Symmetry required it: 2012 american general election thread #2

It'll all come down to a couple counties in Ohio, as usual (looks like)

its just one poll dudes, why when theres like a million poll aggregators and formulas on the internet would anyone possibly care

i feel like if old lizard man had become president we would be at war with 18 different countries

use your illusion

they all obama up by ~3 fwiw

all the latest polls I've seen point toward Obama gains in swing states.

I have to stop myself from getting too excited that Romney's campaign seems to be going off the rails, considering that even in the best-case scenario, we're likely to wake up on Nov. 7 with a 51-49 popular vote "landslide" for Obama and Republicans still controlling the House, and we'll be basically back where we are now, facing big fiscal problems and divided government.

it also looks likely that the Dems will keep the Senate.

nate silvers model has obama not being helped by the electoral math w/romney having a better chance of losing the popular vote while winning the election

we'll be basically back where we are now, facing big fiscal problems and divided government.

― o. nate, Wednesday, September 19, 2012 11:07 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya you cant expect obama to really accomplish much legislatively in his 2nd term, but it will prevent hcr etc from being repealed and pave the way for a democratic win in 16 via inevitable economic recovery, not to mention prevent mitt from giving rich people all of the money

from Silver's blog:
Still, it might be acknowledged that this is among the more confusing periods that we’ve seen in the polls. How do you reconcile a poll showing Mr. Obama with an eight-point lead in Virginia with another putting him at a two-point deficit in Colorado?
Why, if his standing eroded in the Gallup and Rasmussen Reports tracking polls, did he also receive a rather strong poll from NBC News and The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, which put him five points ahead nationally among likely voters?
These polls almost seem to inhabit different universes. As I’ll describe in a separate article, the methodological choices made by pollsters may have something to do with it; Mr. Obama’s bounce has been much more noticeable in polls that use live interviewers and that call cellphones.
But it does not do any good to pretend there is a consensus in the polls when there isn’t. Sometimes there is simply no alternative to remaining patient until one emerges. The downward trend for Mr. Obama in the Gallup and Rasmussen trackers is closest thing we have to a theme in the polls for the time being.
The Impact of ’47 Percent’
There has also been the introduction of a new event in the news cycle: the release of a video, taped secretly, showing impolitic comments that Mr. Romney made at a fund-raiser.
I begin from the premise that there is reason to be skeptical that Mr. Romney’s “47 percent” comments will have all that much effect on the polls. The news media often jumps the gun in declaring events to be “game changers” when they later prove to little effect on the numbers. Mr. Romney’s comments about Libya last week, for instance, were supposed to be very damaging to him, but if anything the numbers have moved toward him since then.
I do not mean to suggest that campaign controversies like this one never matter to voters. But I do think that reporters in Washington or New York, myself included, are not always the best judges of which are the exceptional cases. Furthermore, these judgments are likely to be influenced by the recent polls, meaning that analyses anticipating future reaction among voters may really be lagging indicators.
I have my own instincts about Mr. Romney’s remarks, which are roughly as follows: even if his outlook is a bit less negative than it seemed a week ago, he is nevertheless the underdog in the race, and not in a position where he can afford to alienate any voters who might allow him to climb to 50 percent of the vote. His coalition may already be drawn too narrowly, and this won’t help him with that.
But I’d place rather little value on my instincts, and rather more on the polls. We should know more about the state of the campaign a week from now than we do today.

Sure, it's still way better than the alternative. But I'm afraid the post-election reality may be a bit of letdown.

xp

idk it doesnt seem anyones that excited in the first place

re Silver on lingering effects of Libyan remarks vs. 47 percent, the latter seems closer to home, literally, as/if sinks in that he's talking about so many of us ("not my job to care about")

Yeah I'm not putting out the bunting at any point; assuming as is looking likelier an Obama win it'll be more of schadenfreude combined with weariness that it isn't a lot better all around, from Guantanamo to Planned Parenthood and back.

Nate's right about the "47 percent" remarks not making much difference to how the vote splits. There are only a few undecideds out there, and those who already have made their choice will require a very strong reason to reconsider their vote. Romney saying stupid shit that his campaign later explains away is not a strong enough reason for those who've already cast their votes in their minds.

I don't think any ilxors believe an Obama victory would be anything but a chance to prevent the reactionary right wing from steering us over a cliff. It would be more of a slow erosion of the ground beneath our feet, such as we've seen since 2008.

romney could piss people off enough to vote against him. or even get people who didn't care either way to vote and who wouldn't have voted otherewise. the anger vote!

pave the way for a democratic win in 16 via inevitable economic recovery

lagoonneb

yeah idk, i feel like that the poll numbers don't take into account voter enthusiasm, i really feel like the biggest challenge the romney campaign faces on election day is motivating gotv.

Yeah, the three options are Obama vs Romney vs Fuck This Shit.

I don't think any ilxors believe an Obama victory would be anything but a chance to prevent the reactionary right wing from steering us over a cliff.

I do! But a) I am a chump and b) I have no skin in the game.

the obama campaign had a great ground game in 08 and still has all those phone numbers, and while romney has the benefit of big money being dumped into super PACs, those resources don't easily translate into coordinating voter turnout

Because I still pay for a landline, I get calls from Bam and Rombot workers every day. Do you guys get cell phone calls?

i have a landline too but haven't rec'd any calls from either campaign

I live in Oregon, so both campaigns resolutely ignore me. Florida is in the swing column, ergo daily calls.

i think obama's a pretty good president! i mean given the limits of what he can do and the inherent filth and dirty bloody lying and murdering and crooked racist system he has to work within i think he's done okay. i do think this country would be in a huuuuuuge scary depression if a republican had taken over for dubya. they just would have made things much worse. they would have kept fueling the hate fire too and i think there would have been more attacks here if mccain had won. it would have been ugly. that's my backwards prediction. and obama kinda fought off really ugly in 4 years. i like him. might be the only president in my lifetime that i actually like.

It'll all come down to a couple counties in Ohio, as usual (looks like)

― dow, Wednesday, September 19, 2012 4:00 PM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is that right? i thought it was winner takes all in each state (not county)? why would individual counties matter?

individual counties will tip the state election

ie, winning counties X, Y and Z almost guarantees you will win the state

Because I still pay for a landline, I get calls from Bam and Rombot workers every day

I get opinion poll calls every day. answer one, and they all come runnin... all I will say is that it's fun to falsify data

xp right but if romney wins the close rural counties by like 10 votes each, it doesn't matter if obama gets out an extra 10,000 voters in cleveland. so to say it comes down to close counties is no more true than to say it comes down to how much obama wins the cities by. these bellweather counties get covered a lot in the press, but they aren't actually any more influential than the cities. or am i misunderstanding the system?

if romney wins the close rural counties by like 10 votes each, it doesn't matter if obama gets out an extra 10,000 voters in cleveland.

electoral votes are not distributed by counties

whoever wins the majority of the vote in a state gets all the electoral votes. so 10,000 votes for Obama from Cleveland vs. 9,999 votes for Romney from rural counties = 100% of OH electoral votes going to Obama.

exactly. so a state's EVs are not decided by 1 or 2 counties.

I believe some states distribute their electoral votes proportionally, not winner-take-all.

the bellweather counties are better places for the candidates to spend time/energy cause they're a lot more swing-y so there are more 'votes you can win'

only nebraska and maine, and they don't even do it totally like that xp

I believe some states distribute their electoral votes proportionally

? what are you talking about

If Romney wins the close rural counties by 10 votes each and Obama wins Cleveland by 10K, Obama would still be ahead in OH by over 9000 votes before counting any of the other major cities.

The point is that the margin of victory in the cities is a stronger determining factor than the margin of victory in the rural counties; the cities all have to be close for the rural votes to matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_reform_in_Nebraska

cities are generally solid blue, but the statewide population distribution matters. an overwhelming win in urban areas does nothing if most of your population doesn't live in them.

xp

And looking at counties, especially in suburban areas, is an easier way of looking at data since it encompasses a greater area.

No one wants to constantly hear "If Obama does well in Beavercreek, Bellbrook, Centerville, Fairborn, Huber Heights, Kettering and Xenia…" instead of "If the president does well in Greene County…"

pave the way for a democratic win in 16 via inevitable economic recovery

lagoonneb

― kizz my hairy irish azz (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, September 19, 2012 11:37 AM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is just super basic economics, politics good doctor

Well, Gore lost in 2000 before the recession hit.

gore totally had the way paved for him but couldnt convert

btw guys, how are you celebrating Gerald-Ford-Trapped-In-An-Elevator Day?

http://underthebutton.com/blog/wp-content/imagescaler/c59a7bfd5b669eea92539c45c296a864.jpg

which goes out the window if one thinks 2008 was a preview of an epochal tsunami, good goonie

xxxp

for living in the richest country theres ever been americans have a terrible attitude

lmao @ ford

nobody can really predict the economy, not even the people who get paid to predict the economy, but slow growth / another large recession in the next 4 years is pretty unlikely from a historical perspective

actually i can predict the economy fyi

have you considered daytrading