Kilmer17s non confrontational election prediction-

[DjTj]

I realize that. But you're making the claim that polls are finding more Dems than Rs, and then using THAT as the sample to weigh. That's not what they do. They already assume the bias in Ind who are really Rs. What they do next though is the key piece. They take their total sample, and THEN apply a mathmatical formula to accurately affect what the pollsters thinks will be the electorate split.

None of the major polls weights by party ID. They weight by demographics. For example, if there are not enough blacks and latinos in their sample, they will overweight their black and latino responses. If there are not enough young people, they will overweight their young voter responses. This often results in a weighting towards Democrats, but it is not weighted to meet a particular party ID split, only to meet a particular demographic split.

You can see this in the numbers that nonniey posted a while back in this thread:

See below

Florida

LIKELY VOTERS........

Weighted UnWeighted

Percent Frequency

PARTY IDENTIFICATION

Republican 30% 352

Democrat 37 350

Independent 29 333

Other/DK/NA 4 38

Virginia

LIKELY VOTERS........

Weighted UnWeighted

Percent Frequency

PARTY IDENTIFICATION

Republican 27% 290

Democrat 35 349

Independent 35 395

Other/DK/NA 3 40

Ohio

LIKELY VOTERS........

Weighted UnWeighted

Percent Frequency

PARTY IDENTIFICATION

Republican 29% 343

Democrat 37 396

Independent 30 334

Other/DK/NA 4 37

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes-centers/polling-institute/presidential-swing-states-%28fl-oh-and-pa%29/release-detail?ReleaseID=1812

The Florida sample was heavily weighted towards Democrats because minorities were undersampled, as shown in this word document: http://www.quinnipiac.edu/images/polling/sw/sfl10312012_demos.doc

But in Virginia and Ohio, the weighted party breakdown closely matches the actual sample because the polls reached a representative number of minorities.

[TDDance234]

I'm going to go with 273-265, Romney. I think Mitt picks up Virginia AND North Carolina (They are going to add their first GOP governor in 28 years), Florida, and Iowa. Obama will still win Ohio... and carry Nevada, but Romney squeaks by in an 8 point victory.

But it could get ugly quick if Obama wins Virginia, and picks up a Florida victory, we could be looking at one of the "landslide" outcomes that have been predicted here. The only way Obama cracks 300 is if Mitt fails to win FL... I don't see Obama winning both VA and NC.

[Heisenberg]

Not a can of worms at all.

Regardless of whether he changes or not, if he is using polls that already overweigh one side, it will produce false results.

Silver predicted 49 out of 50, but while the polls were right about who won, they were more often than not wrong about the margins.

Weren't Silvers predictions often conservative vs. the actual margins in 2008?

[Predicto]

I realize that. But you're making the claim that polls are finding more Dems than Rs, and then using THAT as the sample to weigh. That's not what they do. They already assume the bias in Ind who are really Rs. What they do next though is the key piece. They take their total sample, and THEN apply a mathmatical formula to accurately affect what the pollsters thinks will be the electorate split.

I'm pretty sure that they don't do that, other than Rasmussen. They adjust for likely demographics (which has a similar effect) but they don't adjust for party affiliation.

[Kilmer17]

Weren't Silvers predictions often conservative vs. the actual margins in 2008?

Yes. Which is the entire point. He was using polls in 08 that overweighed the GOP vote turnout based on models from 00 and 04. That's exactly why polls like that can lead to erroneous results.

Again, if todays voting population resembles 08, then it will be an Obama landslide.

[Tulane Skins Fan]

Weren't Silvers predictions often conservative vs. the actual margins in 2008?

Generally, yes. And the one state he was wrong on was Indiana. He had it going for McCain, and it went for Obama.

[Predicto]

I'm going to go with 273-265, Romney. I think Mitt picks up Virginia AND North Carolina (They are going to add their first GOP governor in 28 years), Florida, and Iowa. Obama will still win Ohio... and carry Nevada, but Romney squeaks by in an 8 point victory.

Err, if that happens, Romney still needs 16 EVs. Are you giving him Wisconsin and Colorado too?

[mjah]

None of the major polls weights by party ID. They weight by demographics. For example, if there are not enough blacks and latinos in their sample, they will overweight their black and latino responses. If there are not enough young people, they will overweight their young voter responses. This often results in a weighting towards Democrats, but it is not weighted to meet a particular party ID split, only to meet a particular demographic split.

Exactly! And thank you for expressing it so well.

The polls are measuring voters' preferences in candidates AND voters' preference in party affiliation. Neither of these is treated as hard-and-fast demographic data to be used later for poll adjustment, because they are the measurements. Neither is demographically solid; both are (correctly) assumed to be fluid.

Imagine taking an Ohio poll and then saying "Well, the results are 52-48 in favor of Obama, but I happen to know that the actual voter preference is 51-49 Romney, so I'm just going to just go ahead and shift 3% over to Romney to make this poll 'correct.'" That would be completely asinine. Voter preference in candidates is what you're out to measure, subject to the constraint of getting the hard demographics correct.

Adjusting the same poll results according to some presumed distribution of party affiliation is every bit as unwise. Party affiliation is not a hard and permanent per-person demographic to be treated as an adjustment knob. It is an output, along with candidate preference.

When a site such as unskewedpolls.com does ridiculous things like putting Romney ahead by 5.6 points in Nevada, it is exhibiting a failure to understand the role of party affiliation in polling. It is an output of the process, not a knob.

[Tulane Skins Fan]

Exactly! And thank you for expressing it so well.

The polls are measuring voters' preferences in candidates AND voters' preference in party affiliation. Neither of these is treated as hard-and-fast demographic data to be used later for poll adjustment, because they are the measurements. Neither is demographically solid; both are (correctly) assumed to be fluid.

Imagine taking an Ohio poll and then saying "Well, the results are 52-48 in favor of Obama, but I happen to know that the actual voter preference is 51-49 Romney, so I'm just going to just go ahead and shift 3% over to Romney to make this poll 'correct.'" That would be completely asinine. Voter preference in candidates is what you're out to measure, subject to the constraint of getting the hard demographics correct.

Adjusting the same poll results according to some presumed distribution of party affiliation is every bit as unwise. Party affiliation is not a hard and permanent per-person demographic to be treated as an adjustment knob. It is an output, along with candidate preference.

When a site such as unskewedpolls.com does ridiculous things like putting Romney ahead by 5.6 points in Nevada, it is exhibiting a failure to understand the role of party affiliation in polling. It is an output of the process, not a knob.

Its a knob alright.

[mjah]

Its a knob alright.

I was wondering who would be first to riff on the last line. Congrats.

[Wrong Direction]

In my opinion, people don't seem to understand the logical connection between 3 and 4.

Polls are finding more Democrats when conducting polls. Why? As it has been reported, more traditional Republicans are calling themselves Independents rather than Democrats in recent years. You see that trend even here on ES, with many strong conservative posters consistently calling themselves Independent.

This has two effects: 1) It makes Democrat margins looks crazy high in polling 2) It makes Romney look like he is kicking ass with Independents.

I think this is partially true. The CNN poll had it a national tie, with D+11 but Romney winning Independents +24. Neither will happen. There is some substitution effect, we just don't know how much. We do know it's not a 1:1 relationship, so some R advantage with Independents looks likely.

The answer is the auto bailout. All indicators are that it has played extremely well for Obama in the rust belt. That Jeep ad brought it right back up to the forefront of the conversation just before the election, and it was big news when the company said the ad wasn't true. If Ohio is different today as far as outperforming for Rs vs the rest of the nation, I think that's the reason. Or at least a big part of the reason.

The early voting thing is interesting. Someone (can't remember who) on POTUS radio on XM this morning was saying that what he saw was indeed a much smaller lead for Obama in early voting in Ohio, but largely owing to increased Republican participation in early voting, not a decrease in Dem participation. If that's true (and it would make sense - McCain wasn't nearly so focused on the early vote operation in 2008 as Obama was, and Republicans learned their lesson after last election) then the more narrow lead might be a wash. I haven't seen anything before about polls of election day voters.

Both very plausible. The R answer on early voting is that they didn't target their base, they targeted unmotivated/on the fence voters. I think early voting is in transition from non-existent to very common, and it's really hard to account for changes by simple comparisons to previous elections.

None of the major polls weights by party ID. They weight by demographics. For example, if there are not enough blacks and latinos in their sample, they will overweight their black and latino responses. If there are not enough young people, they will overweight their young voter responses. This often results in a weighting towards Democrats, but it is not weighted to meet a particular party ID split, only to meet a particular demographic split.

You can see this in the numbers that nonniey posted a while back in this thread: http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes-centers/polling-institute/presidential-swing-states-%28fl-oh-and-pa%29/release-detail?ReleaseID=1812

The Florida sample was heavily weighted towards Democrats because minorities were undersampled, as shown in this word document: http://www.quinnipiac.edu/images/polling/sw/sfl10312012_demos.doc

But in Virginia and Ohio, the weighted party breakdown closely matches the actual sample because the polls reached a representative number of minorities.

This is also true, but when both parties are holding their party voters at 93% (ish), the party split comes back into play. The reason is that a white D is nearly (statistically) as likely to vote for Obama as a black D.

It all comes down to turnout. I'm nervous.

---------- Post added November-6th-2012 at 04:36 PM ----------

One more thought re: independents...

What if the new independents aren't traditional Republicans at all? What if they're Reagan Democrat types?

So many unknowns today. I'll be happy tomorrow just because this will (hopefully) all be over.

[Lombardi's_kid_brother]

Prediction 1: Obama wins Ohio more easily than anyone expected.

Prediction 2: I will be drunk and yelling obscenities at Fox News pundits by 8:45 CT.

[Popeman38]

Prediction 1: Obama wins Ohio more easily than anyone expected.

Prediction 2: I will be drunk and yelling obscenities at Fox News pundits by 8:45 CT.

Slacker! :nana:

[Wrong Direction]

A buddy of mine who is mildly connected to inside people thinks Obama wins VA, WI, OH and IA. If he's right, it obviously won't even be close. He says his polling place was a lot busier today than in 2008, and full of loud Obama supporters. Implication is the enthusiasm for Obama IS there.

Gotta love election day anecdotes. I'm still nervous.

[Tulane Skins Fan]

Just talking to another GOP friend of mine. What I am objectively finding interesting about this is that he is very confident Romney has won DESPITE the polling, and I am very nervous IN SPITE of the polling. His confidence is also making me nervous. But, he's basically saying the same thing I'm seeing in here. The polls are unanimously overrating the D turnout.

[MattFancy]

Jessica Yellin @YellinCNN

Here's what Obama aides say their data shows them: turnout high everywhere, no romney surge, no surprises, afr am turnout up in PA and VA.

I mean it is Obama's aides, but interesting nonetheless.

[Wrong Direction]

Just remember. Most of us clowns actually have no idea what the truth is.

[Popeman38]

Just talking to another GOP friend of mine. What I am objectively finding interesting about this is that he is very confident Romney has won DESPITE the polling, and I am very nervous IN SPITE of the polling. His confidence is also making me nervous. But, he's basically saying the same thing I'm seeing in here. The polls are unanimously overrating the D turnout.

My best friend is VERY anti-Obama/pro-Romney. He feels the same way. I think Obama winsa close vote, but he is EXTREMELY confidant that all the polling and numbers used to date include a large percentage of people who refused to admit to being in the Romney camp and that the numbers are extremely wrong. he predicts Obama loses big tonight. And I might get flamed for this, but this is what he sent me this morning:

We begin with the three words everyone writing about the election must say: Nobody knows anything. Everyone’s guessing. I spent Sunday morning in Washington with journalists and political hands, one of whom said she feels it’s Obama, the rest of whom said they don’t know. I think it’s Romney. I think he’s stealing in “like a thief with good tools,” in Walker Percy’s old words. While everyone is looking at the polls and the storm, Romney’s slipping into the presidency. He’s quietly rising, and he’s been rising for a while.

Obama and the storm, it was like a wave that lifted him and then moved on, leaving him where he’d been. Parts of Jersey and New York are a cold Katrina. The exact dimensions of the disaster will become clearer when the election is over. One word: infrastructure. Officials knew the storm was coming and everyone knew it would be bad, but the people of the tristate area were not aware, until now, just how vulnerable to deep damage their physical system was. The people in charge of that system are the politicians. Mayor Bloomberg wanted to have the Marathon, to show New York’s spirit. In Staten Island last week they were bitterly calling it “the race through the ruins.” There is a disconnect.

But to the election. Who knows what to make of the weighting of the polls and the assumptions as to who will vote? Who knows the depth and breadth of each party’s turnout efforts? Among the wisest words spoken this cycle were by John Dickerson of CBS News and Slate, who said, in a conversation the night before the last presidential debate, that he thought maybe the American people were quietly cooking something up, something we don’t know about.

I think they are and I think it’s this: a Romney win.

Romney’s crowds are building—28,000 in Morrisville, Pa., last night; 30,000 in West Chester, Ohio, Friday It isn’t only a triumph of advance planning: People came, they got through security and waited for hours in the cold. His rallies look like rallies now, not enactments. In some new way he’s caught his stride. He looks happy and grateful. His closing speech has been positive, future-looking, sweetly patriotic. His closing ads are sharp—the one about what’s going on at the rallies is moving.

All the vibrations are right. A person who is helping him who is not a longtime Romneyite told me, yesterday: “I joined because I was anti Obama—I’m a patriot, I’ll join up But now I am pro-Romney.” Why? “I’ve spent time with him and I care about him and admire him. He’s a genuinely good man.” Looking at the crowds on TV, hearing them chant “Three more days” and “Two more days”—it feels like a lot of Republicans have gone from anti-Obama to pro-Romney.

Something old is roaring back. One of the Romney campaign’s surrogates, who appeared at a rally with him the other night, spoke of the intensity and joy of the crowd “I worked the rope line, people wouldn’t let go of my hand.” It startled him. A former political figure who’s been in Ohio told me this morning something is moving with evangelicals, other church-going Protestants and religious Catholics. He said what’s happening with them is quiet, unreported and spreading: They really want Romney now, they’ll go out and vote, the election has taken on a new importance to them.

There is no denying the Republicans have the passion now, the enthusiasm. The Democrats do not. Independents are breaking for Romney. And there’s the thing about the yard signs. In Florida a few weeks ago I saw Romney signs, not Obama ones. From Ohio I hear the same. From tony Northwest Washington, D.C., I hear the same.

Is it possible this whole thing is playing out before our eyes and we’re not really noticing because we’re too busy looking at data on paper instead of what’s in front of us? Maybe that’s the real distortion of the polls this year: They left us discounting the world around us.

And there is Obama, out there seeming tired and wan, showing up through sheer self discipline. A few weeks ago I saw the president and the governor at the Al Smith dinner, and both were beautiful specimens in their white ties and tails, and both worked the dais. But sitting there listening to the jokes and speeches, the archbishop of New York sitting between them, Obama looked like a young challenger—flinty, not so comfortable. He was distracted, and his smiles seemed forced. He looked like a man who’d just seen some bad internal polling. Romney? Expansive, hilarious, self-spoofing, with a few jokes of finely calibrated meanness that were just perfect for the crowd. He looked like a president. He looked like someone who’d just seen good internals.

Of all people, Obama would know if he is in trouble. When it comes to national presidential races, he is a finely tuned political instrument: He read the field perfectly in 2008. He would know if he’s losing now, and it would explain his joylessness on the stump. He is out there doing what he has to to fight the fight. But he’s still trying to fire up the base when he ought to be wooing the center and speaking their calm centrist talk. His crowds haven’t been big. His people have struggled to fill various venues. This must hurt the president after the trememdous, stupendous crowds of ’08. “Voting’s the best revenge”—revenge against who, and for what? This is not a man who feels himself on the verge of a grand victory. His campaign doesn’t seem president-sized. It is small and sad and lost, driven by formidable will and zero joy.

I suspect both Romney and Obama have a sense of what’s coming, and it’s part of why Romney looks so peaceful and Obama so roiled.

Romney ends most rallies with his story of the Colorado scout troop that in 1986 had an American flag put in the space shuttle Challenger, saw the Challenger blow up as they watched on TV, and then found, through the persistence of their scoutmaster, that the flag had survived the explosion. It was returned to them by NASA officials. When Romney, afterward, was shown the flag, he touched it, and an electric jolt went up his arm. It’s a nice story. He doesn’t make its meaning fully clear. But maybe he means it as a metaphor for America: It can go through a terrible time, a catastrophe, as it has economically the past five years, and still emerge whole, intact, enduring.

Maybe that’s what the coming Romney moment is about: independents, conservatives, Republicans, even some Democrats, thinking: We can turn it around, we can work together, we can right this thing, and he can help.

Again, not the way I feel, and I realize Peggy Noonan isn't the best of sources.

[Tulane Skins Fan]

Well, Peggy is a total hack. Everyone knows that. I am just wavering in all these predictions now because everytime I turn around some GOPer is telling me why they are underestimating the GOP by like 9 points or something.

[GhostofSparta]

Prediction 2: I will be drunk and yelling obscenities at Fox News pundits by 8:45 CT.

I respectfully request the video of this.

[Popeman38]

Well, Peggy is a total hack. Everyone knows that. I am just wavering in all these predictions now because everytime I turn around some GOPer is telling me why they are underestimating the GOP by like 9 points or something.

I stand by my prediction of Obama with ~290 EC win.

[Larry]

Wish it was possible to add a poll to a thread.

I'd like to see the votes on whether we'll have a winner, tomorrow morning.

[Popeman38]

Wish it was possible to add a poll to a thread.

I'd like to see the votes on whether we'll have a winner, tomorrow morning.

I say we have a winner tonight.

[brandymac27]

Wish it was possible to add a poll to a thread.

I'd like to see the votes on whether we'll have a winner, tomorrow morning.

God, please don't even mention that crap!

[Predicto]

Man, I had forgotten how useless Peggy Noonan is.

I've seen some reasonable analysis that suggests Romney has a good shot at this, but none of it was found in that ridiculous column.

---------- Post added November-6th-2012 at 04:46 PM ----------

Jessica Yellin @YellinCNN

Here's what Obama aides say their data shows them: turnout high everywhere, no romney surge, no surprises, afr am turnout up in PA and VA.

I mean it is Obama's aides, but interesting nonetheless.

I expect them to blow smoke up our azzes. That's their job.

(in other words, it may or may not be true....)