Subscribe via RSS Feed

Search Results for 'pollin'

It’s Them Damned Trains!

[ 42 ] June 3, 2013 | Erik Loomis

Scott claims one of the most important questions of our time is why Canadian teams haven’t won the Stanley Cup for so long. He may be right, but THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION OF OUR TIME is the issue of members of Congress killed by trains or who died while riding the train. David Nir points us to Eric Ostermeier, who profiles the 23 members of Congress who died in train-related incidents. This includes Connecticut Rep. Dwight Loomis, who I believe is the only person of my name to serve in Congress. Loomis served in 2 terms from 1859-63 and then was hit by a train in 1903 at the age of 82.

This also reminds me that I’ve thought about doing a blog series on famous Loomises over the ages. There are more than you’d think. Of course, I’d start with Randy Quaid’s character from Quick Change.

….This is also a good place to note that I think the weirdness of the train guy was Sergio Leone’s attempt to create a character based vaguely on what Walter Brennan would look like in a spaghetti western.

…..I have now learned via a Twitter follower that Wendell Willkie died after suffering approximately 20 heart attacks on a train while traveling from Indianapolis to New York City. That’ll do it.

SC-1 Special Election: Sanford vs. Colbert Busch

[ 77 ] May 7, 2013 | Dave Brockington

This is relevant to very few people outside of the 1st Congressional District in the state of South Carolina.  The district has a PVI of R+11 (I’m surprised that it’s that low), has been represented by Republicans since January 1981, and voted +18 for Romney. That the word “competitive” ever enters the discourse on this race speaks volumes about the quality of the Republican’s Appalachian Trail candidate (due in court two days following the election) who must “rise from the ashes” in order to win. Most of the analysis really goes out on a limb in a) predicting a low turnout election, and b) the candidate who mobilizes their support best is more likely to win. In anything other than a Presidential election, that usually can be interpreted as “not the Democrat”.

Regardless of the idiosyncrasies of the candidates, the structural conditions favor a Republican blowout. The best electoral context for Democrats in this district in recent times was in November, and Democrats got hammered. Any decline in turnout will impact the two parties asymmetrically; a May election in an odd year is the worst possible case for Democratic turnout. However, even though the polling has been all over the map on this one, it’s currently (according to PPP) a one point Sanford lead. That Colbert Busch might win is remarkable, but I’m not betting on it. Even if she does win, she’d likely be one of the first Democrats to fall in 2014.

“We’ll See Your Deranged Person With This Suit Stuffed With $500 Bills And Styrofoam.”

[ 45 ] May 6, 2013 | Scott Lemieux

Not that the polling this far out means a lot, but running McAullife against Cuccinelli really will test whether you can beat something with nothing if the something is odious enough.

But Austerity Is Science!

[ 186 ] April 16, 2013 | Scott Lemieux

Well, well, well:

In 2010, economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff released a paper, “Growth in a Time of Debt.” Their “main result is that…median growth rates for countries with public debt over 90 percent of GDP are roughly one percent lower than otherwise; average (mean) growth rates are several percent lower.” Countries with debt-to-GDP ratios above 90 percent have a slightly negative average growth rate, in fact.

This has been one of the most cited stats in the public debate during the Great Recession. Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity budget states their study “found conclusive empirical evidence that [debt] exceeding 90 percent of the economy has a significant negative effect on economic growth.” The Washington Post editorial board takes it as an economic consensus view, stating that “debt-to-GDP could keep rising — and stick dangerously near the 90 percent mark that economists regard as a threat to sustainable economic growth.”

[...]

In a new paper, “Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff,” Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst successfully replicate the results. After trying to replicate the Reinhart-Rogoff results and failing, they reached out to Reinhart and Rogoff and they were willing to share their data spreadhseet. This allowed Herndon et al. to see how how Reinhart and Rogoff’s data was constructed.

They find that three main issues stand out. First, Reinhart and Rogoff selectively exclude years of high debt and average growth. Second, they use a debatable method to weight the countries. Third, there also appears to be a coding error that excludes high-debt and average-growth countries. All three bias in favor of their result, and without them you don’t get their controversial result.

Dean Baker has more.

For the reasons Matt identifies — most importantly, that the causal inference drawn by Reinhart and Rogoff never made sense in the first place — it’s unlikely to matter, but it’s instructive.

UPDATE: Krugman responds to the response.

Reducing the Burdens to Voting?

[ 24 ] February 13, 2013 | Dave Brockington

I didn’t watch the speech last night. Being in Britain, I was busy sleeping. Indeed, I barely made it through all of Celtic v Juventus, regretfully. Buried towards the end of the speech, at about 51 minutes in, is the initiative to address voting barriers:

In another sign of the election’s lingering shadow, Mr. Obama was creating a bipartisan commission to investigate voting irregularities that led to long lines at polling sites in November. Studies indicate that these lines cost Democrats hundreds of thousands of votes. The commission will be led by the chief counsel of the Obama presidential campaign, Robert Bauer, and a legal adviser to Mitt Romney’s campaign, Ben Ginsberg.

To quote the speech:

Defending our freedom, though, is not just the job of our military alone. We must all do our part to make sure our God-given rights are protected here at home. That includes one of the most fundamental rights of a democracy, the right to vote. Now, when — when any American, no matter where they live or what their party, are denied that right because they can’t afford to wait for five or six or seven hours just to cast their ballot, we are betraying our ideals. So — so tonight I’m announcing a nonpartisan commission to improve the voting experience in America. And it definitely needs improvement. I’m asking two longtime experts in the field — who, by the way, recently served as the top attorneys for my campaign and for Governor Romney’s campaign — to lead it. We can fix this, and we will. The American people demand it, and so does our democracy.

I’m not sure that voting is a “God-given right”; if it is, then He has some work to do regarding the fair representation of His flock, given that the geographic distribution of Cardinal electors in the College of Cardinals makes the malapportionment of the Electoral College appear insignificant in comparison. However it is certainly “one of the most”, if not the most, fundamental rights of a democracy by definition. It doesn’t take a political scientist to figure out that no voting means no democracy.

My sense is that setting up a commission to study a problem is a death warrant (but I’m happy to be shown to be wrong). A brief history since 2000 on such voting commissions certainly does not inspire confidence in fundamental progressive reform, and over at the Election Law Blog the best we can hope for appears to be “modest” pragmatic recommendations. See also this story outlining some Republican Senatorial opposition to the commission, but not for that bit of predictable obvious; rather, for the excellent Senator Ted Cruz quotes.

This reminded me of a piece in The Nation that I meant to discuss last week, before my day job inconveniently intruded, which responded to the stories in the NYT last week about the effect long lines and waiting times might have had on the Democratic share of the vote. It correctly points out that the overwhelming majority of election law is conducted at state level, and barring the 15th, 19th, and 26th Amendments and the VRA:

There is no federal right to vote for Congress to guarantee. I’d be glad to be corrected, but as best I can tell, that means that technically, in almost every case, a state can make it as hard as it wants for its citizens to vote, and there’s practically nothing DC can do about it.

The proposed solution is the Right to Vote Amendment, proposed by then-Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., which “would solve every last one of our voting problems. (I bet, although you’d have to ask a constitutional lawyer, it would even cover our gerrymandering problem . . .”.  The thing is, it wouldn’t, nor would it address gerrymandering:

SECTION 1. All citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, shall have the right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides. The right to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, any State, or any other public or private person or entity, except that the United States or any State may establish regulations narrowly tailored to produce efficient and honest elections.

“Regulations narrowly tailored to produce efficient and honest elections” is a green light for Voter ID laws and other selective enhancements in the cost of voting operating under “fraud prevention”.

SECTION 2. Each State shall administer public elections in the State in accordance with election performance standards established by the Congress. The Congress shall reconsider such election performance standards at least once every four years to determine if higher standards should be established to reflect improvements in methods and practices regarding the administration of elections.

Vague. Furthermore, let’s face it: Republicans have been known to control both houses of Congress on occasion, and I’m not sure allowing the present Republican Party to set electoral “performance standards” is in the better interests of democracy.

SECTION 3. Each State shall provide any eligible voter the opportunity to register and vote on the day of any public election.

Most of us can get behind this clause, but the word “eligible” can easily be exploited. This would not prevent the lifetime disenfranchisement for convicted felons, which to my knowledge is the status in both Virginia and Kentucky. Florida used to have lifetime disenfranchisement, then removed it, then restored it in 2011. (Perhaps I should update that lecture again before giving it in a couple weeks). Felony disenfranchisement is generally constitutional, and the 14th Amendment can be read as permissive on the practice.

SECTION 4. Each State and the District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall establish and abide by rules for appointing its respective number of Electors. Such rules shall provide for the appointment of Electors on the day designated by the Congress for holding an election for President and Vice President and shall ensure that each Elector votes for the candidate for President and Vice President who received a majority of the popular vote in the State or District.

This merely eliminates faithless electors, which while theoretically an issue in the 26(?) states that do not have statutes locking electors into the candidate for whom they are pledged has only occurred eight times since 1948. It does have one pedantic problem: majority. What happens to those electors representing states or districts won only by plurality? Do they just disappear? Presumably before the above text made its way through to 2/3 vote in each house, that wording would be addressed.

What this proposed amendment doesn’t do is “solve every last one of our voting problems”. In terms of progressive reform aimed at reducing the burdens to the act of voting, the only thing this amendment guarantees is same day registration. Period. It doesn’t touch gerrymandering, though it does allow Congress to address this through the provisions regarding electoral performance standards. Given the vagueness of that clause, however, Congress can do quite a bit with that power, both progressive and regressive.

Waiting in Line to Vote

[ 33 ] February 7, 2013 | Dave Brockington

The past few days have seen several stories on waiting times at the polls in November, spurred by the release of a couple of studies, including one by Charles Stewart at MIT with an N of over 10,000. Key findings from the MIT survey are illustrated here in the NYT piece. With these data we can’t be at all certain that these resulted from the much discussed Republican vote suppression efforts, but the effects that are observable did have a substantive effect on voters, and were systematically related to politically predictive demographic categories such as race and income.

Democrats waited an average of 15 minutes, Republicans 12.4. Waits were longer in more urbanized settings and for those on lower income brackets. Most damning is that Latinos and African-Americans waited an average of 20.2 minutes, while whites 12.7 minutes. The state with the longest wait was Florida at 45 minutes. This Nation piece on Florida, which conducted its own examination into the problem, includes this brilliant quote by the incumbent Florida Secretary of State: “I can confidently say Florida conducted a fair election in 2012.” Perhaps when compared to some past Florida elections of note, but perhaps not when compared to 2012 cross-nationally. Work done “by an Ohio State University professor and The Orlando Sentinel, concluded that more than 200,000 voters in Florida “gave up in frustration” without voting.” The NYT article states that the overall cost to Democrats numbered “hundreds of thousands of votes”.

Positive reform (not to be confused with voter ID) at the Federal level is encountering the usually justified obfuscation from Republicans:

Conservatives have complained that Democrats are politicizing an issue that should be handled by the states, not the federal government. “It’s ridiculous to stand in line a couple of hours to vote,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “But I think it’s also ridiculous to make a political issue out of it when it’s very easily handled.”

And that’s one of the more ridiculous things I’ve read today. Voting is a political issue, and making voting easier (or harder) is all about politics. When African-Americans and Latinos have to wait nearly twice as long as whites, it’s political. We know, and they know, that efforts to suppress votes masquerading as fraud prevention result in Republicans having a larger percentage of a given electorate, while easing the costs to voting (e.g. easier / no registration, more polling places, shorter lines, etc.) increase the Democratic percentage of a given electorate. While it’s a starkly political issue, there is one key difference: we’re right on the normative merits. Anybody who wants to vote should be able to vote. As a society, we should be reducing, not erecting, roadblocks to the act of voting.

I cobbled together a state level dataset to quickly examine if there are determinants of the average wait by state. While the studies discussed in the NYT and Nation articles are based on survey data, what does this look like at the state level? The dependent variable in the little model that follows is the average wait time courtesy of the MIT survey. I included some standard state level measures, including PVI, wealth, aggregate population, poverty rate, as well as percentages African-American and Latino of the overall state population. I also hypothesized that unified Republican control of the state government (defined as both chambers of the legislature and the executive) would lead to longer wait times, as it was the Republicans pulling back on early voting windows and introducing Voter ID laws (which they achieved anything, achieved longer lines). There are 25 such states. Finally, I included the margin of victory for the state winner in the Presidential election.

Several notes prior to viewing the table in all its glory are warranted. First, interpretation of the effects will be a product of your own view of the significance of statistical significance. I think it is often mis-applied. In this model, it could be argued that I have the universe of cases at my disposal, hence I’m not trying to ascertain the probability that the effect I’m observing in this sample is the result of random chance. Furthermore, with an N of only 48 (two states are not included in the model; Washington relies heavily on postal voting, while Oregon is exclusively so, rendering waiting lines at polling places an irrelevant concept), only the strongest substantive relationships will be significant. A lack of significance does not equate no relationship, it simply means that the relationship has not been observed with the precision necessary to be arbitrarily comfortable generalizing from our sample to the target population. Second, the measures are not normed to a common metric, meaning size is not relative. Third, as this is state-level data, it is not fine enough to capture precinct-level variations, and I suspect a lot of the vote suppression tactics were conducted at precinct level.

“Significant” relationships are found with state wealth, percentage African-American, and poverty rate (the bi-variate correlation between poverty rate and per capita GDP is low.) The actual estimate for wealth required moving the decimal a few spaces to show a real number, but a rough norming of the measures indicates that it has the second strongest substantive impact on wait times: the wealthier the state is, the shorter the wait. Counter-intuitively, the higher the poverty rate, the shorter the wait as well, and I’m not sure what to make of that. The overall winner, in terms of both significance levels and normed substantive effect is % African-American. For each percentage point increase in a state’s black population, the average wait increased nearly half a minute. This doesn’t seem like a lot, but this measure ranges from 0.8% in Montana to 37.6% in Mississippi, hence the overall range effect is around 18 minutes. Moving on to the measures that did not report significant estimates: there really isn’t anything going on with overall population size, states with larger Latino populations had longer waits, the greater the margin in the election, the shorter the wait, and states under unified Republican control waited nearly two minutes longer when everything else in the model is taken into account. A straight bi-variate analysis is starker: the average waiting time for states under unified Republican control was 13.42 minutes, while 9.13 minutes for those with at least a modicum of Democratic input (and this relationship is significant with a one-way ANOVA).

Finally, the overall model fit is only .31: these variables only explain 31% of the variance in waiting times. While some variation is just random, there’s with near certainty several additional unobserved determinants of waiting times.

As I only just slapped all this together, I’m not completely sure what the story is beyond the obvious: your wait time will be shorter in a richer state, but longer in a more heterogeneous state. I think, given the nature of the data and the significance of the bi-variate relationship, we can also be confident that states under unified Republican control had significantly longer lines to vote.

And that’s pretty much exactly the way they like it.

GOP Meddling With the Electoral College, Part 18: The National Popular Vote?

[ 60 ] February 4, 2013 | Dave Brockington

While I can’t speak specifically for my seven colleagues, I will anyway: I sense that the official LGM position on the Electoral College is “it sucks”. Yet we’re also a pragmatic enough bunch to recognize that the probability of the requisite constitutional amendment to eliminate the Electoral College passing both houses and receiving support of 75% of the states is vanishingly small. This results in any reform necessarily retaining the underlying logic of the EC. We’ve discussed the problems with the Congressional district system at some length here recently. While we haven’t really touched on a pure state-level PR distribution, we did show some data that suggests a decent (e.g. Perot, Wallace) or even modest (Nader), third party challenge can throw the election to the House, and nobody wants that. Well, nobody here wants that.

This leaves the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Here is the one example of “if you can’t win outright, change the rules” schemes I can get behind lacking a constitutional amendment. It is not without its problems; the comments to this post leads of with an engaging game theoretic discussion on how state legislatures might back out at the last minute and swing the election. Indeed, I’m not even sure I’m entirely sold on it. But RNC committee member Saul Anuzis is:

“I think there’s a growing consensus that the winner-take-all system we’re currently under is a problem, that it’s not representative, that only a small number of states benefit, and that it needs to be changed”

All well and good, but if I’m a Republican and I’m trying to find the most efficacious means to rig the rules in the favor of the GOP, this is not necessarily the route I’d suggest. The Democratic candidate has won the plurality of the vote in five of the past six elections, and unless the Republicans shift their (now stereotyped) pitch as the party of middle and upper middle class white males, they’re operating at a disadvantage in the next couple cycles (a disadvantage that is not necessarily insurmountable, but a disadvantage nonetheless). However, if the RNC was to follow the lead of Anuzis and get behind this proposal, it shouldn’t be too difficult to enact.

Currently, eight states (HI, WA, CA, IL, VT, MA, NJ, MD) plus DC have the Compact on their legislative books for 132 EC votes. Incidentally, those nine “states” have gone for the Democrat 100% of the time in the past six elections and 92% of the time back to and including 1988 (CA, IL, VT, NJ, and MD were not part of the ‘Dukakis Ten’). If the six Red / Blue states (PA, WI, VA, OH, MI, FL) can be convinced to get behind it, that brings the EV total to 238, leaving only 32 votes required to make it law in the states that have adopted it. That’s Texas, with change to spare. I don’t see Texas adopting a law that could be argued to disenfranchise its solid Republican support in years a Democrat has the temerity to win, so perhaps NC, IN, and WV would be more likely. WV has a recent history of voting for Democrats and Republicans (though the foreseeable future it seems to be solid red), NC is now a legitimate swing state, and IN did vote for Obama in 2008 somehow. Those three are not enough; an extra EC vote found between couch cushions or the Dakotas somewhere. But it’s doable, and public opinion appears to be on side:

That said, there is polling evidence that GOP voters are become more interested in a national popular vote as 2000 fades into the distance and Democrats expand their reach into more swing states. A Gallup poll this month found 63 percent of respondents supported replacing the Electoral College with a national vote. But the big news was that 61 percent of Republicans now favor the change, a huge shift in support since 2000, when only 41 percent said they were were pro-popular vote. Even in 2011, only a slight majority of GOPers wanted to ditch the current system.

Given our antipathy for the Electoral College, this might be the least bad proposal.

Britain and the European Union, belatedly

[ 54 ] January 26, 2013 | Dave Brockington

On Wednesday, Prime Minister David Cameron managed to finally deliver a speech that half the Conservative Party has wanted delivered for decades: at some point following the next Parliamentary election due no later than the Spring of 2015, there will be a referendum asking whether or not Britain should remain in the EU.  A referendum is expected in 2016 or 2017.

When this speech was first mooted, towards the beginning of this month, most of Europe and several business interests in the UK (e.g. Roger Carr, head of the CBI, Sir Richard Branson, and others; post-speech the reaction was more divided) came out in opposition to Cameron’s desire to have the British (yet again) renegotiate its relationship with Brussels.  What really made news here in the UK, however, was the US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, Phillip Gordon, explicitly warning the British to not screw up their membership in the EU.  It made enough of an impression that BBC Radio Devon wanted to do an interview about it, and as I seem to be their go-to-guy for all things American, I got the call.

They had three general questions specifically about the State Department’s remarks.  First, why is the US offering such advice?  I pointed out that official diplomatic meddling in domestic affairs is rare, but Gordon had explicitly answered this question: “this is in America’s interests” for the UK to remain a key member of the EU.  I elaborated by suggesting that the US can use the British as a back door to influence EU policy by proxy.  Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg agrees.  To paraphrase, Clegg asserted that a UK firmly in the European Union is “more valuable” to the United States.

The second question area was whether or not Britain should take the advice of the United States.  My response was an unequivocal yes, and for reasons beyond the value of my British passport once I finally plunk down the £850 required for a citizenship application.

The third topic was which relationship should the UK prioritise, Europe or the United States.  I said that this was the wrong question to ask (in not so many words), but that the real decision is between the UK’s relationship with Europe or their relationship with the Conservative Party.  The Shadow Foreign Secretary would say the same thing: “the real question is the European Union vs. the Interests of the Conservative Party”.

The European Union causes Cameron two political problems, one endogenous and one exogenous to the Tories.  The former is the constant struggle within the Conservative Party itself on the question of Europe (a question that might confuse the outside observer as the UK joined the EEC 40 years ago under a Conservative government, and this membership survived a referendum in 1975).  This division hasn’t helped any of the Tory PMs since joining, and largely defined John Major’s tenure.  Beyond the confines of the Conservative Party, the growing electoral strength of the United Kingdom Independence Party worries (needlessly in my assessment) the Tories.  Cameron hopes to both quell internal debate and stem the perceived hemorrhaging of support to UKIP by throwing both constituencies a bone.

Cameron suggested that the referendum would be preceded by a wide ranging renegotiating of Britain’s relationship with Europe, and the operation of the European Union writ large.  The latter is with near certainty not going to happen any time soon.  The EU spent most of the last decade negotiating and presenting to (some) voters a new constitution, which failed in 2005 to be refashioned as the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007.  Currently, the EU, specifically the Eurozone, is struggling with the incentives created by having a single currency and monetary policy without having a common fiscal policy.  Reassessing the entire institutional structure and operation is not going to be a priority for the other 26 member states of the union.  Furthermore, Britain already has a unique status within the EU, with the range of opt-outs from European policy beyond not being a member of either the Euro or the Schengen Agreement, and the famous “rebate” from its financial responsibilities to Brussels negotiated by Margaret Thatcher.  Supranational institutions don’t work very well À la carte, yet the ideal relationship for the Conservative Party and a large segment of the British (or just English and Welsh) population is a European Union that begins and ends with the open, free market.

I was asked for a prediction on who would win such a referendum.  I predicted that it would never take place.  The referendum is scheduled for after the next Parliamentary election.  Labour has led in the polls for 22 of the last 24 months, and the current snapshot has C32/L41/LD11 for a 96 seat Labour majority.  Obviously these numbers are not solidly predictive of what would happen in the Spring of 2015, but the Conservatives have a lot of ground to make up if they are to win the outright majority necessary for triggering this referendum.  Achieving this majority is even less likely seeing as how boundary changes for Westminster constituencies are almost certainly not going to be enacted prior to the next election.  The map changes have been largely estimated to help the Conservative cause.

So what’s this all about, then?  I agree with Simon Usherwood, writing over at the LSE blog, that this is a largely political exercise; “As such, it is not going to satisfy most people, since it looks a bit too much like what it is: a fudge and can-kicking.”

Unskewed!

[ 88 ] November 21, 2012 | Erik Loomis

Creepy unskewed polls guy is back with the real reason Obama won–voter fraud!

[SL]: See also Weigel.

Yes. A Liberal Cocoon.

[ 104 ] November 19, 2012 | Scott Lemieux

Item 1 — Mr. Glenn Harlan Reynolds:

That’s no secret in the Obama era, of course, as the press’s efforts to boost, and then protect, the presidency of Barack Obama have become ever more obvious. But it’s still worth pointing out. It’s a problem for America, and it’s a problem for people on the right. But it’s probably a bigger problem for people with whom the media agree. That’s because they wind up living in a bubble, protected from contrary views, which means that they are perpetually caught by surprise when reality asserts itself.

Item 2, by the same not-at-all cocooned gentleman:

OBAMA IS DOING FINE: President Barack Obama is rapidly losing support among African-American voters in North Carolina, a new poll out today from the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling shows. [Features uncritical link to story breathlessly announcing that 20% of North Carolina's African-American voters intend to vote for Romney. I swear.]

Item 3:

Both threats fizzled. In North Carolina, 96 percent of blacks voted for Obama.

In conclusion, it’s really tragic how liberals delude themselves by limiting themselves to useless, farcically biased news sources.

As a bonus, for those who prefer undiluted delusional wingnuttery to the greasy passive-aggressive Reynolds version, the good Roger Ailes finds this classic from Mr. Hillbuzz, the man who will be running the campaign of the woman Democrats are very, very scared will be the Republican nominee in 2016:

The hacks and Obama cultists who comprise Minitru so desperately want Barack Obama to be reelected that they’re publishing fan faction in once-reputable papers and outright lying to viewers on the tee-vee. This election will be the end of Minitru’s last remaining credibility…with anger actually coming from all sides, since lefties will be furious that things turned out nothing like Nate Silver, in particular, repeatedly assured them. The Left is going to eat its own in the coming months and a lot of heads will roll. I personally don’t think MSNBC will even exist by the time of the next presidential election because its viewers will be so furious that no one on that propaganda channel warned them this would happen. Already we’ve seen the complete and total disappearance of Oprah Winfrey from the face of the Earth, still smarting from the blowback she received from her former viewers who hold her partly accountable for Obama’s election in the first place. Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow will see their own fans turn on them soon, with a great many Hollywood stars such as Eva Longoria and Beyonce paying a high price in years ahead for being so closely associated with the Obamas.

Amazingly, this crackpot rant goes on for thousands of more words. I particularly treasure #3 (“All of them believe in Nate Silver the way toddlers believe in Santa Claus…only I guarantee you that November 6th isn’t going to be like Christmas morning for these people. Nate Silver’s predictions are bunk and everyone on the Left who clung to them to hold their mental health together the last few months are going to turn on him in an instant when Mitt Romney wins the election in a landslide,”) but it’s all pure comic gold.

Is Our Conservatives Learning?

[ 113 ] November 10, 2012 | Scott Lemieux

With some conservatives figuring out that being constantly lied to by their media sources isn’t actually helpful, it’s fun to see what happens after the popping of the bubble on election day. Dean “Unskewed” Chambers is actually relatively gracious, straightforwardly admitting his error.

Then there’s the Weekly Standard‘s Jay Cost, who hilariously dressed up his hack predictions (Pennsyvania’s going Republican!) as a manifestation of his superior knowledge of American history compared to those who actually try to learn things from data. No acknowledgment of error from these quarters! Instead, we get a belligerent series of non-sequiturs about how it’s “identity politics” and (even more cynically) “vote suppression” to accurately describe conservative policies and support moderately progressive ones. (In case you’re wondering, he still completely ignores data that falsifies his ridiculous claims, in this case “rich people vote Democratic.”) And he follows this up by demonstrating what he considers his learning by asserting that liberal historians all have a teleological view of history and love Woodrow Wilson.

I’m guessing that in this respect, Cost will be rather more representative.

Asymmetric Beliefs Can Lead to Bad Outcomes

[ 88 ] November 8, 2012 | Robert Farley

This may, believe it or not, be the scariest thing I’ve ever read about the modern GOP:

Romney advisers are telling CBS News that there wasn’t one person on the Romney campaign who saw the loss coming, and the GOP presidential candidate was “shellshocked” by the results. Here’s what they have to say:

  • “We went into the evening confident we had a good path to victory…I don’t think there was one person who saw this coming.”
  • “There’s nothing worse than when you think you’re going to win, and you don’t…It was like a sucker punch.”
  • Romney “was shellshocked.”

The CBS story indicates that the Romney team even bought into the “unskewed polls” theory, believing that the polls dramatically underestimated Republican turnout and overestimated Democratic enthusiasm.

This report comes after other indications that the Romney campaign was disregarding polling data.

It’s one thing for the rubes to believe that an election is in the bag when the actual chances of victory are south of 10%; indeed, a good campaign requires creating the conditions for suspension of disbelief. It’s entirely another when the braintrust of the campaign has determined to smoke its own product. When I wrote this post, I didn’t really think that the core strategists in the campaign had abandoned connection with reality; rather, I figured it was mostly #2 and #3. Asymmetric beliefs about the probabilities of success in conflict can produce bad outcomes. Another way of phrasing is that it would be remarkably more reassuring to learn that the campaign was simply lying about its chances (and, of course, they may still be); lying, at least, can be entirely rational. See also Ari Kohen on the difference between hope and delusion.

As it happens, Dan Nexon and I chatted about this just today:

Page 1 of 121234510...Last »

    • Switch to our mobile site