Does anyone have a cite that more newly registered voters are democrats then repub. I remember hearing it was the other way around in FL anyways. I think I read it in the St. Pete times, but could be wrong.
I realized that the Ruy Teixeira link I posted before was a bit incomplete.
http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com/donkeyrising/
He has an updated post explaining the problem with Gallup again and discussing it in the context of the other polls. Gallup is so consistently, and in my opinion willfully, wrong that I have to wonder about their motivations. MSNBC today took their data to feature, all day long, a big header about Bush opening up a lead. Bullshit.
Update from http://www.electoral-vote.com/, 10/19/04:
My questions for both of those would be the same. If you are strongly certain, why not earn some extra cash?
I can tell you that I wanted the Redskins to win – and I thought they would win… but I wasn’t certain enough to risk a dollar in a wager. That holds true for pretty much all NFL contests – I think on any given day, the worst team in the league can have a great day and beat the best team in the league.
I could certainly undertstand someone saying, for example, that while they’re rooting for Kerry, and believe he’ll win, they don’t have the certainty that would justify putting money on it.
And everyone’s risk tolerance is different – I know people that would think twice before betting the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.
But that level of cautiousness I don’t really understand. If someone really wanted to offer me such a giveaway bet, I’d take it, because I’m certain enough about the outcome to risk money on it.
Here, too, I am certain enough about the outcome that I am willing to risk money. So if someone says they think thus-and-so, but aren’t sure, I understand the reluctance to wager. When someone does not indicate any wavering whatsoever in their certainty, but still refuses a bet, my firsttake on the situation is that their certainty isn’t quite what’s advertised.
By the way, if your first sentence ("…that one must claim to be wagering money in order to be regarded as feeling strongly…") has any implication that my claim of existing wagers is inaccurate, I can point to the other Dopers with whom I have wagers as evidence that at least those “claims” are true.
Just in case that was the implication.
Bricker, the fallacy in this continued tack of yours is that you assume the person who should win is the person who will win. I don’t believe that’s necessarily the case. I’m confident that Kerry is a far superior candidate to Bush. I’m confident that Bush has been the worst president of my lifetime and that includes Nixon. However, I am not confident that the Bushies cannot manipulate enough of the public to win the elction. Just because I’m not positive Kerry will win does not mean that I secretly fear he’s not a better candidate.
To paraphrase Paul Newman in The Hustler, Our candidate is better than yours and even if you win, he’s still better.
For you, for some reason, the following is true:
being certain=willing to bet money
and the converse appears to be true as well
not willing to bet money=not being certain
Do you really feel that these are entirely true? Why is that? Can you conceive of someone feeling certain about something but not wanting to bet money? Are you a pathological gambler?
I think your desperation shows through with this tack.
No.
Well, yes, I guess I do, but I don’t impute that feeling to you. If your argument is, “Kerry is better, but he may not win,” then I’ve got no beef with you (in the context of this argument, anyway). My beef is with the guy that says, “Oh, Kerry will absolutely win. No way he can’t win. He will win fer sure!” and is at the same time strangely reluctant to place any actual cash at risk.
Not quite. I’d frame it as: “If you’re certain, my presumption is that you’re willing to bet money.” It’s a rebuttable presumption; all sorts of things can refute it: an aversion to gambling, not having spare cash, being married to someone with an aversion to gambling, and, I’m sure, other good reasons. But absent any rebuttal, yeah, I’d say that if you’re certain, it boggles my mind that you wouldn’t want to make a little extra spending money, especially because you can get such good odds on Kerry now.
My desperation for what?
Look, on November 3rd, one of us will have been proven wrong. (Or, if not on November 3rd, on January 20th, DEFINITELY one of us will have been proven wrong). I’m certain that you’ll be the guy making excuses. You claim that you’re equally certain I’ll be the guy making excuses. But from the limited evidence I see, your “certainty” extends only to making bold predictions on a message board. Mine extends that far, and to my wallet as well.
If I’m wrong, that will definitely make me the bigger fool. If I’m right, that will, I contend, make you the bigger - hell, the ONLY - phony.
- Rick
I am certain. Your logic on this matter appears to be limited.
Your desperation is revealed in your need to assess and challenge my certainty. What difference does it make what my certainty level is, regardless of whether I “rebut” your presumptions about wagering?
It shouldn’t, if you were confident in your belief.
It’s a common misunderstanding that betting reflects a likely outcome because the bookies “know.” The lines are determined by one thing: betting. That only indicates that more people are betting on Bush.
My prediction has been, and remains, that Kerry will win decisively with a margin of around 100 electoral votes.
For the first time, Nevada has more registered Democrats, than Republicans.
Early voting in Nevada began on Saturday, and so far the turnout is already double that of the last Presidential election.
In looking at the voting numbers so far, I noticed that one of the largest turnouts at this early stage is at a mall very near a predominantly black neighborhood.
My prediction is that Nevada is going for Kerry.
My predicition for the election is that Kerry will win by a larger margin than expected, and even a few of the so-called Red States will have smaller than expected Bush margins of victory.
Afterwards, the pollsters will be doing their own “spin” as to how they weren’t wrong, it was the voting public’s fault for invalidating their predictions.
Right. What a bookie tries to do is set the odds so that an equal amount will be bet on either side. That way he can pay the winners with the money of the losers, with negligable financial risk to himself. These odds may just reflect that Republicans have lots of money to bet, and are putting it on Bush as wishful thinking.
I’m not sure I agree with this, Rick.
Certainly some people are betting types and some are not. I learned early that in the Washington journalism circles one can bet on almost anything. It cheeses Lady Chance off something fierce.
Nonetheless, as you and I, the first two to have something riding on this outcome, you should know that I didn’t bet on ‘Kerry’ or whatnot. I bet the odds as I saw them. I saw a President who was, at the time, fairly popular but that popularity was soft. I figured there would be a certain level of overconfidence on the part of the administration and that, with the 2000 election going as it did, there was no WAY this (2004) wasn’t going to be a dogfight of epic proportions. This for certain wasn’t going to be one of those ‘over in August’ type of campaigns.
I admit, I made the bet hoping for a Bush-Gore rematch because that would have been GREAT political theater. It would have had everything except (maybe) Gore ripping off his shirt and offering to wrestle Bush on the White House lawn all to the tune of ‘THIEF! You have stolen what is mine! Vengeance is here!’ and such.
But I stand by my prediction that this sucker is close and anyone who says otherwise is a fool.
Well, alrighty then! I like you very much too.
Minor hijack:
This is only true to a certain extent. If a bookie thinks the public is wrong, he can and will let the sides be unbalanced - in essence placing a wager himself. This is common.
Another reason why the bookie won’t just move the lines until they balance is because if the line moves too far from what he believes the ‘true’ odds are, he opens himself to being ‘middled’. That is when two lines are way out of whack, and sophisticated bettors can place offsetting bets and guarantee themselves at least a break-even wager, with a big profit if the middle comes in. This allows them to wager large stacks of money.
For these reasons, plus the fact that the public is a lot smarter when betting than most people would think, betting lines are historically very close to the ‘true’ odds. Professional sports bettors who try to beat the spread are lucky if they can manage to do more than a few percentage points better than average.
Also, some of the online markets are not run by bookies, but are simple trading exchanges. The two most common are the Iowa Electronic Markets and Tradesports. Both have markets running for the presidential election.
The Iowa Electronic Market presidential price graph can be seen Here. From the chart you can see that Kerry was essentially tied with Bush through the middle of July. Then there was a blip for Kerry after the Democratic convention which faded away almost immediately. Then there’s a huge surge for Bush during and after the Republican primary. After the first and second debates, the market started trending towards Kerry again, but then moved Bush’s direction again. It looks like the start of a trend back towards Kerry in the past couple of days, but we’ll have to see if that develops.
I don’t see a historical graph on Tradesports, but right now a share on Bush is .58, and a share on Kerry is .41.
One caveat about these markets is that they may be pretty thinly traded, so a large buy could skew the data. I can see them being open to statistical manipulation by deep pockets organizations, if they felt that moving the price on t here would have a political payoff.
Sorry. Not a bettin’ man. Once in a great while I buy a lottery ticket on impulse. That’s as close as I like to get to gambling.
Recount.
OK. Fair enough.
See you on the 3rd.
I predict several states will be close enough that legitimate questions will be raised about the outcome. There will be widespread problems with electronic voting machines (this is already starting to happen). I predict several lawsuits in several states, and we won’t know for sure who the president is until December. Because the Republicans are in power right now, I predict Bush will emerge victorious.
I don’t necessarily thing the above will be true, but it probably will be at least partially true. The previous predictions of a smooth election disregard how much scrutiny things are under right now, and the emerge of the role of lawyers in the election process.