# Is it too early to say Romney has lost? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [September 18, 2012, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066 "2012-09-18T13:26:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 37
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/722 "2012-10-16T11:49:18Z")
> [@Nazarene](#): > > Is there a word for that. I think it’s a phrase, and the phrase is “Michelle Obama is a stone cold fox.” ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/723 "2012-10-16T12:01:34Z")
Well, that and “She knows where I sleep.” I’m not saying she’s evil or anything, but I wouldn’t cross her. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/724 "2012-10-16T12:36:30Z")
> [@elbowj](#): > > Obama raised more than $180 million in September. And Romney [raised](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/16/usa-campaign-money-idUSL1E8LFL6A20121016)[only](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/16/usa-campaign-money-idUSL1E8LFL6A20121016)[$170 million](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/16/usa-campaign-money-idUSL1E8LFL6A20121016). The market has spoken. ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/725 "2012-10-16T13:55:43Z")
> [@Nazarene](#): > > Nate Silver is kind of my Bible on this > [@](#): > > I think we’re in dead girl/live boy territory, and I’m not even sure a live boy would be that fatal anymore. As **JKellyMap** points out, Silver is saying Romney has a 1 in 3 chance of winning. You seem to be saying it would take a major scandal to cost Obama the election. The only way those are consistent is if a major scandal has a 1 in 3 chance of happening between now and the election.😕 ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/726 "2012-10-16T14:26:13Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > Some Republicans might say that this is another thing that makes him “different,” “not quite human,” even “un-American”! 🙂 Newt Gingrich, looking over his shoulder at all his ex-wives, would certainly think so. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/727 "2012-10-16T15:07:06Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I think Nate Silver is pretty good, and his odds are probably reasonable given the information we have today. > > The thing is, there’s a lot of information we don’t have. So while the numbers may be accurate, the error bars around them are very large. > > The other problem is common to all models: they’re only as good as their data, and the data on presidential elections is very thin because they change so radically over time. The internet, for example, has only been a major factor in elections for 15-20 years, which is only 3-4 presidential elections. And even in that time, the landscape has changed dramatically. That’s a pretty thin dataset. > > So while I think Nate Silver has good models, I’m not sure their predictive power is all that good. He had good results in 2010 for Senate races and governorships, but he missed the house Republican gain by 10 seats or so. > > I tried to find out what his confidence intervals look like, but I ran out of my 10 article limit on the NY Times. I generally agree with all this. Silver has been meticulous in reminding people that presidential elections are a small data set but he’s also locked into an almost daily posting requirement for which he has to say something more than “it’s close.” We saw the problems with this during the primaries. He was hit with a double whammy: some people made up their minds late in the game and some people switched candidates freely. The experience gained from that might be useful in the long run, but it said little from day to day about Romney’s assured victory. He’s running into the same problem now, but it appears to be of a far lesser scale. There simply aren’t more than 10% of the likely voters who are not firmly locked down. It’s interesting that so many states are at a near 50/50 split to make this decisive this year but it’s hard to believe that this condition can prevail for many future elections. This year’s polling may actually reduce the accuracy of polls in 2016, IOW. Irony is a bitch. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/728 "2012-10-16T17:39:51Z")
Posted this in another thread, but I just realized that this is a better place for it… Weird polls this past weekend by Gallup and PPP among a few others that show Romney up four, with a big jump in his favor on Sunday in particular. It’s kind of puzzling; I can’t think of anything that happened then, and it seems strange for past events to catch up like that. The timing seems wrong somehow. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/729 "2012-10-16T17:44:17Z")
Romney’s favorability is better than Obama’s for the first time. It could be the ongoing Libya coverage is hurting Obama’s favorables. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/730 "2012-10-16T17:46:46Z")
Relevant to both of the last two posts: [xkcd: Sports](http://xkcd.com/904/) ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/731 "2012-10-16T17:47:33Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Romney’s favorability is better than Obama’s for the first time. It could be the ongoing Libya coverage is hurting Obama’s favorables. There aren’t too many water cooler conversations about Libya and there won’t be any tomorrow. It may resonate with the anti-Obama faction but it’s a bit like preaching to the choir. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/732 "2012-10-16T17:50:24Z")
It’s not Libya itself so much as Obama has a good reputation that conservatives have long felt isn’t deserved. Liberals used to go just as crazy about Bush’s reputation. Voters thought he was basically honest if a little dim and incompetent. The constant changing of stories and finger pointing over Libya has to be hurting Obama’s credibility, as well as the general negativity of his campaign. The negativity did less harm when Romney hadn’t defined himself, but since the debate these negative ads might be making voters think Obama is dishonest. Just wild ass hypotheses for why Romney’s favorables are up. It’s also possible Gallup and Pew screwed up. ---
**Author:** ![Nazarene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c57346/32.png) [@Nazarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nazarene)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/733 "2012-10-16T17:58:25Z")
They don’t have to have screwed up. Polling, when done correctly, will have those kinds of fluxuations. Sometimes you roll 10 snake-eyes in a row or come up with heads a dozen consecutive times on a coin flip. Any single day of polling can result in an outlier. ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/734 "2012-10-16T18:34:47Z")
According to 538’s calculations, there has been a small bounce for Obama (currently is at 66%, up from a low of 61.1% on Oct 12). In addition, my own calculations also show that Romney’s improvement after the debate is fading and things are getting closer to where they were before the first debate (currently at 81% compared to 83% before the first debate) Similar thing happened after the 47% video came out. In the beginning, polls showed an improvement for Obama, but ten days later, things were back to where they were before the video came out. I’m not sure how to explain all this. [ul] [li]Maybe people have the memory of a gnat and forget things that affected them before? [/li][li]Maybe people are more enthusiastic to respond to polls after a positive event (e.g. Republicans after the first debate) and this skews results?[/li][li]Maybe TV advertising goes after the perceived strengths of their opponents (e.g. Romney’s performance in the first debate) thus changing people’s minds about what happened and reducing the effect of the original event over time?[/li][/ul] ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/735 "2012-10-16T18:38:28Z")
Maybe folks are able to determine the fact that Romney lied to their faces more easily over time. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/736 "2012-10-16T19:20:02Z")
Huh, someone pointed out that, [according to the RCP average](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/election_2012_vs_election_2008_four_years_ago_today.html), in the 2008 election, there was an almost nine point swing against Obama in nine days. I’m not sure if this actually supports the visceral reaction I have that such a big change in the polls is an outlier of sorts, but it sort of feels like it does. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/737 "2012-10-16T19:55:22Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Romney’s favorability is better than Obama’s for the first time. It could be the ongoing Libya coverage is hurting Obama’s favorables. It must be something with more significance than Libya; perhaps Ryan’s dishwashing picture is resonating with voters. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/738 "2012-10-16T20:01:41Z")
Or, according to [this](http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/15/politics/romney-polls/index.html?hpt=hp_t1), maybe ‘right leaning’ voters are starting to get on board with Romney (I realize that the board wisdom is Romney is a right winger, but apparently the right isn’t/wasn’t all that enthusiastic about him). Guess we’ll see how the debate goes tonight. I’d say that if Obama gives another flat performance then things might stay neck and neck until the election, but if he does well or Romney does particularly bad (or both) then it’s probably going to be all over. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/739 "2012-10-16T20:50:25Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Guess we’ll see how the debate goes tonight. I’d say that if Obama gives another flat performance then things might stay neck and neck until the election, but if he does well or Romney does particularly bad (or both) then it’s probably going to be all over. You don’t see any possible outcome that leads to a clear Romney lead? ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/740 "2012-10-16T20:53:25Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > You don’t see any possible outcome that leads to a clear Romney lead? I sort of feel like the people who were going to be influenced by a great Romney performance/bad Obama performance in a debate, already were. I’m not sure there are a lot of people left who are like, “Welllll, Obama got crushed in the first debate but now that he’s been crushed TWICE, well, that’s sold me.” I could be wrong, of course, but I just don’t think that many votes are still in play. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066/741 "2012-10-16T21:03:28Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Or, according to [this](http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/15/politics/romney-polls/index.html?hpt=hp_t1), maybe ‘right leaning’ voters are starting to get on board with Romney (I realize that the board wisdom is Romney is a right winger, but apparently the right isn’t/wasn’t all that enthusiastic about him). True. And ironic, because if Romney won their enthusiasm via the debate, he did so by staking out the most moderate stance since he was governor of MA, rather in distinct contrast to his fighting for conservative credibility as demonstrated in the GOP primaries. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066.md?page=36) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-too-early-to-say-romney-has-lost/635066.md?page=38)