Next: Why Has Obama Lost the African-American Vote?
The premise increasingly shared by pundits:
Then suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, Obama’s edge with women began to melt away. More than any other group, women have accounted for Romney’s surge in the polls, which has now given him a slim lead in the national popular vote and in some calculations of the electoral college. Women, it appeared, were not as firmly ensconced in Obama’s camp as they had seemed. Indeed, they were abandoning the president en masse.
If only women voted, President Obama would be on track for a landslide re-election, equaling or exceeding his margin of victory over John McCain in 2008. Mr. Obama would be an overwhelming favorite in Ohio, Florida, Virginia and most every other place that is conventionally considered a swing state. The only question would be whether he could forge ahead into traditionally red states, like Georgia, Montana and Arizona.
If only men voted, Mr. Obama would be biding his time until a crushing defeat at the hands of Mitt Romney, who might win by a similar margin to the one Ronald Reagan realized over Jimmy Carter in 1980. Only California, Illinois, Hawaii and a few states in the Northeast could be considered safely Democratic. Every other state would lean red, or would at least be a toss-up.
Again, taking contrarian points by cherry-picking small-sample outliers from the crosstabs of individual polls is a terrible idea. There’s no reason to believe that the “Romney surge” among women actually exists.
As someone over at Balloon Juice said, “Because shut up, Horse Race”. It is in the media’s best interest to have a close race. It is no different from when a football game is a blowout at halftime, and the announcers desperately try to gin up some excitement for the second half: “You know, Jim, the Sloths once came back from 30 points down back in 1930!”.
I’m Al Michaels, and I approve this message.
Anyone else kinda feel like there’s not just an interest in making this a close race, but that main MSM outlets are deliberately putting their thumb on the scale for Romney? I see it especially in the constant reinflating on the piddling Benghazi matter, and the complete lack of interest in tackling any of the huge whoppers and misdirections put out there by Romney/Ryan.
Is there really any difference between the two?
Putting a thumb on the scale for Romney is an effort to make the race closer, or at least look closer.
And the fact that NOBODY reminds the public that the morning of the murders, Romney accused the White House of sympathizing with the attackers. Sounds like a real statesman, just like the one who spent 8 years messing up the whole planet by running his fat mouth and being oblivious to the idea of diplomacy or…you know…facts and stuff.
When Nate says, “Obama is a modest favorite because of the state polls,” that is not “shut up, Horse Race.” Nate’s integrity as a forecaster is at stake because there are competing polling sites.
I am also very worried about this debate because foreign policy is the area where campaign reporters and the public are going to have the least idea if Romney knows what he is talking about.
Keep in mind that a question in the VP debate began with “Social Security is going broke . . .”
But Nate agrees with Scott–the crosstabs of one poll have limited explanatory power for just about anything.
The thing is, it’s working. I’m a wreck. I’m already starting to mentally prepare myself for a Romney victory. My stomach is knots. I want it to be over.
Romney turned the tide by lying in a debate. How does one counter that? Because he can just keep lying. And it’s pretty obvious the American people don’t really care that much.
I wouldn’t worry more. And turning the tide (stopping the slide?) isn’t the same as securing the win. It’s unclear that there’s a huge amount more to be gained by lying per se.
A Romney victory was always a real possibility. I don’t think the possibility has changed very much recently.
I do think there’s reason for cautious optimism. Obama is still leading more often than not and showing rather consistent electoral college strength.
I think [i.e., hope] that the Obama strategy is to remind people of something we all hate — George W. Bush. He began that process in the last debate. I think it will be hammered home tonight in the realm of [arguably] Bush’s greatest sphere of failure — foreign policy. Romney is W, only way worse.
I don’t know if this is comforting, but at least it isn’t discouraging.
Because Democrats are the real racists.
FTW!
But maybe
punditswomen have realized their long standing need for a strong daddy to pick hem up in manly Galtian arms.There is no reason to listen to anyone other than Nate Silver when it comes to polls.
Haven’t heard much about losing the jewish votes for weeks now.
Just wait until after tonight. Mitt will attack the President’s insufficient deference to a particular Israeli governing coalition and espouse a “pro-Israel” foreign policy cribbed from antisemitic American fundamentalist Christians; plenty of rightbloggers will then speculate if the nine-thousandth repetition of the first few chapters of Left Behind will finally be enough to wake all those money-grubbing left-wing American Jews up to who’s really on their side.
A yes, the calm before the storm.
I hear that this is the year Jewish voters finally vote Republican.
Yep, I hear that. I hear it every four years.
I didn’t see Silver break it down much, into swing states and solid-color states. Almost by definition, swing states will have smaller to nonexistent gender gaps.
Point me to those numbers, but Silver is in the tank for Obama.
Better Polls Swing State Women 10/15
“The unemployment rate among women was 7.5 percent as of September — up from 7.0 percent when Mr. Obama took office in January 2009.” …Silver
Four more years like this for Women! Obama!
Another way to put that last point is that 8% of new jobs created in Obama’s first term went to women, 92% to men. My guess 80% to white men.
Thing is Obama doesn’t have to do anything for his core base, anything at all, in fact he can beat the most vulnerable parts of his base til they bleed and cry…and they will still vote for him.
And Obama knows this.
You understand, I hope, that there are reasons for these “facts,” and that Obama is not one of them?
gee, bob, do you think the total war on state government jobs by republican state legislatures might have an outsize effect on women’s unemployment?
arne duncan aside, it’s not team obama who is on the fire teachers/fire social workers/fire a whole shitload of clerical workers who just happen to be female tear.
Nothing is ever Obama’s fault. Obama is responsible for nothing, can do nothing, will do nothing without the permission of Republicans, He will appoint to SCOTUS only a person Republicans allow.
Why should I vote for this useless person again?
Vote for whomever you like. But if you are withholding your support for Obama because Mitt Romney will be better for women or because Obama’s economic policies are the cause for the female unemployment rate, you are delusional.
Romney is scum. I prefer to imagine Republicans did not exist, which is also a policy preference.
However. Once Obama with FISA, the nature of the bank bailouts, and the composition of the stimulus not only went against my policy preferences but adopted policies I thought would be counterproductive and have bad consequences…I no longer felt I had a duty to make excuses for his predictable failures for the next four years.
Loyalty when I get absolutely nothing in return is ridiculous.
I prefer to imagine Republicans did not exist, which is also a policy preference.
How long until “keep fucking that ostrich” becomes a new LGM tradition?
I prefer to imagine that I weigh 205 pounds. Doesn’t make my pants fit any better.
Hogan: clearly you’re not trying hard enough
absolutely nothing in return
Well, if you’re a well-off white guy with good health insurance, this might be largely true. If you’re one of many other Democratic constituencies, it’s rather glaringly false.
I am absolutely not at all a well-off white guy with good health insurance.
And this is my point, Obama has really helped the well-off white guys and not the other constituencies.
How’s employment for young black males? How about net black wealth?
Worsening wealth inequality by race June 21 2012
White Americans have 22 times more wealth than blacks — a gap that nearly doubled during the Great Recession.
The gap between the races widened considerably during the recent economic downturn, which whites weathered better than blacks, Hispanics and Asians.
The latter three groups saw their median household net worth fall by roughly 60% between 2005 and 2010, while the median net worth for white households slipped only 23%.
This allowed whites to leap ahead of Asians as the race with the highest median household net worth.
Obama sure took care of rich white people.
So now the consequences of the Bush Recession belong to Barack Obama.
Mitt Romney’s talking points, repackaged for a liberal audience.
How’s employment for young black males?
Bad, but falling for 16 months
Sorry, meant that unemployment was falling since Aug 11.
Look, Bob doesn’t know or care how, but he just knows that Obama personally went Louis Napoleon on the asses of Asian-Americans’ median wealth.
OK, everyone, who is it that attributes the consequences of the recent economic downtown to Barack Obama?
The latter three groups saw their median household net worth fall by roughly 60% between 2005 and 2010, while the median net worth for white households slipped only 23%.
Because nothing says quality business cycle analysis like measuring peak-to-random-point.
I’s also note that of the six years in your “sample,” four were while Bush was in power.
So, clearly the black guy’s fault.
What you get is not being bent over by Republicans for the next four years.
Yes, I’m aware that being bent over by the Democrats is only marginally better, but it is in fact better. That’s what you get. It’s a shitty deal, but if there’s a better one out there I’d like to see it.
You’d be on more solid grounds making the argument that you can’t vote for Obama because you find his policies repugnant enough that you can’t affirmatively endorse them. But trying to argue you get “nothing” for voting for him is just dumb.
I think it’s not great, but it’s a good deal more than slightly better.
Medicare is a great thing, let’s keep it.
Social Security, likewise.
You might argue that the ACA is only slightly better, though it could get much better soon.
Whatever I don’t like about Obama’s foreign policy, I think it’s much better than Bush’s and probably much better than any likely Romney.
Even civil liberties, a lot of them Obama is much MUCH better (abortion, gay rights, right to vote, etc.). The ones he’s crap on…well…that sucks, but is going to be no better with Romney.
I’m happy for the sake of interleft comity to grant that Obama doesn’t rise up to, in toto, a “good” leftist. But the “better”ness isn’t close.
Look, you guys know McManus is a republican operative right? He’s here to try and get dem voters to stay home in November.
He is typical republican trollery, why do we dignify him with engagement?
Bobo mcmanus – blaming Obama for Republican obstructionism. A NYT column awaits.
The difference between Pox on Both Houses leftists and Pox on Both Houses centrists?
Hair cuts.
Stop going into your generic pout every time someone points out a fact you don’t like, and try thinking for a change.
He appointed to the SCOTUS two people Republicans despised and tried to block.
Nice own-goal.
Another way to put that last point is that 8% of new jobs created in Obama’s first term went to women, 92% to men.
This seems wildly implausible, but you seem to think you’ve derived it from…what changes in the gendered unemployment rates? Could you walk me though your math here?
This seems wildly implausible
That is putting it mildly.
Oh Christ 2010?
Huffington Post Feb 2012
Their source for the article is the National Woman’s Law Center
Bob, this isn’t rocket surgery, come on.
Men lost their jobs first in the recession when the construction jobs from the housing boom disappeared, while job losses in the sectors which traditionally employ more women lagged behind, and then women took the biggest hit from the more recent loss of public sector jobs.
As hiring started again in the “recovery,” the people who had lost their jobs first (men) were first in line to be hired.
This has nothing to do with Obama. Get over it.
This is better as an explanation of why women have been losing jobs in the recovery.
As to how much blame accrues to Obama, well, as much credit as accrued to FDR in 1933-36.
Unlike the folks who love their President with his own thumbs up his ass, I think we elect a Leader of the Free World not try hard and whimper about mean Republicans but to take responsibility, fix things, and get things done. I don’t care how, and I really don’t, but failure is not in the job description.
I look at what happened, and Obama made the Gini Index worse. He doesn’t deserve re-election as a Democrat, and I will not vote for any fuck who makes the rich richer and the poor poorer
I have already mentioned two “mistakes:” not restructuring banks and having too much tax cuts in ARRA. Housing could have been handled diferently. Trillion dollar platinum coin and a CCC and PWA bypassing Congress. Go Louis Napoleon on their asses. I don’t care.
But it is Obama’s responsibility and he failed miserably.
But honestly it is not my job to come up with methods and solutions. Nor is it my job to cover the bastard’s banker-owned ass.
I largely agree with your first paragraph, except that you are ignoring that compromises must often be made to pass legislation. Without the tax cuts, there is probably no stimulus bill, and the job picture would be much bleaker today.
Since thinking about how the things you want can be practically accomplished is not something you do, then your criticism of Obama’s performance is not terribly compelling.
“Wah wah wah, I didn’t get everything I want,” is not an indictment of Obama.
you are ignoring that compromises must often be made to pass legislation.
I believe that’s covered by “Go Louis Napoleon on their asses.” Because nothing says “progressive politics” like “Bonapartist coup.”
Look, Obama should have reduced the unemployment rate to 1%, and gotten a constitutional amendment permanently enshrining single payer (including a national right to taxpyer-funded abortions.) How? Don’t ask me — it’s not my job. But FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION!
You really went with the trillion dollar platinum coin? Really?
Not only the trillion dollar coin, but the coin in the context of spending money, which only Congress can do, rather than retiring debt, which the Treasury can do. So even that he got wrong.
Oh Christ 2010?
Oh Christ, that’s the most recent DoL data. Now, I know that isn’t as exciting as your make up wildly implausible data, then hope that nobody notices that your very next link contradicts your first number, but we do what we can.
He “prefers to imagine” that it’s a 92-8 split.
Which is also a policy preference. Or something.
WTF?
“Women are trailing behind men in the economic recovery, claiming a mere eight percent of the 1.9 million jobs that have been added to the economy since the end of the recession in June 2009, a NWLC study shows. Unemployment rates for women have actually risen from 7.6 percent in June 2009 to today’s figure of 7.7 percent, while men have seen unemployment fall from 9.9 to 7.7 percent over the course of the recovery.”
Okay, let us look at the BLS chart that is allegedly supplying your data.
Total nonfarm jobs, jan 2010: 129,279,000. Total nonfarm, Sept 2012: 133,500,000. Change: +4,221,000
Total woman nonfarm, Jan 2010: 64,615,000. Sept 2012: 65,839,000. Change: 1,224,000.
Percent of increased employment that went to women = 29%.
Oh, and I will grant that to actually get the data, you need to look at the footnotes of the fact sheet that the normally completely reliable HuffPo thinks is a “study.” And then you need to do math, unless unsigned HuffPo pieces are something you want to rely on. And basic math is a lot harder than outrage.
Numbers, like understanding how the political system works, is not his job.
I’m picking up on familiar tells in “bob mcmanus’s” comments.
Percent of increased employment that went to women = 29%.
That’s not very good for women.
Depends on what % of the lost jobs came from women.
It is also not even kind of sort of the 8% mcmanus claimed.
But no, laying off a metric boatload of teachers will hurt women disproportionately, and is a Bad Idea. But local town and county budgets is not actually something that Obama has all that much influence over.
Without searching for the data, I’m pretty confident that women make up ~50% of the workforce, so the gains are disproportionate.
Sherm,
It isn’t the % of the labor force that the gains should be measured against, but the % of jobs lost.
If men lost 1% of the jobs but enjoyed 50% of the job gains, while women lost 99% of the jobs but gained 50% of the jobs in the recovery, would you laud those results for being gender-neutral?
Joe, that’s pretty much what I’ve been saying throughout this thread in a futile attempt to get McManus to understand that the talking point about women’s job losses under Obama is complete bullshit.
Newer news from the National Women’s Law Center (Oct. 5):
And the price of gas is up too since January 09! Vote the bum out!
Have you heard what Axl Rose’s voice sounds like thanks to this president’s disastrous MOR policies, Obots?
Damn, that was awful. Axl definitely sounded better under Bush 41. Vote republican!
I didn’t see Silver break it down much, into swing states and solid-color states. Almost by definition, swing states will have smaller to nonexistent gender gaps.
? I don’t think you understand what a “gender gap” means.
Silver is in the tank for Obama.
Yeah, I remember Clinton operatives saying that in ’08 too. Silver didn’t recognize the genius of Mark Penn and looked at the actual data instead! He was an “Obot!”
Since unlike ethnicity, gender is pretty close to a 50/50 split, if a state has a wide gender gap, IOW, 65% of women in said state favor Obama, it is very unlikely to be a volatile swing state in play. Think about it.
And that is what my link an 10:48 shows, that those states still in play have much smaller gender gaps that those states already decided. Also, the white men are more evenly split in Ohio than committed states. Which was what the articles were really about, not the national gender gap, which like most national polls and trends, is irrelevant, but about trends and polls in the swing states.
Also of course, a national poll will show a much larger gender gap by averaging out swing states and polarized states. And Silver by attempting to prove a point with a meaningless national poll (who cares about a gender gap in California) did show himself more a propagandist than honest analyst.
But if 65% of the men are for Obama as well, then the gender gap is 0. So, your “IOW” doesn’t quite make sense. I guess you could be implying that whenever women in a state are 65% Obama there will be a gender gap, but is that true?
(If 65% of women favor Obama and 65% of men favor Romney and the split is 50%-50%…won’t it be a volatile swing state?)
Because such a state is much less likely to have “independent” or volatile voters.
It would help if you first acknowledged that you are, at best, being really incomplete in your gender gap analysis and, more likely, just go it wrong.
Second, what? Isn’t a state with a close race by definition a swing state? I.e., it wouldn’t take much to shift the win. E.g., a small shift in turnout could swing the race.
States with swing voters and swing states aren’t the same thing. Massachusetts has a lot of swing voters, but it’s also one of the most reliable Democratic states because the non-swing voters are predominantly Democrats. And conversely, states like Virginia don’t have very many swing voters, but it’s still a swings state because it has about as many Democrats as Republicans so those few swing votes matter more. Fivethirtyeight had a neat article on the subject.
And even then, I’m kind of skeptical of your claim that a strong gender gap implies inelastic voters. Just because on average each gender is significantly more likely to vote one way over the other doesn’t mean there can’t be quite a few of each gender willing to go the other way.
And in a close race, you don’t need a large number. Suppose women are set, i.e., Obama has all the women he’s going to get and their solid.
If he loses men a little (in an even race), then that’s enough to lose.
bob, this is just totally bonkers.
This doesn’t make any sense at all. Close overall has nothing to do with the gender gap. 2000, which was the closest modern election, had a massive gender gap; 1972, which was a blowout, had none at all. A gender gap can be consistent with almost any reasonable overall split, and certainly it’s not true that “by definition” swing states have less of a gender gap.
Shouldn’t you determine whether that Gallip likely voter model is accurate? Gallup has had Romney in a large lead for a while that is nowhere else reflected. And the key bit:
Given all that, I’d be more cautious. But that’s just me.
No. A fifteen point gender gap in a blue state means Obama wins 62-37 among women and is even among men. A fifteen point gender gap in a swing state means Obama wins women 57-42 and loses men 42-57. A fifteen point gender gap in a red state means Obama is even among women and loses 62-37 among men.
I’m very curious to see if bob owns up to his screw up here.
So, no.
Well, to be fair, bob has moved on to a whole new mistake.
Looking them over, I’m picking up on familiar tells in the comments of “bob mcmanus.”
He’s not JenBob, if that’s what you’re getting at. He’s always angry and often incoherent on his own.
He also vomits copious amounts of this kind of stuff onto Crooked Timber (aka The Enemy). Well-known troll, in other words.
People told me the same thing about the fake TDK421.
What was interesting about that episode is that there actually was a TDK421, whom the troll sock puppeted to push his anti-Obama talking points.
I don’t know if this is the same thing here or not, but there are some stylistic similarities, which I am not going to describe.
There was an awesome Unfogged thread a while back in which someone with much deeper knowledge than I patiently dismantled Bob’s assertions about what PPACA didn’t address. It was an entertaining read.
Unlike TK421 and JenBob, McManus has participated untrollishly in non-political discussions at this and other blogs. Most notably regarding movies and literature.
bob appears to have a stable IP address with no overlap. I suppose it’s theoretically possible, but he’s had a stable (so to speak) blog comment presence for over a decade, and he’s never seemed to worry that what he wants to say is too crazy to post under his own name. He’s always struck me as a perfectly nice guy with interesting, if idiosyncratic, taste in movies, who I’d probably like in person but who happens to be an insane sort of left-wing Schmittian about politics.
Fraid not.
And, as Mal points out, bob has decided that there wasn’t enough fail in this thread for them to not own up to.
My contention is that your 2nd example, which I suspect is theoretical, is very unlikely to be a swing state. One should be allowed to imagine a state where the voting preference of women (or men) could shift 20-30 points in a given year. I think such places are not even theoretically imaginable.
Now I suppose one could find states with small gender gaps that are solid blue or solid red, but those will not be swing states.
The pie charts in the 10:48 link for instance show the swing states Obama/Romney 49-48 women and 44-52 men.
The reason this is interesting is that in these states with small gender gaps Romney is not trying to increase his margin with men, but with women. The reason Romney thinks that is possible is Obama’s horrible record on women’s employment.
Since those pie charts are almost certainly largely based on sample sizes too small for crosstabs to be useful, drawing any conclusions from them would be foolish.
Is this true?
Is 869 going to make men vs. women worthless? It does seem rather small (see this discussion), but I still rather suspect that the problem is the likely voter screen. That seems to be the underlying problem with Gallup polling.
I mean, would it widen the confidence interval all that much? It’s already +-4.
Fair enough. That’s a reasonable sample.
What did you think Obama was supposed to do about it? Geez, I’m not thrilled with Obama either, but the backsliding of women and blacks is NOT because of Obama’s policies (whatever the fuck they are). This is the culmination of 30 YEARS of union-busting, paring back diversity laws, and the return of chauvinism to mainstream fashion for white guys. If this ever changes, it’s not going to come under a single president, and it will never come until the electorate quits being afraid of icky brown people and icky girls and starts voting for people who aren’t insane. Don’t pin all of this on Obama.
I predict that Prof. Reynolds is pushing the first “story” and ignoring the second.
(OK, not much of a prediction.)
The actual women who they interviews for this article are, shall we say, uninformed.
I am honestly dumbstruck by these statements. How can you not have any appreciation of the vast gulf between the parties on this issues? You’re from Virginia for God’s sake!
How can you not have any appreciation of the vast gulf between the parties on this issues?
Because people for whom politics is not a serious interest are conditioned to think that all politicians are the same, more or less – and that extends to parties as well.
Exactly. They think they’re just picking the guy best equipped to pull the levers. Any talk of differences they’re not in the mood to believe exist is just partisan nonsense and gives them a headache.
Thinking is HARD!
I hate to do the heightening-the-contradictions thing (because lots of people, including me, would be badly hurt in the process), but on my most depressed days, I sometimes wonder if we really will have to go all the way down the rathole before enough people will start paying attention that we can even start to climb out of it.
Yeah, I wonder about that too. Really depressing.
The attempt to lure and keep women voters in the GOP has been going on for at least a decade, ever since political consultants convinced themselves and each other that “soccer moms” were a key voting bloc that they could lure to the Dark Side. Thus, you had security moms in ’04, hockey moms (evolved from PUMAs) in ’08, and… uh… no idea what they’re being called this year; I guess Molly Ball is going back to soccer moms. (The vox pops that Ball is basing her article on include a couple of Christian school moms and someone who believes in reverse discrimination and criticizes the “slutty people” getting abortions at the same time that she was getting hers.) It’s almost amusing to watch Ball et al. trying to hawk their counterfactuals in the face of a candidate who can’t cross a parking lot without stepping in it.
I’ve heard “Waitress moms,” or something along those lines.
bob mcmanus – So you blame Obama for not doing more for the economy even though Republicans in Congress have opposed every measure Obama has proposed (or passed, in the case of ARRA), exactly as they threatened to do?
Oh I see, you’ve already pre-answered my question with the mocking “nothing is ever Obama’s fault” line. Never mind.
Men lost more jobs than women early in the recession when all the construction jobs from the housing boom disappeared. Women lost more jobs than men later in the recession when local governments tightened their belts in response to a decrease in tax revenue as a result of the housing crash.
Lets not hold our breath while we wait for Bob McManus to explain why the latter is Obama’s fault.
Lets not hold our breath while we wait for Bob McManus to explain why the latter is Obama’s fault.
I’m going with “neoloberalism” as my prediction for McManus’ explanation.
neoliberalism, even.
I condemn the neoloberal’s control over our international tennis strategy. Less lobbing, more peace!
No, no, they’re controlling our frontal lobes. Get your tinfoil hat on!
Get your tinfoil hat on!
It won’t fit over my neolobe.
well I’m not Bob Macmanus, but the federal government was propping up the state governments with increased Medicaid funding and fiscal stabilization funds for education. These were part of the ARRA and were extended for about 6 months in the August 2010 — well Mediciad was extended and $10 billion was added to the state fiscal stabilization funds, but these ran out by the end of fiscal 2011 in June 2011. The state fiscal stabilization funds were not extended/increased and although I may have missed it, I could find no attempt to keep it going despite the need.
In fact, “1/3 of federal non-defense discretionary funding flows through the states” and “this funding has gone down by 9% since 2010″. These cuts certainly weren’t passed over the President’s veto. You could argue that the trade of these cuts for other not cutting other areas or raising the debt ceiling was worth it, but these cuts and the end of ARRA funds are a major reason why the states have been laying off so many women over the last couple of years.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=711
Speaking of polling hysteria, I just sent Excitable Andy Sullivan an email about the trendlines drawn through the data points in the chart in this post he made today:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/10/five-lies-in-30-seconds.html
I may be one of the last humans around who studied technical drawing and curve fitting by hand in college, but these lines, particularly Romenys’ look wacky to me. If I had submitted a line like that through some data points in college, my professor would have attacked me with a french curve.
I hope Andrew Sullivan isn’t drawing phony frightening trend lines through data just to hype a story…
I wonder why he didn’t just outsource it. If you find Silver’s too comforting, then TPM’s Polltracker should give you the heebie jeebies.
Polltracker doesn’t look scary to me.
Looks like Obama’s parchute opened and he’s currently in an updraft.
Anybody is free to bet against Obama, but I’d say you’d better be damn sure you really can afford to lose the bet. I think a lot of the supposed tightness is a matter of LV models skewed too heavily toward the 2010 electorate. I expect it to be pretty close in national popular vote because Romney will meaninglessly run up the score in the red states, but I think Obama will win the electoral vote fairly comfortably and it won’t take all night for the networks call the election.
PollTracker seems to me to see a far closer race than Silver’s model.
Silver’s still has some fundamentals built in which favor Obama, IIRC. So.
I’m not betting against Obama at the moment, but I think if you want to be nervous, PollTracker does an ok job of that :)
The chart Sullivan has up comes with those trendlines straight from HuffPo. So it may be distorted, but it’s not Sullivan’s fault if it is.
It is that he relied on HuffPo :)
It looks like a fairly benign local regression, which is one of those new fangled computer powered statistical tools. It seems fairly legitimate to acknowledge that things aren’t always going to follow nice simple curves, but the thing is that when you allow such curves, your ability to extrapolate becomes limited, (extrapolating a line is easy, extrapolating a curve whose slope varies based on local data is not) and Sullivan is extrapolating in ways that aren’t really justified.
TPM had back to back stories today:
1. Romney closing in on Obama
2. Obama enjoying polling surge folling second debate
I think political reporters are just writing their opinions and then shopping around for a curve fit that fits their story no matter how mathimagically silly the line is.
I think political reporters need to get some ethics:
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