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?

Guess what: if the research is correct, up to at least one in five Americans have sociopathic tendencies strong enough to believe that full-on overt fascism would be a great idea and total improvement. There's a reason why Alan Keyes got the numbers he did when he ran against Obama, or why Nixon's approval ratings were nonzero on the day he got on that helicopter to leave office, or why Dubya's numbers never dropped elong a certain point. What do you do, how do you adjust your Enlightenment-era view of the benefits of rationality, reason, and democracy when knowing how fucked up a large enough percentage of people think?

Education, education, education.

As a displaced NJ voter, by order of the governor, I can now vote by email. However, this seems to require a printer and a scanner, so it's not quite as easy as it sounds. Not sure if this will invite massive absentee ballot fraud.

im glad that they are giving people affected by the storm more convenient voting options, this is incredibly stupid though. do they not know that pdfs can be interactive?

#jersey

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/04/3081614/florida-democratic-party-files.html

oh yeah -- I had a friend in line over there. Shit was crazy.

a line to vote in FL. thank god we have all-mail voting in WA.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A6z07-WCcAAIrju.jpg:large

insane

voter suppression in FL is so real. i've had multiple convos with family members this week about friends who have waited 5+ hours in line.

one of the reasons that it takes so long to vote -- i'm sure alfred could attest to this -- is because the ballots are 10+ pages long. the ballots list the full text of all ballot measures in both english and spanish. rick scott is actively attempting to make voting the most loathsome act on earth.

After my eight-hour voting wait in 2008 i will never really be impressed by voting lines again, but that was really a matter of a significant jump in turnout and people really being super excited about voting for Obama, not a matter of anyone deliberately trying to make it hard to vote IMO.

crazy thats for early voting

The ballot is insane: five double-sided pages. One amendment "synopsis" requires a full page of legal doggerel. Voting yes to another amendment will make Obamacare unenforceable in Florida. Yet another restricts state funds for abortions.

I mailed my absentee ballot three weeks ago, about which I'm still conflicted. Naturally I avoided the fate of a friend who arrived at 6:15 a.m. at a polling station yesterday morning and didn't leave until a quarter to one, but my 88-year-old grandmother who vote in person on Tuesday.

Charles Pierce has been terrific: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/

btw lines for early voting were insane in 2008 and 2010 too but when I voted on Election Day I waited ten minutes in line both times.

I need to find a story analyzing whether early voting diminishes length of time spent waiting on ED or if it's merely a cosmetic thing.

As for the latest Pierce column, love his allusion to David Gergen blather as "enervating fatuousness."

Is that Nation link as disturbing as it sounds or a little paranoid?

here they just put the full text of the ballot measures in the voters' pamphlet (this year's is 151 pages!). the ballot itself is one two-sided page.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/2012/11/axelrod-theyre-in-deep-trouble-148315.html

comments on this post are psychotic - if you're into that kind of thing

Rs Smth · Top Commenter
This Veteran will not defend an Obama Amerika!
Reply · 182 · Like · 11 hours ago
Rs Smth · Top Commenter
If Obama wins , you'll have to split the republic Red from Blue in order to remain free.

my voting precinct in (flooded out town in) New Jersey has electrical power and is a block away from my (still powerless) apartment. so i plan to do it old school and just walk to the precinct to vote instead of trying to do the email/fax voting option.

http://m.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/president-obama-and-mitt-romney-begin-final-push-toward-election-day/2012/11/04/14b1923e-269b-11e2-8d6a-9b57d8a5215c_story.html

Love the last paragraph

Liberals are Hypocrites
I remember, not too long ago, when liberals said they would retain the house in 2010... they didn't. Then they said they would recall Scott Walker... they didn't. Now they say Obama will win re-election. ;)
Reply · 282 · Like · Follow Post · 18 hours ago

Maura Bl · Top Commenter · Boston, Massachusetts
its invent math Ma! lol first it was inventive spelling and reading which has done nothing more than make our kids dumb ...
Reply · 39 · Like · 18 hours ago

Lana Savin · Top Commenter
@Jack D Howard...so sick of the hypocrisy of liberals, I haven't heard about conservatives threatening riots and mayhem if Romney loses, nor have I heard about conservatives vandalizing private property and cars because they have an Obama sticker or sign. Nor have I heard of them threatening to kill black babies and black people in general. And nowhere in Paul's comments to he say he hated Obama. Democrats have become the true party of hate, the secret is out so stop the BS
Reply · 9 · Like · 18 hours ago

ok sorry, I just...

We all probably need to take a step back, and take a deep breath.

Yes. Yesterday I was driving through Easthampton, MA and saw a few people standing around waving Romney signs and a Don't Tread on Me Banner, which is not a common sight around here. Because the Republicans in my life have dialed it way down in the last few years or are newly minted fake-Libertarians, I felt this desperate need to talk to these people — to interact w/ them rather than read their FB comments or see them soundbitten on Comedy Central. So I parked around the corner so it didn't look like I was pulling over just to needle them or start a fight or whatever, but by the time I got there they were gone.

Hopefully that can serve as the epitaph of this election.

I feel like a such a clown every few months for having the same, private epiphany — "Oh yeah, this country has gone seriously, irretrievably off the rails." But it does feel different this time. Not because "they" are any more vitriolic or dishonest than before but because there is ZERO OVERLAP in the competing narratives.

The odds are probably better for term limits legislation or comprehensive gun control than for anything that will walk back the FCC deregulation that has allowed for this. Clear Channel, Fox, Gannett, Time Warner...the system they've been gifted with is profitable ONLY by permanent encampment on one of the two sides.

(^this is obv. a false equivalency in strictly ideological terms)

obama -- 67% to win on intrade as 7:30am EST the day before election

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

some of you probably couldnt bring yourself to vote for O unless you checked the maniac militiamen comments, I suspect. (At least leave me that illusion.)

(At least leave me that illusion.)

Why? Your desire for this illusion would seem to bolster the thought that you're mainly in this for the superiority. (For the record, I'm voting for Jill Stein and suspect I'm in the minority w/r/t to being generally sympathetic toward yr position)

whatev, i don't get that

Yeah, no.

Sorry...it sounds to me like you are saying Obama voters require wingnut noise to justify their votes, which suggests they're not thinking clearly. And yet you don't really believe this but would prefer to hold this illusion....

yes, yes

There you go, believing in things you don't believe in.

Morbs beleives in contrarianism.

Nate Silver ‏@fivethirtyeight
Obama's win probability peaked at 87% on 10/4, last day before polls reflected Denver debate. Fell to 61% on 10/12. Now fully recovered.

ha at mobuto's description of unskewed polls: "generated in the same way that a kid turns an F into an A by drawing an extra bar down the right side of it."

welp

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/11/this_could_get_weird.php?ref=fpblg

ha at mobuto's description of unskewed polls: "generated in the same way that a kid turns an F into an A by drawing an extra bar down the right side of it."

Loved that line. It was a really good piece all over.

Yesterday I was driving through Easthampton, MA and saw a few people standing around waving Romney signs and a Don't Tread on Me Banner, which is not a common sight around here.

There are weird pockets of hardcore conservatism in that area (cf. my former employers in the adjacent town who stalked around the office muttering "I can't believe we have a n----r president" the morning after the 2008 election).

A bit of levity:

http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/barack-obama-s-cold-calls

Either Obama will win, or polling/poll analysis is finished. Not sure whether that's comforting or not.

Sidenote: I wonder whether Romney's personality explains the infamous divide between national polls and battleground state polls. That is, the more you see of him, the less you want to vote for him.

Raymond, that was awesome.

Either Obama will win, or polling/poll analysis is finished. Not sure whether that's comforting or not.
--Ye Mad Puffin

Not likely. Methodologies might get adjusted, but that's it. People don't seem to remember how wrong the polls were in 2000.

Thanks man

ya that was great

xp

I think we are probably in a transition period w/r/t polling methodology and online/tech-related polls will def slowly take over. but its not like the field of statistics disappears if it turns out there was some huge methodology problem this time.

Either Obama will win, or polling/poll analysis is finished.

No! The polling just says that Obama is substantially more likely to win than he is to lose. But he could still lose. All the polls give us is an estimate. If Romney wins California, then yeah, that's a strike against polling. But I don't think that's going to happen.

good post on the difference in methodology of the various polling agrigators, agrees w my suspicion that Nate silver is v conservative in calling an election a lock http://election.princeton.edu/2012/11/04/comparisons-among-aggregators-and-modelers