Symmetry required it: 2012 american general election thread #2

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

also, iirc, weighing state polls + national polls differently. i think there's a lot of stuff like that. every now and then he mentions a different number in the mix

another thing i remember him talking about is weighing newer numbers over older numbers, but keeping older numbers in the mix, and discounting individual polls that fall way outside consensus

I remember that from 2008, a doppler effect, numbers fading as they recede into the past, not just disappearing.

it's funny that it took as long as it did some a nate silver figure to appear, I remember thinking bout how crappy poll-analysis was back in 2004. but in print, someone coulda been doing this in the 80s.

Romney already trying to work the State Dept. worker's death in Libya politically. Sick.

NEVER FORGET

well here we are

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/state-dept-confirms-death-in-libya-romney-attacks-disgraceful-white-house.php

sick

https://twitter.com/Reince/status/245733811747422208

I should probably go find some tin foil hat forum when I feel like this, but doesn't the whole situation seem kind of manufactured?

cameron:

But having been through every document – and every government document including Cabinet Minutes will be published - the Panel found no evidence of any government trying to conceal the truth.

At the time of the Taylor Report the then Prime Minister was briefed by her private secretary that the defensive and – I quote - “close to deceitful” behaviour of senior South Yorkshire officers was “depressingly familiar.”

so they didn't try and conceal the truth that the police were liars, they just didn't tell anyone and put it safely in secret government papers which have never been published.

duh wrong thread!

why the fuck are ppl protesting an embassy because some asshole posted something stupid on youtube? do they not get what youtube is?

That was my reaction. Although I'd say that once you move into gunfire and rpgs you're out of "protesting" territory.

Odyssey Dawn: a military operations in Libya thread.

why the fuck are ppl protesting an embassy because some asshole posted something stupid on youtube? do they not get what youtube is?

― Mordy, Wednesday, September 12, 2012 8:29 AM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

signs point to no

tho i need to look into whatever this 'movie' is. is it just some dude's channel or is it one of those things that everybody in the anti-islam crowd is bigging up

http://www.leaderpost.com/news/world/7228133.bin?size=620x400s
http://www.faceoff.com/7228133.bin?size=620x400

oh, it's terry jones. ffs.

looool

Not THAT Terry Jones, this one, for anyone who confuses the two: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/08/obama-effigy-hanged-outside-church_n_1581272.html

not a jew.

maybe we need a new thread for that, idk. of course it's political right away. fucking reince priebus, what a gross little shit

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/innocence-of-muslims-terry-jones-video-sparked-protests-libya-egypt.html

rare NY Post otm

http://www.nypost.com/rw/nypost/2012/09/12/covers/front091212.jpg

terry jones is hugely hugely famous across the muslim world. not exactly sure how that happened, but after his koran burning stunt he's the michael jackson of crusader devils over there. this isn't 'just a movie'

that said, the coordinated nature of this whole thing is freaking me out.

it's just a movie like terry jones burning the koran is just an idiot

so then how are there riots and assault on embassies happening?

it's a new mutant version of one of the most powerful underlying incentives for terrorism - the power that it affords non-state actors with few resources to draw attention to a cause. normally we think of that kind of action as a direct one, with some group going out and doing something violent. now with these internetz, globalization, etc, it's possible to make a profoundly ignorant video that no one even knows about in this country, publicize it, and use it to incite a reaction across the world. and there's a neverending well of stupidity. i'm not sure how you mitigate the risk, since you can't really stop stupid people from doing stupid things with internet videos and trying to provoke a reaction.

xposts, Just to be clear, it's not a Pastor Terry Jones production, he just jumped on the bandwagon.

Can't believe Muslims are upset over this video, you'd think we'd have been bombing them for ten years or something...

note that both jones and paranoid islamists have incentive to inflate jones' influence in the US

xp yeah that's true, but publicity by jones was responsible for making it well known in egypt:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/obscure-film-mocking-muslim-prophet-sparks-anti-u-s-protests-in-egypt-and-libya/

I'm sure anti-US protests are going on all the time. If Libya was blowing shit up over here with drones i'd be protesting too.

I'm not totally shocked but, well, still shocked at how inaccurate, unhelpful and inappropriate Romney's response to the Libya mess has been. This guy is even tone-deaf when the mood calls for something simple like sympathy if not outright silence.

Jones is a scumbag, he keeps coming to Dearborn with his followers to harass Muslims.

Scott Galupo:

Before yesterday, I had assumed that the Romney campaign was perhaps mildly spooked by President Obama’s post-convention polling bounce, but nonetheless confident that the bounce would recede and that the race would return to the status quo ante September.

Now: not so much.

The Romney campaign’s reaction to the attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya was, as Daniel Larison says, “hasty and stupid.”

I think Daniel is being charitable.

Think of it: On the eleventh anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, a day in which both campaigns have agreed to a political cease-fire on television, several U.S. foreign service workers are murdered by an angry mob. “Apparently unaware of the timing of the first embassy statement,” as the Times puts it, the Romney campaign crudely parlays the facts of the attacks — angry Muslims kill Americans — into a broader narrative about Obama’s supposed weakness on terrorism and “sympathy” for America’s enemies.

That’s more than hasty and stupid; that’s unconscionable.