He had previously stated that there was no significant electoral structural advantage for Obama and the Democrats; the results of the election are having him revisit that assessment. The results showed that Obama could have won the EC even with popular vote loss of a percent or so.
Measure-Can’t you say the same about SSM and older, conservative voters? Sorry, didn’t read Marley’s post.
I don’t dispute Nate’s statistical findings (I might be clueless, but I’m not stupid),
However I do have to wonder how much of the blue support comes directly from Obama being Obama - I wonder if becuase the minorities identify so strongly with him whether that is skewing results away from the norm.
I would so like to see recreational pot on the Ohio ballot. Not because I smoke it or because I care about Democrats, but because I think it’s a stupid thing to regulate any more than cigarettes or beer. They should separate industrial hemp and completely drop it from all regulations.
Hmmm… so maybe I should write to the state Dem party about starting a petition to get it on the ballot… never thought about them as a potential asset…
The part about pot legalization to get the youth vote out is interesting. I have heard laws raising the state minimum wage will increase turnout among the working poor and disadvantaged. Those laws (pot legalization and the minimum wage) could be the democrats version of gay marriage laws as a tool of increasing turnout.
I have it on good authority that he is a witch.
I was thinking about the high-tech 21st century efficiency of the Obama campaign and cannot help but think the Republicans must be handicapped by the wing-nut anti-science base probably providing a substantial portion of their foot-soldiers.
You say that like it’s a bad thing? If Silver wants to keep on top of his game, he has to be willing to re-examine his methodology and base assumptions after each election.
Message: throw the old white guys under the bus and become more relevant to the modern world.
Hmmm, the popular vote was so close that it just may have made a difference in the popular vote in this particular case. Non African-American minorities don’t feel group affiliation for Obama, and black people mostly vote Democratic anyway, just not as in high numbers as they do for Obama. But even then, 5-10% or so of an 18% or so slice of the voters is still around a 1% shift in the overall vote, which makes an impressive-looking difference in an election with such a close popular vote outcome, even if it doesn’t make a real difference usually.
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I’m having trouble following this. I see nothing in the article to support this, and Obama looks to have won the popular vote by about 3 million, and proportionally by pretty much the amount predicted by 538.
What are you talking about?
ETA: Indeed, the 538 prediction was Obama +2.5%. In the linked article Silver says the difference 2.4% and that he expects it will reach 2.5% as vote tallies are completed.
Embrace reality. It might be refreshing.
He is saying, I believe, that Silver’s projections of scenarios where Obama got less than 50% of the popular vote showed Obama losing the electoral vote, too. Now Silver is saying Obama could have won the electoral vote without winning the popular vote.
It looks like maybe this time the Republicans were hampered by using a corporate model for their GOTV effort. Project ORCA Will Win the Election for Romney! - Politics & Elections - Straight Dope Message Board
I don’t Silver was ever saying that Obama would lose if he lost the popular vote. In fact, he gave a 5% chance of Obama losing the pop vote but still winning (out of all scenarios). What he was arguing was that the national polls showing Romney with a lead just didn’t match up with the state polls at all, and must be skewed. Which they obviously were.
Yea. Been reading about that since posting. A technical operation they didn’t have the staff qualified to run in support of people unable to take advantage of it if it had even worked.
People expected to have to print off an 80 page pdf on the morning of the election to know what they should do.
A mission critical system whose first beta test was the live event.
Ineptitude of the highest order and on such a scale that it demonstrates that Romney was not fit for office. He might be great at looting companies but obviously not capable of setting up an effective electoral machine let alone run a country.
Could you point to something I’ve said which leads to your impression that I “say that like it’s a bad thing”? What have I written which carries that implication?
He argued against that possibility, at least early on. But even as later as November 4, he wrote:
What he now points out, based on actual results, is that Obama would have tied with a 2.2% Romney advantage.