Actually, that’s your argument if you believe Democrats would hold the Senate if the election were held today.
I predict that Demopublicans will retain control of the House, the Senate and the White House for the foreseeable future, and that until that changes, nothing much will change.
Actually, you’re mistaken. there is a 90% chance that independents will decide who controls the Senate. Sanders is the only sure thing of the three, should Orman be elected. Angus King has made noises about defecting before.
Pulling out of Iraq was not his choice.
Are you saying we should have remained in Iraq whether the Iraqi government we created wanted us there or not, in violation of its sovereignty? (America - fuck, yeah! We don’t ask permission - we just go where we want!)
Absolutely not. It is true that we would have had to pull out regardless of who was President. But Obama campaigned on getting us out and bragged about getting us out. Until it became a problem, where he reverted to form: “I had nothing to do with it! It’s someone else’s fault!”
And BTW, his current profile in courage on immigration… inspiring, really. He can’t even be bothered to spin anymore, he just came right out and said it was about the politics. Good on him. That’s actual change. Or he’s just too tired to pretend anymore. I think he was trying to provoke the Republicans to impeach him. And that’s why you should know your enemy. He’s internalized the liberal critique of the Republican Party. ANd he ended up being so wrong that it put him in an embarrassing situation.
Dammit, that imperial dictator with no respect for the law isn’t doing anything! How daren’t he!
Its less what he does and doesn’t do than his unwillingness to take responsibility for it.
Braley is moving ahead:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2014/senate/ia/iowa_senate_ernst_vs_braley-3990.html
That’s not what he’s said. He’s taken credit, and bragged about it, because it’s very popular. And then when he’s criticized by Republicans, he points out that this was the Bush administration’s policy, at the end of his term, as well. So you’ve got this totally wrong.
Wow, for once you actually criticize Obama in a reality-based way. I applaud you…
And then you sink yourself with this total nonsense.
You don’t think it was a ploy to get them trying impeachment? Given how much Democrats built their message around impeachment for awhile there, I can’t imagine it’s coincidence that Obama dropped his immigration plan soon after Democrats realized impeachment wasn’t going to happen and it wasn’t a useful campaign issue. Much to their chagrin.
Every pundit cites history.
As to what Wang thought about Seante races … cite please.
Here’s his post regarding the Senate races back in May.
As to [specific races](in an election today, Democrats would retain control of the Senate with about 67% probability.), he first discussed them a month later.
At the time he thought AR was far enough in GOP territory as to not be knife edge.
Which exact races did he discuss how strong the Democratic incumbants were that are now in question?
Again though, 65% one way, 70% the other … is still pretty wide open either way. Wang has emphasized that and Silver has emphasized uncertainty as well. And again, these predictions will be very subject to changes. If those are changes that reflect nationwide shifts in perceptions then the whole calculus shifts. I trust Wang’s analysis and I still wouldn’t take a bet without real good odds.
I mostly agreed with you on this part, though this was probably just a tertiary side-benefit and not the primary goal.
Their predictions are going to change the closer we get to the election and the more polls come out, that makes their current predictions fairly worthless.
Worthless because they might, nay likely will, change along the way, as more data becomes available? Only the absolute and unchanging is worth anything?
These analyses are worth a lot even if what they are worth is telling us that it is really too close to call as a few, currently likely to be close, elections will swing the balance of power, and those might all be influenced one way or the other by unpredictable future events which may ir may not occur. They are not each telling us that one or the other party has a 90% plus chance of winning control on election day. If you require that for a model to be of value then worthless they are. Many of us however see informed, data-based, reads as of value even if they tell us it is too close too call from here.
It’s not punditry. Fundamentals have a long history and a solid track record in Presidential elections: IIRC Fair published his first pure-fundamentals model in 1980.
Fair also has an off year model, which doesn’t perform as well. Hey, I try not to pretend that all the evidence points in a single direction. Sam Wang may deserve greater weight than 538, but the fact is 538 is more consistent with the other models: SW carves out his own space in this election. Which is good for learning, actually.
They are worth far more than 90%+ of the horse race commentary you read in the media. But you have to be statistically numerate to some extent. Using the weather example, 10 day forecast probabilities routinely shift as you get closer to the day the actual weather takes place. That doesn’t make the 10 day forecast useless. Heck, 1 year forecasts are also worth something: it’s fair to say that the chance of rain in August is a lot higher in upstate New York than in the Central Valley of California. Yet you will still see shifts in probabilities as you approach a day that rains.
Long history I’ll grant. More of a solid history than flipping a coin I’ll grant. But solid in comparison to polling data, when even a moderate amount of polling is available? I see no evidence to support that. Basically if you have nothing else to go on then “fundamentals” (e.g. “The President’s party is at a disadvantage in midcyle mid-terms”) are better than nothing. But how much do they add when you have something else to go on? Wang’s point, if he is to be believed, is that each one adds its own additional error bar, or as he puts it, each adds additional noise as well as additional signal and the more you add the more the additional noise obscures the signal. Fundamentals are great at predicting past events … but future ones?
But polls have to be put in their place. Long before an election, a poll will tend to reflect name recognition to a large extent. Otherwise Sam Wang could confidently predict that HIllary Clinton has a 98% chance of being President. Of course, he could have made a similar prediction in Aug. 2006 as well. A poll taken before the candidates are finalized is a poll taken before a campaign has really gotten started, and thus of limited use.
I guess Rothenburg couldn’t let Wang make all the bold predictions himself:
http://www3.blogs.rollcall.com/rothenblog/elections-2014-stu-rothenberg-senate-republican-gains/
Even though his model doesn’t say it, he predicts a sizeable GOP wave.
I see that Mr. Rothenburg is making his predictions on the basis of instinct and history. In short, punditry.
If his model doesn’t say it, why is he?