2012 election pregame

[davidf]

You may want to ask for a refund on that education. "

Wonderful deflection, though not really a clarification of what glaringly obvious logic principle I missed. So I’m going to assume you don’t want to engage on that point. moving on…

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.”

I would agree with your assesment, EXCEPT this was his answer to that direct question! Everything you say is correct, taken out of that context, but in that context, its unreasonable to assume he meant otherwise UNLESS he stated “well of course, not in this case!” or as I said there was a overwhelming uiversal truth that both parties agreed on in this context (which doesnt exist to my knowledge). Since none of those apply AND in this context to this question he was asked, it meets the lofty defintion of reasonable.

[Jason_McCullough]

Another bit; 538’s 2010 projection for Senate was within 1 seat (+1 off in favor of the Republicans), as was his governor’s projection (which was +1 off in favor of the Republicans). The House projection was off by +8 in favor of the Democrats, but predicting the House is goddamn hard given how minimal the polling data is; the 95% confidence interval was 54 seats +/-30. It’s not like he was wildly lowballing to hurt the Republicans that year.

[Jason_McCullough]

The funniest bit about all this? Fox has the race dead even in nationwide polls and up by a whopping 2 points in Ohio. Clearly, the tiny gap (2% or so) between Fox and the average of all other polls is in indicator of how biased everyone is!

[billt721]

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.

What? He’s a guy who does math. If Team R ends up winning the election, it won’t say anything about models, samples or anything like that. On the 538 site they still give Romney a 22.6% chance of winning the election, which means - hey! it’s entirely possible that he could be elected. People understand how odds and percentages and stuff like that works, right? If the last X polls out of Ohio showed Romney leading there by ~2.5 points, he’d have liberals complaining about his bias and conservatives defending the math.

[Jason_McCullough]

I think liberals learned their lessons about polls in 2004 and the GOP will learn this year. Or maybe it’ll be all conspiracy theories about how ACORN stole it again, we’ll see.

[Andy_Bates]

I would agree with your assesment, EXCEPT this was his answer to that direct question! Everything you say is correct, taken out of that context, but in that context, its unreasonable to assume he meant otherwise UNLESS he stated “well of course, not in this case!” or as I said there was a overwhelming uiversal truth that both parties agreed on in this context (which doesnt exist to my knowledge). Since none of those apply AND in this context to this question he was asked, it meets the lofty defintion of reasonable.

You’re acting like he was asked “Do you want to shut down FEMA?”, when he was asked nothing of the sort. The exact question was, “FEMA’s about to run out of money, and there are some people that say do it on a case-by-case basis and some people who say, you know, maybe we’re learning a lesson here and maybe the state should take more of this role. How do you deal with something like that?” So again, the simplified version of the question is, “Should the states take on more of the role of FEMA?” More of the role, not all of the role.

And the relevant part of Romney’s response was, “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction.” So he’s talking about a direction, of moving things from the federal level to the state level. He’s not talking about getting rid of the federal program, or shutting it down. He’s talking about moving more of the responsibility towards the states.

Then he says, “Instead of thinking in the federal budget what we should cut, we should ask ourselves the opposite question: What should we keep? We should take all of what we’re doing at the federal level and say what are the things we’re doing that we don’t have to do and those things we’ve got to stop doing because we’re borrowing $1.6 trillion more this year than we’re taking in.” And now he’s talking on a more general level. He went from the specific example of FEMA (“We should start moving in the direction of sending more responsibility back to the states”), to the more general topic of examining all programs in the federal budget (“We should start looking at what we’re doing at the federal level and see what we should keep”).

He never says, or even implies, that we should shut down FEMA. At most, he says that we should examine all federal programs to see which ones are necessary, so FEMA is implicitly one of those programs. But looking at something is not the same as shutting it down.

[Driveled]

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.

Gallup paints a much different party ID picture:

If you check Gallup’s party ID vs actual turnout it has historically been pretty accurate. At the very least I think the trend this year is much more R than 08. Given that I have a hard time believing the Ohio polls with a D+6 average.

[davidf]

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.

Guys made some tough calls in NJ to balance that budget, a lot of things that would get someone else ousted. I can respect that, and the national budget needs someone to take a hard realistic look, and not talk pie in the sky dreamland talk about increasing military spending or lowering taxes AND balancing the budget.

I could endorse someone like that IF they A lost weight and B kept to their word of reducing goverment size realistically and increasing taxes realistically. Getting rid of regulation that is overly restrictive, overhaul unemployment and welfare to be counciling and job training focused, and eliminating tax loopholes for corporations and creating/focusing tax incentives for jobs stateside and employee tax incentives (so job creators have actual incentives to create jobs, instead of a tax system that encourages time and resources on other shelters)

[Jason_McCullough]

Gallup’s party id picture is well within the historical gaps between pollsters; it’s only a 2 point shift from Gallup to Quinnipac.

If you check Gallup’s party ID vs actual turnout it has historically been pretty accurate.

So have lots of other pollster’s numbers.

At the very least I think the trend this year is much more R than 08.

Yes, but how much?

Given that I have a hard time believing the Ohio polls with a D+6 average.

They don’t have a +6 average, they have a +2.5% average.

The polling story this year isn’t the cross-pollster differences; that always happens. Look at the Ohio projections for 2008 - Obama won by 4.5%, but the final polls varied between 0% gap and 6.3% gap.

The new thing is the ~2.5% gap between the national polls and swing state polls, which is just strange; I have no idea what the explanation is, and from this neither does 538.

[Synth]

For what its worth I’ve never believed Romney was talking about FEMA. I think he latched onto the last point the moderator made, “the states should take on more of this role.” and took the opportunity to launch into one of his prepared sound bites. He effectively forgot the question at that stage. Thinking he was answering the question is giving him far too much credit in my opinion. I dont think he gave any consideration to the consequences of saying that as an answer at all. He saw an opportunity to make one of the points he wanted and put his foot in his mouth. Thats far more in keeping with the Romney we all know and love.

[davidf]

You’re acting like he was asked “Do you want to shut down FEMA?”, when he was asked nothing of the sort. The exact question was, “FEMA’s about to run out of money, and there are some people that say do it on a case-by-case basis and some people who say, you know, maybe we’re learning a lesson here and maybe the state should take more of this role. How do you deal with something like that?” So again, the simplified version of the question is, “Should the states take on more of the role of FEMA?” More of the role, not all of the role.

And the relevant part of Romney’s response was, “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction.” So he’s talking about a direction, of moving things from the federal level to the state level. He’s not talking about getting rid of the federal program, or shutting it down. He’s talking about moving more of the responsibility towards the states.

Then he says, “Instead of thinking in the federal budget what we should cut, we should ask ourselves the opposite question: What should we keep? We should take all of what we’re doing at the federal level and say what are the things we’re doing that we don’t have to do and those things we’ve got to stop doing because we’re borrowing $1.6 trillion more this year than we’re taking in.” And now he’s talking on a more general level. He went from the specific example of FEMA (“We should start moving in the direction of sending more responsibility back to the states”), to the more general topic of examining all programs in the federal budget (“We should start looking at what we’re doing at the federal level and see what we should keep”).

He never says, or even implies, that we should shut down FEMA. At most, he says that we should examine all federal programs to see which ones are necessary, so FEMA is implicitly one of those programs. But looking at something is not the same as shutting it down.

Bleh, I’m not sure why I’m even arguing this one, since i mostly agree with Romney’s position. Federal goverment struggles with responding nimbly to situations and looking at things at a human level, so of course this makes sense.

The danger here, and Romney’s not won my confidence that he understands this, is that this direction needs a built in safety value if the local/state agencies can’t handle the situation.

It’s really not going to be huge cost savings moving this way (because of the redudancy needed) but it will allow local agencies that have a better understanding of whats needed to drive the response.

[Driveled]

They don’t have a +6 average, they have a +2.5% average.

Sorry I was referring to the RCP list:

Quinnipiac D+8
Survey USA D+6
Gravis D+8
PPP D+8
Purple Poll D+4
CNN/Opinion D+3
ARG D+9
UofCin Even

[davidf]

For what its worth I’ve never believed Romney was talking about FEMA. I think he latched onto the last point the moderator made, “the states should take on more of this role.” and took the opportunity to launch into one of his prepared sound bites. He effectively forgot the question at that stage. Thinking he was answering the question is giving him far too much credit in my opinion. I dont think he gave any consideration to the consequences of saying that as an answer at all. He saw an opportunity to make one of the points he wanted and put his foot in his mouth. Thats far more in keeping with the Romney we all know and love.

Yes, on reflection. I agree with this assessment.

[Timex]

For what its worth I’ve never believed Romney was talking about FEMA. I think he latched onto the last point the moderator made, “the states should take on more of this role.” and took the opportunity to launch into one of his prepared sound bites. He effectively forgot the question at that stage. Thinking he was answering the question is giving him far too much credit in my opinion.

Yep, That’s what I was thinking… because, frankly, that’s what everyone does in the debates.

It’s all about finding a way to stay on message.

[Clay]

Romney talked himself into a corner, then, because a lot of people interpreted that to mean that he would eliminate FEMA. Today he said that he wouldn’t. Sandy’s impact has been forecast (more or less) for at least a week and the storm hit several days ago. If he feels FEMA is an important agency, I think he should have mentioned that prior to the storm tearing up NY and NJ. That he waited until now to comment on the issue was a tactical error.

[charmtrap]

If you check Gallup’s party ID vs actual turnout it has historically been pretty accurate. At the very least I think the trend this year is much more R than 08. Given that I have a hard time believing the Ohio polls with a D+6 average.

Am I misunderstanding, or are you comparing Ohio party ID with nationwide party ID and claiming a discrepancy? Why do you assume the two numbers would be similar?

[Driveled]

Am I misunderstanding, or are you comparing Ohio party ID with nationwide party ID and claiming a discrepancy? Why do you assume the two numbers would be similar?

Isn’t it a pretty safe bet that Ohio is the average given that its always a toss up state? With how the trends go, Ohio goes.

[Jason_McCullough]

Sorry I was referring to the RCP list:

Quinnipiac D+8
Survey USA D+6
Gravis D+8
PPP D+8
Purple Poll D+4
CNN/Opinion D+3
ARG D+9
UofCin Even

Ah, ok. I think this is the case where 538’s discounting by “this pollster historically is X% biased one way or another” is useful; the poll aggregators like 538 don’t show anything like +6. Does RCP not even list Rasmussen or something?

Edit: RCP doesn’t show anything that extreme in Ohio recently.

[Driveled]

Ah, ok. I think this is the case where 538’s discounting by “this pollster historically is X% biased one way or another” is useful; the poll aggregators like 538 don’t show anything like +6. Does RCP not even list Rasmussen or something?

Edit: RCP doesn’t show anything that extreme in Ohio recently.

The RCP overview doesn’t show the party ID. You have to view each poll.

I didn’t list Ras since its +Romney.

I know I’m looking too much at the ID’s but something just doesn’t add up.

[rhinohelix]

Ah, ok. I think this is the case where 538’s discounting by “this pollster historically is X% biased one way or another” is useful; the poll aggregators like 538 don’t show anything like +6. Does RCP not even list Rasmussen or something?

Edit: RCP doesn’t show anything that extreme in Ohio recently.

I think the confusion here is that the turnout model, not the poll result.