Symmetry required it: 2012 american general election thread #2

determining the proper height of trees

Communicating with moisture vaporators.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lpshttdIbC1qeslf7o1_500.jpg

Also: any scenario involving rubber gloves.

"LET ME SEE YOUR FUDGE"

AP: Paul Ryan To Begin Airing TV Ads For His Wis. House Seat

lool

I was wondering if he was running for that as well.

Symmetry required it.

When was the last time that happened, Lloyd Bentsen?

Didn't Biden run for the Senate again in 2008?

Lieberman.

Lieberman too, rather

is it that he's running, or is that he has to run advertisements? it seems like he'd get enough publicity from being the vice-president on the ticket, but what do i know.

I think the ad running is telling of something, IE "Sir, a lot of your constituents are thinking you're a dumb fuckhead now." "UH."

also hes thinking maybe this vp thing might not work out

"Damn I need to keep my government job with its sweet benefits."

Of course, the thing is: Romney loses, Ryan keeps his seat and committee chairman job, GOP continues to hold the house, sequestration etc happens -- EPIC SNITFIT.

ya its kinda interesting romney loses and his political career is over while ryans left sitting pretty the bastard

http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j186/DonaldDouglas/Second%20Americaneocon/tumblr_m8lmkeymvn1rv57kko1_500.jpg

xpost, no, romney loses, ryan keeps his seat, gop holds house, and then a great new golden era of bipartisanship emerges as the republicans realize that their civic duty is to cooperate with those across the aisle, to focus on the things that unite us, not the things that divide us. after all, with no second term for obama to prevent, what possible incentive would they have to continue obstructing?!?!!

my wife keeps asking me why people think Ryan is attractive

its just a meme

also almost every politician is hideously disfigured so they kinda picked him by default

yeah i don't get that either!

i can't figure out if he's hot for wisconsin or hot for washington

Big nose, long ears, sunken-in blue eyes… sounds like a handsome dude to me!

and his hairline is so LOW and ~pointy~

i can't figure out if he's hot for wisconsin or hot for washington

hot for teacher?

Putin thanks Romney

"The most important thing for us is that even if he doesn't win now, he or a person with similar views may come to power in four years. We must take that into consideration while dealing with security issues for a long perspective," he said, speaking after a meeting with Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic, according to Interfax news agency.

sadly he may be correct with that first sentence at least

This is why 538's current projection puzzles me:

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

TPM is obviously Obama-friendly, and I have to assume their polling is going to be credible. So: they've got it 256-219 in favor of Obama, with the remaining 63 electoral votes (four states) in the toss-up category. Obama is up in all of them, but the margins are +0.9 (Florida), +1.8 (Ohio), +1.0 (Wisconsin), and +0.7 (Iowa). Granting that Romney would have to win the first two plus one of the two others, I just don't see how that translates to an 80% win probability for Obama with such small margins. I honestly don't.

80% isn't that much really

the chances of Romney essentially running the table in all the close states being at 20% sounds about right to me

538 has a formula, tmp just has averages

I don't know (xpost)--it just doesn't to me, and I'm pretty good with probability. If Romney had to run the table with seven or eight states, I'd agree--but you're looking at moving three out of four states a point or two. I also know, probably thanks to Silver, that states don't move in isolation--movement tends to be across the board. So if Romney could move a point in general, that would likely ripple out to those four states.

I'm not questioning Silver--he understands this stuff inside-out, I'm a gut-feeling amateur. I'm just trying to understand why and coming up short.

538 adjusts for house effects and tpm doesnt, so it could be the 538 thinks those states are further appart then tpm does

the thing with models is that the numbers that come out of them can occasionally be opaque even to the people who make them. (Also this may be obvious but the "80% chance of winning" on 538 isn't the output of a static formula; they run 10,000 simulations (or whatever), and in 80% of them, Obama hits 270 EVs.)

i'm headed out the door so i don't have time to skim through 538's methodology, which i haven't read in quite a while, and tpm's, which i've never read, but i'm assuming they've provide the answer here.

but could it be that the 538 model predicts what would happen if the election was held TODAY? with a few months to go, a ~1.0% lead in 4-5 states could easily shift one way or another, true. but if the election were held tonight, it would be pretty unlikely that all 4-5 swing states would fall in one direction? i dunno.

It's probably as simple as that (xxpost)--he doesn't have those four states that close. It they were all in the Obama +2 -- +4 point range, it would make more sense to me.

Yeah, that's what Bill James would always do, run thousands of simulations. And Silver comes from a baseball background.

"If they..."

538 has a thing that predicts it today 'now cast' but their main prediction is for election night

tpm has obama up 2.8% nationally and 538 has him up 4%, that could be the house adjustment or how they weight the polls over time or something else

He's got Obama up to 86% for today, 80% for Nov. 6.

man they should just have the election today

If Romney had to run the table with seven or eight states, I'd agree--but you're looking at moving three out of four states a point or two.

Romney's 219 there includes VA and NC, though. If you include those, he has run the table with five states including both Ohio and Florida.

Georgia at three points is amazing, by the way. Clinton carried it in '96.

nate silver knows his shit and his model is complex (and he describes different pieces of it at different times). projection is far from a perfect science, but to the extent to which humans can accurately predict things like elections, i think nate silver is the best.

i think everyone pretty much already agrees with what you're saying, just wondering aloud about certain aspects of how he does it

he should draft a post for nov. 5 with a big focus on tarot cards, the history of phrenology, birther-style handwriting analyses &c&c

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/how-our-primary-forecasts-work/

house effects + also another huge thing is giving heavier weight to polls that have performed better in the past