What does income disparity have to do with anything? The fact that income grows faster at the top then it does the middle has no bearing on how comfortably those people in the middle are living.
Of course, that depends a lot on the state you happen to live, as some states are doing better than others due to a myriad of factors. Of course, if I wanted to engage in some partisianship, I’d point out that I’d much rather live in some backwater city in Utah than I would some liberal stronghold in Illinois.
I commend your use of cites substantiating the above.
Having looked at the suggestions you made in the previous thread, I have to admit there are a number of very good ideas there. As various people mentioned at the time, there is virtually no way today’s Republican Party would ever endorse your proposal. In fact it seems to me the only chance most of those things would be done is if the Democrats keep the Senate and the White House and take back control of the House.
Which leads me to ask this question:
Who are you and what have you done with Martin Hyde?
You can dismiss the evidence, ignore the problem, and wave your hands madly if you like. But the evidence is still there.
As to your personal beliefs about economics, unless you’re on tap for a Romney Cabinet post, in the context of this thread and this forum they simply don’t matter. The fact that you support people whose controlling philosophy is the fantasyland we’ve been discussing matters greatly. Your reasons for supporting them, despite your positions apparently aligning better with the other party’s, *could *be of interest if you’d share them. Your indignation is misplaced.
I’m not backtracking one inch. The entire point of metapolling analysis is to use all meaningful polls to determine the likeliest outcome. And as evidence by Silver’s 2008 predictions, his methodology has an excellent track record.
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Oh, 538. You mean the 538 that predicted Kerry winning by a fairly significant margin through the day of the 2004 election?
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No idea what you’re talking about, sorry. The website did not exist until 2008.
Not a great example, as that particular line was uttered by a loser.
It may true that a really great zinger than change things; again, the 1980 election results were determined by the debate. But I’m not sure that isn’t a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Nothing like it has happened since; Bentsen burned Quayle badly with that comment and then went on to be a historical footnote. Reagan’s “are you better off than you were four years ago” line in 1980 came with just days to go in the campaign, so it was still fresh come Election Day. That won’t happen this year - the debates are in early October - and really, I can’t think of another example of a Presidential debate being decisive. People analyzed and argued over the debates in 2008, 2004, 2000 and on and on, but they rarely much affected the polls at all. VP debates affects polls not in the slightest; the 2008 debate demonstrated Sarah Palin was an utter nitwit and yet her ticket’s popularity remained about the same. People see in debates what they want to see.
Electoral-vote.com did exist in 2004 and basically used the same methodology and didn’t quite get it right. (It predicted like 262 to 261 in favor of Kerry, and 15 too close to call.)
The same thing could happen to 538, because really in 2004 you had a large number of polls in battle ground states all within the margin of error. I don’t actually think Electoral-Vote.com’s approach was wrong or anything, it’s just Bush and Kerry was a very very close thing on the electoral vote front and there was obviously some late shift. (For example every poll had Pennsylvania very close prior to election night, and the same for Florida, in reality Kerry won PA fairly handily as did Bush in Florida, and then Ohio was so close it wasn’t called til the next morning.) In a similarly close election it wouldn’t surprise me if 538 would be unable to decisively predict the winner.
How many of those middle class voters understand the right wants to raise the SS retirement age, cut medicare, cut public education and raise taxes on those earning less than 100k?
I know it sounds insulting, but I’ve never met a middle class conservative voter who understands what the GOP stands for on economic and safety net issues. They seem to think they only want to cut ‘other peoples’ welfare (never theirs or those they care about). The concept that the GOP would increase middle class taxes never even crosses their minds. I’ve never met one who both understands and is ok with their medicare and SS being cut while their taxes go up.
Silver’s model has been demonstrated to be accurate in predicting outcomes.
This model hasn’t. It’s a couple of guys constructing a model that fits results in the past. It has no track record of being accurate in predicting an outcome.
If it works, then I’ll believe it. Until then, explain to me what’s wrong with Silver’s current forecast.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde] Electoral-vote.com did exist in 2004 and basically used the same methodology and didn’t quite get it right. (It predicted like 262 to 261 in favor of Kerry, and 15 too close to call.)
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They aren’t Silver, though. In any case, they called it as “too close to call,” and they were correct. The election was awfully close.
Currently Silver’s calling it as “Obama will probably win,” not that he is guaranteed to win. Now back to the question; what can Romney do to change that?
Right, I was just explaining the issue with electoral-vote.com because it was widely cited in 2004 like 538 is today, and I thought maybe people had confused the two. They are awfully similar.
Obama having less than a 50% approval rating shows that he’s at least vulnerable to losing re-election. But based on what I’m seeing right now, I agree with Nate Silver’s prediction of an Obama victory. I think if Romney wants to have a chance he needs to basically take a page from Reagan’s play book. Keep hammering on Obama, of course, but also clearly stand up and give Americans a clear alternative choice. That’s something John Kerry never really did when he ran against George Bush.
Yes, Kerry was a very different choice from Bush, but the campaign rhetoric was all focused on the failures of the Bush regime. You have to strike a certain balance. I think however that Romney will not do this, the more vague he is the more protected he is from focused attacks on his policy proposals. I think the Romney strategy is “stay in the race as a viable candidate and trust the bad economy to push Obama out of office.” I don’t think the economy is going to push Obama out of office, and I think Romney is too cautious to change that approach, so I predict he’ll lose.
I think he’ll actually end up winning Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and Ohio, but still lose the election. I expect Obama to carry every other state he won in 2008, so he’d have around 283 to Romney’s 255. The only other state I could see going for Romney would be maybe Colorado flipping, but I think Obama will win the western states he won last time.
I don’t know that I think it will happen, but a “long shot upset” flip might be Wisconsin going for Romney, but that still leaves it 273-265 Obama.
Another thing Reagan did against Carter was successfully dismiss claims that he was a right wing extremist. It was something Carter always tried to lay at Reagan’s feet, but Reagan quite masterfully downplayed any issues where he really was to the far right (and there were a few of them where he was.) Romney would do well to try and do that in his convention speech and debate. But I don’t really expect Romney to change anything from what he’s already done, which is why I predict he’ll lose.
I view Romney as very similar to John Kerry in terms of their election attempt. Kerry could have won, but he’d need to have ran the campaign differently, and since that is how he ran the campaign it basically means Kerry wasn’t going to win.
Romney has the same problem, I think he could win, but he’d have to change how he campaigns, but how he campaigns is basically how he is as a candidate and that’s not going to change. That seems circular, but my basic point is there is nothing in this election cycle that should make Romney unelectable but his specific strategy won’t win the White House sans an economic catastrophe.
Christ. He said “there you go again”. That’s it. Just like “I am paying for this microphone” won him the nomination, “there you go again” won the election. A former B-movie actor could have done it.
It would be gracious of you, OMG, to accept RickJay’s clarification of his original claim.
There are a number of election models with differing goals. The 538 model gives Romney 31% odds, which isn’t all that bad actually. Intrade puts Romney at 44% (up today). Nate Silver, the author of the 538 model, seems to have obliquely indicated that the truth is somewhere in between those 2 probabilistic forecasts. I’m inclined to agree. This race isn’t in the can yet.
So OMG. Are you saying Romney has a 90%+ chance of victory? Because if you do, you can make big money at intrade. Why don’t you?
A couple of months ago Bricker honorably put his money where his mouth is and predicted a Romney victory, offering a 50-50 odds bet. That is he stated his prediction as well as the confidence he had in his prediction. I take his views seriously. Bricker: There’s a saying among prognosticators: if you must forecast, forecast often. Have you adjusted your subjective probabilities? Here’s a standard followup question that is posed when the researcher is trying to guage expert opinion: “Think about how you could be wrong, and sketch that scenario. Then consider whether you want to adjust your odds.”
My take is that Fair’s results show that the public is fairly myopic with respect to the economy: the election year figures that matter a lot more than the previous 3 years. So if you think unemployment is important, you would want to look at it’s change from Jan to Oct. The best figure IMHO is personal income growth – but that’s not available until the following year. Nate’s model has a platter full of economic variables (as well as polls). I figure he’s captured all that stuff. What’s left is messaging, personality, social issues, turnout, voter suppression… and let’s not forget developments between now and the election, economic and otherwise.
Incidentally, Nate discusses a lot of puzzles on his blog. One is that polls show that Romney is losing 52-43 percent among registered voters… but only by 49 to 47 among likely voters. So the Democrats have a serious registration/turnout task for themselves. Voter suppression could really make a difference. NYT!: Aug. 25: An Above-Average 'Likely Voter Gap' for Romney - The New York Times
ETA: That’s a strikingly center-leftish platform, Martin. Especially the wealth tax on banks.
Again, that’s up to the judgment of the voters. I think the record is clear that the Democrats are better for the poor, the Republicans for the rich, but for the middle class the record is more mixed. It used to be that the Democrats were clearly the superior party in this regard, but decades of increasing taxation and spending pushed the middle class too far. Ever since the tax revolts of the 70s, the GOP has had a clear advantage. Democrats now oppose taxing the middle class, but then that creates other problems for them: how to fund the entitlement state without new middle class taxes?
So did Obama in the Democratic parties. Hillary Clinton was clearly the working class candidate. Obama was winning among the poor and students and wealthy liberals.
How the coalitions stack up in a general election is different from how they’ll stack up in primaries.
ARe Democratic voters better informed? I’ve seen no evidence of that. Polls that try to measure voter knowledge tend to find roughly equal levels of knowledge or ignorance, unless the questions are stacked towards issues that one side cares about more than the other.
I think that voters tend to be very well informed on issues they care about, not so much on issues of less concern to them.
