately by three or four of you, but I was wondering if that final jobs report could have a marginal effect if it were at one extreme or the other--say, +200,000 or in the red. If it's where it probably will be, in that +50,000 - +125,000 range, no effect. But would an extreme number be enough to affect a very close state?

its less the 'effect' and more that positive economic data suggests that people were gonna vote for the incumbent cause their lives were going better

I think there's some disagreement about this, but imo job numbers are more of an index of what people are feeling in their personal lives than a number that actually sways people. I think the report is mostly priced into ppl's already existing opinions + poll responses before jobs report even comes out. ymmv etc

pretty sure our economy is going back into the shitter after the election since the eurozone has unemployment up to 11% due to their awesome deficit cut to prosperity plan.

dont tell anyone tho.

I mean good news is good news and bad news is bad news but the type of people who can tell you what a job report means also are not undecided voters in Ohio. I mean maybe like 3 of them or something. but just think back to the town hall meeting and ask yourself if those people know what the last jobs report number was.xp

***vizualizes***

The guy who got together with his co-workers to come up with the question on Libya: he knew.

Yeah, the people that pay attention to job reports are unlikely to favor this one over the past 4 years' reports, and the people that don't pay attention will continue to not pay attention.

I mean good news is good news and bad news is bad news but the type of people who can tell you what a job report means also are not undecided voters in Ohio. I mean maybe like 3 of them or something. but just think back to the town hall meeting and ask yourself if those people know what the last jobs report number was.xp

― iatee, Wednesday, October 31, 2012 6:29 PM (25 minutes ago)

actually no news is good news

i just voted-- maybe i shoulda waited for the jobs report.

This is great (via Salon):

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/31/Chris-Christie-Welcomes-President-to-the-Post-Obama-Era

it's been almost three weeks since Romney gave an interview and more than a month since he answered a single question from the reporters that travel with him. He can't, obviously. He can't answer questions about his auto industry claims and now he can't answer about FEMA either.

is this getting traction in the MSM/ cable news? seems like a p big deal to me if Romney won't answer questions from the reporters traveling with him

― it's smdh time in America (will), Wednesday, October 31, 2012 11:45 AM (4 hours ago)

Watched some of the network news yesterday and it was mostly storm coverage, so no mention of the fact that he was asked 11 times if he would still de-fund FEMA and ignored it each time. I'm guessing the Biden challenge on the auto industry claims might make the news tonight.

car companies themselves pushing back seems p noteworthy

This is great (via Salon):

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/31/Chris-Christie-Welcomes-President-to-the-Post-Obama-Era

― clemenza, mercredi 31 octobre 2012 23:44 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

someone please tell me this bullfeces

Romney’s lead in the national polls may appear small, but it is likely much more significant, since the electorate that shows up on Tuesday will include proportionally fewer Democrats than most polls have assumed thus far.

Conservatives are beginning to understand that, though few will say so openly, for fear of encouraging complacency among voters, or tempting superstition.

xp you gotta be kidding me?

polls dont assume a gop/dem split they just call people

I love the "You shouldn't put too much stock in their predictions...because I HAVE A PREDICTION TOO!" rhetorical style that is so popular in election season

Here's the key paragraph from the Christie piece:

But the truth about Christie’s outreach to Obama is blindingly obvious: Mitt Romney is now running away with this election, freeing Christie to praise the president without fear that doing so will tip the scales. (Followed by Mordy's quote.)

will include proportionally fewer Democrats than most polls have assumed thus far.

Mitt Romney is now running away with this election

I read these sorts of pronouncement and I begin to fear that the invisible voters may steal this election, yet.