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?

It's best to not argue with people who were likely conceived at an L.A. Guns concert.

simultaneous lol & middle finger

I rolled my eyes and then I remembered when I saw Poison at the Cap Centre in Landover, Maryland in 1988 when I was 13, I saw a couple openly having sex in full view of everyone and theoretically that could have resulted in a baby who would be voting in a few days.

if it makes you feel any better, I'm voting for Obama

lol

today in the war on our friend nate silver http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/11/todays-war-on-nate-silver-quiet-flows-the-don-edition.html

i am currently up about $28. looks like i sold romney at pretty much the exact top of his market.

Proof that Romney is already doing good things for the economy.

OF ENGLAND

GERMANY ACTUALLY

I was torn on which to go with tbh, England seemed funnier

i think your instincts were solid

Wanted to post this long quote (somebody named Gelman, via Sullivan) because it's exactly the point I was making yesterday. (Sorry if someone's already linked).

I can simultaneously (a) accept that Obama has a 72 percent chance of winning and (b) say the election is too close to call. What if the weatherman told you there was a 30 percent chance of rain — would you be shocked if it rained that day? No. To put it another way, suppose Mitt Romney pulls out 51 percent of the popular vote and wins the election. That doesn’t mean that Nate Silver skews the polls (as is suggested by this repulsive article at Examiner.com, which, among other things, criticizes Silver for being thin and having a soft voice). Romney winning the election with 51 percent of the vote is well within the margin of error, as Silver clearly indicates. That’s what too close to call is all about.

gelman is a statistician who does a lot of polisci stuff and he has a good blog

it's true in a v limited way of thinking, like maybe it's too close to call but not too close to put a probability on, one tells you something the other nothing

another way of looking at it is one way would help you win at poker, the other not so much

Everyone take a nap for the next 5 days.

Great idea.

gelman's better critique in another post was that as far as these sorta conceptual probabilities go, 538 is probably being *too* precise and rounding to the nearest 10% would be less confusing

xp

omg imagine the seizures when the prediction flipped from 60 to 50%

and in this case the only poker here is intrade or whatever. but as far as just understanding what's going on 72% vs 73% doesn't help people and can be deceiving in a sense.

yeah I thought of that too, when you round to the nearest 10% people misinterpret things in the other direction.

it helps show the movement over time, if maybe not day to day

and it would be way less fun to check every day

I think he should just do it like the homeland security alert system, 5 colors

top threat level soviet red

I'm guessing the actual results will be slightly better for Obama than the raw polls indicate because a lot of them don't include households without a landline -- missing a lot of the under-30 voters, who don't turn out to the polls as much as others, but who lean Democratic. (I believe 538 takes this into account but I'm not sure.)

the odds of Romney winning goes down the more he says things like this:

http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/10/31/romney-compares-sandy-relief-to-cleaning-up-after-high-school-football-game/

I saw that last night while watching Last Word (ugh, Lawrence O'Donnell) because nothing else was on. Was hoping some other media outlet would pick up on it so I don't have to link to his page.

(xpost) I imagine the world Romney carries around in his head looks a lot like this:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/__hspjzfC024/TDLdWOX1uMI/AAAAAAAABd0/FzCfyhWzQYA/s1600/pleasantville-Islam.jpg

Which I sort of understand--the one in my own head looks something like this:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/auteurs_production/images/film/dazed-and-confused/w448/dazed-and-confused.jpg?1337960424

the world in my head looks like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXT6KrX-PF4

"What World Do You Carry Around in Your Head?"

http://www.springfieldfiles.com/albums/food/0229.JPG

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQiZhghc1d3tWt0yjX1EbUYUoM5iaf6istSZIwzWQWaVEjLhw8Q9Q

^^ good idea, but needs its own thread. not here, plz.

Doesn't one big statistically misread involve the overwhelming, almost exclusive support Obama has among blacks and Latinos? I could have sworn I read something about how the various models have trouble with political data that anomalously skewed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxMD02zU9SE

mittens getting ruffled by a (quite conservative, iirc) iowa radio host about his political waffling vis-a-vis the stance of the mormon church on abortion

holy crap

wait what the hell?

would love to see the setup/context for that, it seems like mitt just starts shouting like crazy for no reason but OMG this guy is a basketcase, really bizarre next to that "silent statue of jello while crowd shouts down global warming protester"

O_o Kinda shows why Mitt hasn't really talked religion much on the campaign trail.

OMG this guy is a basketcase

hey how the fuck else are you supposed to hold all that shit together

the pacing!

Video is from 07?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MRbIwshAvU

this is an odd thing to only see NOW

xxpost Really? Wow. Can't believe it hasn't been passed around more, it's just...the blowsy short-tempered bullying quality of it, it's this glimpse into the board-room hardman Mitt that we got teeny little glimpses of in the debates, the total impatience with the person he's arguing with. I really can't wait for the inevitable tell-alls from his campaign staffers.

http://youtu.be/IFkaCji-UDA

20 min director's cut (rage portion starts @ 10:00

7:45 or so gets onto the topic it seems

OK obv he's a dick in this video but it's almost a relief to see some blood flowing here...I think this actually humanizes him. Also relative to his typical convolutions his argument seems (?) rhetorically sound.

yeah I agree, if anything reminds me of romney in debate #1

I mean he's way more likeable getting his panties in a wad like this — w/o simultaneously wearing that shit-eating smirk.

Yeah I'm actually with him insofar as, the question about the church actually is not really fair or germane. What's staggering is just the realization that there's some kind of human being in there who gets angry and goes ham, y'know? That it takes the specific form of this board-room motherfucker is the icing on the cake really.