Timex
2761
lol?
Hey, at least I got listed as barely sentient in this totally out of the blue attack. You stay classy, Warren.
Lantz
2764
There’s a difference between moving jobs/domestic production out of the US and expanding into other countries.
Modern car/truck assembly plants handle reconfiguration for color/features/etc for literally every vehicle on the plant. They don’t make 5,000 red ones with one feature package, and then reconfigure for 5,000 blue ones with a different feature package. They assemble each vehicle along the line with whatever that vehicle needs. It allows them to adapt to market trends and handle ‘special order’ scenarios very quickly. So there is a big cost savings advantage to having vehicle assembly close to points of sale. That’s why foreign car companies have assembly plants in the US. It’s the same reason why GM wants assembly plants in China as it continues to increase sales in China.
This is very different from moving production for US consumed products to other countries.
It’s closing argument season. Chait gives us his argument for Why Obama today:
I can understand why somebody who never shared Obama’s goals would vote against his reelection. If you think the tax code already punishes the rich too heavily, that it’s not government’s role to subsidize health insurance for those who can’t obtain it, that the military shouldn’t have to let gays serve openly, and so on, then Obama’s presidency has been a disaster, but you probably didn’t vote for him last time. For anybody who voted for Obama in 2008 and had even the vaguest sense of his platform, the notion that he has fallen short of some plausible performance threshold seems to me unfathomable.
Obama’s résumé of accomplishments is broad and deep, running the gamut from economic to social to foreign policy. The general thrust of his reforms, especially in economic policy, has been a combination of politically radical and ideologically moderate. The combination has confused liberals into thinking of Obamaism as a series of sad half-measures, and conservatives to deem it socialism, but the truth is neither. Obama’s agenda has generally hewed to the consensus of mainstream economists and policy experts. What makes the agenda radical is that, historically, vast realms of policy had been shaped by special interests for their own benefit. Plans to rationalize those things, to write laws that make sense, molder on think-tank shelves for years, even generations. They are often boring. But then Obama, in a frenetic burst of activity, made many of them happen all at once.
Timex
2766
Absolutely, but what I replied to was the idea that GM would “bring those profits back to the US”, which is interesting in light of the push to try and tax profits out of the US, because they are specifically NOT being brought back to the US.
davidf
2767
This kind of logic makes my head hurt, it was certainly no part of the critical thinking classes I had in the education i receieved. Because he’s talking about other things, then it doesnt apply? The logic of that, is hard to disipher. Other parts I can agree with sort of.
He wasnt specially calling it terror. He was calling it a general act of Terror, and comments “We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others”? because the intelligence community up to that time was inclined to believe that may have been a factor. So addressing that possiblity was salient.
I think, the whole concern with this from Romney was akin to arm chair quarterbacking. Especially since the intelligence community was the one saying at the time, this video was a likely catalyst. As a President, to act otherwise (and ignore the intelligence) would be irresponsible governing, you act with the facts you have. Of course the bigger the stakes the longer you wait until you are sure of the data you’ve collected before acting.
I initially gave Bush the same benfit, since if the intelligence community is telling you the wrong thing, its not really something you can be blamed for. Though working to ensure acting on wrong information doesnt happen again is critical to preserve your integrity.
Sadly, in that administrations case actually willfully looking for information to support your action and ignoring reports that counter it became another issue entirely.
Again in context, I don’t see how that logic is justified. If someone asks you a direct question, and you site numerous related examples to support your previous answer to that subject in another context, how is that not the same? Unless their is a specific ‘univeral’ exception that everyone agrees to and is common knowledge (OR he states of course not but lalalala), then making the statement that they could not be assumed to be the same thing isn’t based in a school of applied logic I know.
If you look at the Quinnipiac polls ini OH, VA, and FL, they are showing Republicans in their models at significant amounts (between 5 and 9 points) below even their 2008 turnout numbers. Does anyone think fewer Republicans will be voting in 2012? I think Mr. Wolf is right.
You may want to ask for a refund on that education.
Because when you say that we should look for ways to move responsibility from the federal government back to the states, and when you say that we should look at programs to see where cuts can be made so we don’t continue with deficit spending, that is not the same as saying that one specific program (FEMA, in this case) should be shut down. I don’t know how to explain it any more clearly than that.
Saying, “We should look at federal programs and see which ones we don’t need” is different from saying, “We don’t need any federal programs.”
Whoever wins this argument gets an extra vote.
I’m guessing D+2
I know I’m ready for this nonsense to be over with already.
Hugin
2772
If I had a magical wishing ring, I would be wishing so hard for the whole “The Party ID number is skewed” thing to die.
- Party ID fluctuates a lot, for a variety of reasons.
- There’s some evidence R numbers are down in swing states because of demographic shifts, particularly lots of Latinos going D this cycle.
- Lots of pollsters simply use the party ID numbers people give them when they’re polled. They don’t just make some ID number up out of nothing.
Nate Silver @fivethirtyeight
7 polls released in Ohio in past 48 hours: Obama +2, Obama +3, Obama +3, Obama +3, Obama +5, Obama +5, Obama +5. #notthatcomplicated
Manresa
2774
Let’s set aside whether or not Romney meant what he said about FEMA. Let’s talk about disaster prediction. According to NPR and the Washington Post weather forecasters did an amazing job of predicting Hurricane Sandy. Yet, if Romney is elected, expect money for the National Weather Service & NASA’s Earth science research to be slashed. Here are some numbers from the Ryan budget that Romney “would pass”:
“All of NASA’s activities except aeronautics are in function 250 – General Science, Space and Technology. That category also includes the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy’s science programs. For FY2013, the Ryan plan calls for allocating $28 billion, down from $29.1 billion in FY2012. The Obama budget calls for $29.5 billion in FY2013. Over the 10-year period, the Washington Post says the total for function 250 is six percent less in the Ryan budget.”
“NOAA’s programs are in function 300, Natural Resources and Environment, along with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and a range of conservation and natural resources programs. In the near term, function 300 would be 14.6 percent lower in 2014 in the Ryan budget according to the Washington Post.”
Is deficit spending on weather satellites, supercomputers, and forecasting research “immoral”?
All with bad weighted models? All garbage. Ask Kerry about the Gold Standard of polls, the election day exit poll, if you don’t think the sample and the pollsters can affect the outcome.
Look, it comes down to this: Some pollsters have a different view of the electorate than others. CBS/NYT/Quin, PPP, etc all think that Democrats are going to turn out in record numbers, way above their 2008 percentages and Republicans are going to come in way lower. Others don’t. Given the other polls we have seen, including independents and GOP enthusiaism, that former model doesn’t bear out to me. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.
Nate’s either going to be the patron saint of Liberals whose hands he held through the dark time of Mittmentum or he is going to try to salvage his credibility by saying his model worked in spite of the wonky weighting of various polls, skewed samples, and poor turnout models. I really think his ideological inclinations are leading his statistics and not the other way around. I agree with others, though, I will be glad when it is over.
Sure it does. One thing it tends to not do is go down for the opposition party from a historically unique wave election after 8 years of a divisive Presidency.
You mean more than went for Obama over McCain? Really?
Actually, they do. Some polls “weigh” the poll to account for what they believe to be skewed samples, particularly when they aren’t measuring for the variable in question. In some cases the pollster will change how they choose and poll the sample; in some cases, like you mention, they are sampling for the raw number, and that will also affect how they choose the sample.
Republican party id has dropped. Part of that is that a lot of Republican leaners are now calling themselves independents. Go here and mouse over the 2008+ period; Republican party identification has dropped from ~30% in 2004 to 24% in current polls - 5% drop 2004 to 2008, it’s bounced up and down by a point since then, currently at 24%.
If you include leaners, which should capture the “disgusted Republicans saying they’re independent factor”, you get this.
Big collapse to 2008, recovery afterwards towards 2010, not much change since.
Other pollsters show similar trends. If you look at the crosstabs at the bottom of this Quinnipac poll their likely voter screen resulted in 29/37/30 Republican/Democrat/Independent, which is very close to the nationwide party id gap above.
You can look this stuff up, you know.
Perhaps you can cite some pollsters claiming that exit polls are the most reliable kind.
Citation needed; I am unaware of a single poll projecting a Democratic turnout boost - as in, more Democrats as a percentage of registered Democrats will turn out over 2008 - in their likely voter screen.
Hugin
2778
Actually it’s way more volatile than that. Party ID can fluctuate over the course of weeks or months, several times within an election cycle. It’s better to think of it as a number like “Enthusiasm” or “Likeability”
You mean more than went for Obama over McCain? Really?
This varies state to state of course but some polls have the Obama/Romney “Latino Gap” at 10 percentage points over Obama/McCain.
Actually, they do. Some polls “weigh” the poll to account for what they believe to be skewed samples, particularly when they aren’t measuring for the variable in question. In some cases the pollster will change how they choose and poll the sample; in some cases, like you mention, they are sampling for the raw number, and that will also affect how they choose the sample.
Some do, some don’t. But this is all unknowable until election day. Are all (well, most) of the polls just crazy and biased and wrong, or does Obama actually have a small but real lead? I generally feel that if you’re down to calling all the pollsters wrong you’re probably scraping the bottom of the hope barrel.
Oh, and the difference between the weighted and unweighted in that Quinnipac poll I mentioned is that there were a whopping 1% more Republican voters in the unweighted; it’s nowhere near enough to support your theory.
The bulk of the difference between individual polls are 1) statistical noise, 2) question phrasing, 3) interviewing methods, and 4) how they design the likely voter screen. #1 is statistical controls, #2 and #3 influence the answers the same people will give, and #4 is a filter on who you treat as a voter in the first place. The turnout argument is almost entirely about #4.
From the polls I’ve seen Obama is definitely going to have lower support than his 36% blowout of McCain with Latinos.
So, living in NJ, all I can say is that I’m voting for the guy that Christie is endorse. That’s Obama right? Cause it certainly looks like the future Republican Presidential Candidate is endorse President Obama this time around.
