2012 US Election -- Round 2

[Tero]

Yes, Romney has no personality, no clue. Not sure why he was governor. Pendulum effect?

[FBM]

Has anything happened yet?

[Tyrannical]

Glenn Beck? Fox news?

I see, Limbaugh, a reliable source of hot air.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/ ... _landslide

I forget who, but it was a professional though partisan pollster. It was on Fox news, but even their anchor gave the guest a sort of look. We'll know soon enough.

Besides, Romney isn't that bad for you left leaning folks. Think of him as a Bill Clinton that you'd trust your wife with. How right-wing could a former Massachusetts Governor be

As right-leaning as his puppet masters want him to be...

If he had any puppet masters, it'd be the Mormon Church. And I've no idea what the Mormon Church wants in the big scheme of World politics
Aside from religious beliefs, Mormons seem like decent honest law abiding folk to me for the most part. A good moral basis to build a successful society from I think. Of course their anti-gin stance would be a deal breaker for some

[Tero]

Has anything happened yet?

No. People in Illinois earlyvoted. No help with exit polling.

[FBM]

[JimC]

Glenn Beck? Fox news?

I see, Limbaugh, a reliable source of hot air.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/ ... _landslide

I forget who, but it was a professional though partisan pollster. It was on Fox news, but even their anchor gave the guest a sort of look. We'll know soon enough.

Besides, Romney isn't that bad for you left leaning folks. Think of him as a Bill Clinton that you'd trust your wife with. How right-wing could a former Massachusetts Governor be

As right-leaning as his puppet masters want him to be...

If he had any puppet masters, it'd be the Mormon Church. And I've no idea what the Mormon Church wants in the big scheme of World politics
Aside from religious beliefs, Mormons seem like decent honest law abiding folk to me for the most part. A good moral basis to build a successful society from I think. Of course their anti-gin stance would be a deal breaker for some

And their anti-coffee stance would do it for others...

[Jesus_of_Nazareth]

The thing I admire about Romney is that he made more money from the Credit Crunch / The Great Recession than he did even when helping cause it.

[macdoc]

You need to catch up

Aside from religious beliefs, Mormons seem like decent honest law abiding folk to me for the most part. A good moral basis to build a successful society from I think.

they are whackiest bunch of child molesters you ever did over look.

http://www.mazeministry.com/mormonism/w ... onsex3.htm

http://ldssexchildabuse.blogspot.ca/

http://exmormon.org/d6/drupal/drameana

with a fraud from the get go

http://sidneyrigdon.com/criddle/Smith-ConMan.htm

http://www.pleaseconvinceme.com/index/D ... seph_Smith

some other insights

http://vegasjessie.com/2012/05/27/unbel ... e-mormons/

Should make L. Ron sit up and take notice....he probably did.

[Tero]

I ran a couple of scenarios. Obama gets Ohio in both. If Obama gets NM, likely, he wins.

[Warren Dew]

Wonder where Obama got the idea of voting for "revenge"? Perhaps it's from Valerie Jarrett, Obama's political advisor:

“After we win this election, it’s our turn. Payback time. Everyone not with us is against us and they better be ready because we don’t forget. The ones who helped us will be rewarded, the ones who opposed us will get what they deserve. There is going to be hell to pay. Congress won’t be a problem for us this time. No election to worry about after this is over and we have two judges ready to go.”

http://theulstermanreport.com/2012/11/0 ... -time-wsi/

[macdoc]

I woudn't toss rocks Warren given the Repuglies treasonous action over the last few years.
The rest of the world wonders openly why most of them are not locked up in either the loonie bin or the brig.
Obama's done okay given the outrageous actions of your fav party.
Even The Economist can't tolerate the Repuglies and they are hardly left wing.

[Wumbologist]

I ran a couple of scenarios. Obama gets Ohio in both. If Obama gets NM, likely, he wins.

Not sure what you did to get a possible Republican win in New Mexico on that first map, considering that every poll that's been run has shown a solid Obama lead there.

[macdoc]

Election Forecasts - FiveThirtyEight Blog - NYTimes.com

calling Obama by a good amount in the Electoral vote

315 versus 222

and 51 versus 48 in popular vote.

[amused]

Comparing 538 to Intrade:

http://t-a-w.blogspot.com/2012/11/tomor ... on-in.html

Intrade vs Nate Silver
Unfortunately we have very few serious statistical models, and very few serious prediction markets, and even less overlap. Pretty much the only area where we can compare them against each other is predicting outcomes of American elections. And unfortunately for us, in the past they've been mostly in very good agreement with each other.

However, something really interesting happened. As of today, prediction markets and statistical models disagree more than at any time in history. Here's quick summary of Obama's vs Romney's chances of victory (normalized to 100%):

Intrade (popular vote by at least 0.5%) - 58.1% to 39.1% (1.48 to 1)
Intrade (electoral college) - 67.3% to 32.7% (2.06 to 1)
Intrade (Ohio) - 68.7% to 31.3% (2.20 to 1)
Iowa Electronic Markets (popular vote) - 74.0% to 26.0% (2.85 to 1)
betfair (electoral college) - 79.3% to 20.7% (3.83 to 1)
538 (popular vote) - 80.2% to 19.8% (4.05 to 1)
538 (electoral college) - 86.3% to 13.7% (6.30 to 1)
538 (Ohio) - 87% to 13% (6.70 to 1)

Don't be misled by the fact that they both predict Obama's lead - they differ so drastically in predicting how big is the lead it's as if they were seeing different elections. 538 offers odds more than three times Intrade's. Difference is very similar for popular vote and for Ohio winner.

[Ian]

Re-printed from Electoral-Vote.com (some handy lists for those who will be asking How and Why tomorrow):

How the Right Will Rationalize a Romney Loss
If we have a winner tonight--a big if--there will be a lot of postmortems tomorrow. But why wait? The reasons for each side winning or losing are well known now. All we don't know is which set of arguments hold.

If Romney loses, a full-blown civil war will break out in the Republican Party. The North will be played by Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Karl Rove, and the rest of the establishment. If Obama takes Virginia, they will be in a state of advanced panic because the GOP's base is the South, and if Virginia secedes from the South and becomes a warmer version of Maryland, the road ahead looks grim. The rebels will be played by the tea party, whose motto is: "To hell with winning, purity comes first." The pros will realize that having boatloads of money isn't enough. You need a good candidate and they didn't have one. The tea party types are going to be saying things like this:

- Romney was not a real conservative, but he was the only one left standing after the others crashed and burned
- The liberal media (= NYT) were in the tank for Obama and refused talk about Libya all day and night
- The pollsters conspired to have skewed polls that discouraged all the faint-hearted Republicans from voting
- It's all the fault of Hurricane Sandy because it cost Romney three days of campaigning
- Well, its the fault of Sandy plus that traitor Chris Christie, who is only looking out for his own fat ass
- The voters are too stupid to realize that when Obamacare kicks in, America will instantly become Cuba

How the Left Will Rationalize an Obama Loss
Left-wing commentators and Websites like Daily Kos will be full of explanations of what happened, should Obama lose. These will include:

- He was scared of the Republicans carping so he made the stimulus too small to do the job
- He didn't call the Republicans' bluff ever, for example, on raising the debt limit
- Fox News and all of talk radio acted as an extension of the Republican National Committee
- Obama was asleep at the switch during the first debate

Why Did Obama Actually Win
Obama didn't build it entirely on his own. Romney blew it in many ways. Some factors are as follows.

- Seventy percent of incumbent Presidents since WWII were reelected. The power of incumbency is enormous
- If Obama wins Ohio, his decision to bail out GM and Chrysler may have given him a second term
- Obama is a guy you could drink a beer with. Romney is aloof and looks like the guy who fired you
- Not having to fight a primary, Obama spent the year on his ground game and built a huge network of field offices
- The decision not to deport young Latinos, combined with the GOP hostility to immigrants, handed him the Latino vote
- His decision to spend a fortune in the Spring and Summer to define Romney as a heartless plutocrat worked
- Romney was a deeply flawed candidate with a tin ear for politics. A better candidate could have won
- Romney's campaign was poorly run, unfocused, disorganized, and without clear lines of authority
- Despite Romney's CEO experience, Stuart Stevens actually ran the campaign and made blunder after blunder
- Romney ran to the right of Rick Perry, saying he wasn't tough enough on illegal immigrants. That blew the Latino vote.
- The GOP's trivializing rape and opposing abortion and contraception was not a winner with women
- Romney's decision not to fight in the Summer but to hoard his pennies for a Fall offensive was foolish
- When the media asked about his taxes, plans and vision, Romney refused and then complained about the resulting coverage.

Why Did Romney Actually Win
- The economy was in bad shape and running a businessman, even a deeply flawed one, was a smart move
- The Citizens United decision allowed billionaires to give hundreds of millions of dollars to the Republicans
- Obama was asleep at the switch during the first debate and Romney made a strong impression
- Young voters were drunk on impossibly high expectations after 2008 and Obama didn't even try to achieve them
- Obama did a horrible job of explaining the benefits of the ACA to the voters. In fact, he barely tried