The polls as a whole show that Romney had a lot of momentum after the first debate. That lasted about a week or so. After that, the polls slowly but steadily moved back in Obama’s direction- he didn’t make up all the ground he lost, but he made up a lot of it. The polls don’t just show Obama ahead- polling in OH, which has had an extremely high volume, averages out to Obama having about a 3 point lead or so.
You do know the difference between using a past event as predictive and having a current event resemble a past event? Well, obviously you don’t.
Regardless, as another poster said, “Who’s saying the votes (your referring to “the electorate” is baffling) is shaping up to be really close to 2008? Only you seem to believe anyone is saying this.”
So you’re 0-for-2 here.
I believe he’s saying this because of the polls (D +X and such), despite this having been explained to him, and others, about a dozen times across a dozen threads.
Even the poll that OMG is citing as evidence of whatever it is he’s trying to prove doesn’t seem to help him much.
Here’s the first question on the poll:
How exactly do you cite this as evidence that “Obama is toast”? Especially when this is the most favorable evidence you can find.
The most you could say at this point with any rationality is “Romney still has a chance.”
Using 2004 as a metric isn’t much of a fallback at this point. Dare I say, it’s grasping at straws. Just look at how drastically the narrative on this board has changed over the past month or so (from Obama blowout to 2012 being reminiscent of 2004). But, no. This really is nothing like 2004. Unlike some of you, I’m actually looking tangible data to base my assertions on (in this case party registration vs 2008, early voting numbers vs 2008 and election history). With that being said, the biggest difference between this year and 2004 is that, in no particular order:
(1) Romney is going to win the “crossover” vote while winning Independents by around 5%. Kerry, on the other hand, lost the the “crossover” vote while winning Independents by 1%. The fact Kerry had a net loss of 5% (gained 6% of the Republican vote but lost 11% of his Democratic vote) doomed him. That’s not something Romney will have to contend with.
(2) Obama is going to get under 40% of the White vote where as Kerry got 41%. Even a 2% difference is huge. There’s no understating how important this is. If Obama gets under 40% of the White vote, he would need to not only have minorities increase their turnout for 2012, but he would have to win about 83% or so of their votes (rough math in my head). But who expects him to do both of those things? It’s a very tall order for anyone. And
(3) To put it succinctly, Obama’s early voting numbers look like poop, even after he put in a ton of effort to emphasize early voting. Romney’s early voting numbers are on par with 2004, in some cases he’s even doing better (Iowa, for example). It’s hard to imagine Obama’s going to get record Democratic turnout in order to offset his lower than expected early voting numbers among Democrats and the fact that he’s not likely to win Independents this year.
Pretty sure the logic to Kerry voters in 2004 were just that the polls were wrong. In multiple threads I’ve given you multiple reasons to suspect the numbers being published in the polls, as many of the underlying assumptions simply defy historical trends, but you reject them on the basis that “the numbers are wrong and the polls are right”. Or something to that effect.
Indeed we will, though I believe you will be in for quite a shock.
That’s a nice “argument”; too bad I don’t watch FOX. Is there another “argument” you would care to try?
(By the way, the central premise of your narrative is laughably wrong.)
I think you should reread my post, then you’ll probably get it. If not, that poll have a D+7 split; which just so happens to be the same as 2008. Again, magic.
(Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the same poll had a D+4 split a few days ago. The topline stays the same but the split going up by one each release. Again, by magic.)
BTW> It must have been really hard to find that poll. It’s not like it wasn’t in my post or anything.
I find these posts baffling. The polls that actually poll everyone say Obama’s leading in enough states to win the election.
Rather than examining white Latino righthanded voters with lisps in the middle income tax bracket who are registered independents, why not look at an analysis of ALL the polls, the ones that attempt to capture everyone, and see what those polls say? Because, historically, that approach tends to be very effective. And according to that approach, Romney’s got, at best, a one in six chance.
When you’ve got, on one hand, analysts looking at all the polls, carefully adjusting for their known history and accuracy, and saying “it would appear, looking at all the data, that Obama has a slim lead,” and on the pother hand you’ve got a rabid partisan picking and choosing only those numbers that suit him and interpreting them to suit the specific outcome he wants, it would be pretty nuts to not take the former as being a bit closer to the truth.
I am absolutely fascinated to see what your reactions are after the election, OMG. I know if Romney pulls out a convincing win I’ll be back here saying “Man, were the polls ever wrong.” If Obama wins, I wonder if you’ll be here to say something?
My side looked at the same thing- it was deceiving- because in 2004 the Democrats had a real primary, so voters actually registered to vote in the primary, vs no contest in the Republican primary. Now its reversed. It’s already been said, but of course Republican voter registration increases by more when they have a contested primary as compared to an uncontested primary for the Democrats. My side tried to make the exact same point in 2004, and we were wrong.
Says you (about the crossover vote- you’re probably right about the independent vote, which has been shown to likely include lots of formerly self-id’d Republicans).
He’s going to win a huge majority of non-white voters. I think it’s likely to be over 83%, but we’ll see. In OH, the polls show he’s barely losing the white vote.
I don’t know where you’re getting this- the early voter #s I’ve seen have been very good for Obama, if not quite as good as 2008.
They made the same arguments about turnout and registration that you have, and they were wrong. I don’t know about the early voting argument.
It’s not hard to find underlying assumptions that “defy historical trends” in polls every election- because the electorate changes pretty significantly in 4 years. My side made this exact same argument in 2004, and they were wrong.
It’s just weird to me that you express so little doubt that pretty much ALL the polls are really wrong. It would be a massive, huge story if you’re right and the polls are this far off. Yes, I’ll be shocked- because the polls have historically been so much better than the partisans who try and make the claims you’re trying to make. I don’t see much difference in your arguments from my side’s in 2004- it really just seems like the same sort of wishful thinking.
Eh, I’ll cut him some slack. I vividly remember doing the same thing in 2004 - just being sure that the polls showing much higher GOP turnout than 2000 were bogus.
Basically he’s making the argument that all of the polls are biased towards Obama. This is certainly possible - in fact it accounts for pretty much the entirety of the roughly 15-20% chance Romney has (or lower if you believe Sam Wang).
I don’t think Silver’s model incorporates potential bias, so much as a candidate down by anything less than 3 still has a small chance of pulling it out on election day. What if there’s pouring rain in Cincinnati? That sort of thing.
Here’s some early voting numbers from Nevada that show how difficult it’s going to be for Romney to make up for it. To summarize- the Democratic advantage is very close to as large as it was in 2008, and Obama won Nevada in 08 by more than 10 points.
Early voting numbers in Florida: here and here we can see that early voting so far favors the Democrats by a margin of about 100,000 votes. In 2008 at the end of early voting, the Democrats had a margin (based on voter registration) of about 250,000 votes. So it’s smaller now than it was in 2008. But in 08 Obama won Florida by about 240,000 votes- so even with this reduced margin, Obama still may be favored to win.
OMG- you say that early voting numbers are “poop” for Obama. I think you’re totally wrong on this. I think early voting numbers are good for Obama, if not quite as good as in 2008.
He sort of includes things like that. He adds an error to include how far off polls have been historically on top of the error due to sample size. In theory, things like weather would be accounted for in that, at least as sort of a global average.
So, is this interactiveuseful and accurate?
That’s not accurate. You should read his postfor today.
He runs simulations where the “baseline”, if you will, is adjusted based on historical polling accuracy (since 1968 it looks like). So, there is a chance (16% based on today’s polls) that the polls are systematically biased towards Obama by a sufficient amount to give Romney a victory.
A quote:
[QUOTE=Nate Silver]
The FiveThirtyEight forecast accounts for this possibility. Its estimates of the uncertainty in the race are based on how accurate the polls have been under real-world conditions since 1968, and not the idealized assumption that random sampling error alone accounts for entire reason for doubt.
To be exceptionally clear: I do not mean to imply that the polls are biased in Mr. Obama’s favor. But there is the chance that they could be biased in either direction. If they are biased in Mr. Obama’s favor, then Mr. Romney could still win; the race is close enough. If they are biased in Mr. Romney’s favor, then Mr. Obama will win by a wider-than-expected margin, but since Mr. Obama is the favorite anyway, this will not change who sleeps in the White House on Jan. 20.
[/QUOTE]
FL’s also reduced the time for early voting this cycle. So there’s a certain amount of “apples and oranges” in comparing those numbers.
Looks right. What is perhaps amazing (and perhaps not) is that it gives Obama 431 paths out of 507 to win. That is 85%.
538 has Obama’s “now-cast” at 85.7%…
So if you consider the each battleground state a coin flip you get the same projected result as a rather complicated polling aggregation. 
You’re less informed than the average Fox viewer?
What analysts are on your side? Let’s be honest. Every single contention on this board comes down to “Nate Silver”. I’m sure Nate Silver has to be mentioned at least twenty times a day, if not more. Much to your chagrin, there are polling analyses by Jay Cost, Adrian Gray, Michael Barone, Sean Davis and a host of others. Sure, they’re conservatives but they actually break down the numbers on a county by county basis, break down early voter numbers by county (Adrian Gray does this), compare numbers to prior elections, note trends and use all other sorts of evidence rabidly dismissed because it’s contrary to what Nate Silver says. Mmmmkay. You can’t argue with that, though I try.
Oh, and fwiw, if Obama wins then I’ll admit I was wrong. Simple.
Here are a couple more- Sam Wang and Drew Linzer. They both use state polling pretty much exclusively, but spend a lot of time talking about how unlikely it is that the polls are all wrong.