Lots of buzz about Obama having 8-9 point lead in Ohio right now. With talk like this from other Republicans, it’s little wonder (via):
“He says he’s got a 53-point plan or whatever, I don’t know,” was Kasich’s rousing endorsement of the Romney agenda.
Hill Dweller
The one constant of Willard’s political career is the more people see him, the more they hate him.
Willard somehow hoodwinked Massachusetts voters when he ran for governor, but they turned on him within two years. He didn’t even pretend to govern during his last year in office.
Mark S.
I think it’s safe to say neither candidate got a post-convention bounce.
/Kaplan Fishwrap
spiffy
I know it’s silly, but I get uncomfortable when I hear these stories about Obama’s big lead in some states. I hope to God it’s true about Ohio, but I also don’t want people to get complacent and think that they don’t need to vote and that Obama will be just fine.
I want Romney crushed and for Obama to win both the electoral college and the popular vote by as huge a margin as possible so I want everyone who can vote to vote.
Oh, and Kasich is a goon and a tool. I wonder how many people in Ohio who voted for him regret it?
Ruckus
@spiffy:
Oh, and Kasich is a goon and a tool. I wonder how many people in Ohio who voted for him regret it?
All of the ones with a functioning brain. OK that narrows it down a bit.
Roger Moore
@spiffy:
The longest coattails in history would be a nice add-on, also, too.
Randy P
They’re surprised that Obama is doing better and better despite “the president’s lackluster prime-time performance”. Gee, maybe the voters didn’t find it lackluster. Maybe we heard exactly what we needed to hear from our president.
danimal
@spiffy: Winning is contagious. Let’s take our lead in the presidential race and work like hell to win the Senate and House.
Nobody is saying get complacent, but when the opponent is on the ropes, DON’T LET THEM OFF because you are insecure. Pound them. Let them form a circular firing squad, which they will now that Willard has said he likes portions of Obamacare.
Anya
Wow, this beats O’Malley’s screw up last weekend.
On the polls, WTF is up with TPM’s poll tracker? Is their model different than Nate Silver’s model?
freelancer
@Anya:
Someone asked this in a previous thread. It’s not current apparently, or it doesn’t reflect current polling.
Biscuits
Anvils. Needs more anvils!
Hill Dweller
@Randy P: The Village did the same thing during the debates with McCain. They live in their own bizarro world.
jwb
@spiffy: I don’t see anyone getting complacent knowing that the other side has a $2 billion war chest. But if you really want Obama to crush Mittwir, we need a large gap to open up in order for the circular firing squad to form on the right. I feel that moment is tangibly close. Once that happens if it indeed does, a lot of the base will grow despondent and be less likely to vote. that’s when we start finding a lot of House and Senate seats in play we hadn’t really thought about. I rate the possibility of that kind of blowout at about 10% right now.
The Ancient Randonneur
Obama’s GOTV effort is going to be a thing of legend. Many OFA offices opened November 2011 to begin canvassing. Here is a sample of the coverage they got in NH/VT near Dartmouth College.
Mitt better be praying a bunch of seagulls appear and eat all the Obama votes up.
Suffern ACE
Based on what they did in 2010, are the great lakes voters fickle? Their passions seem to blow all over the place.
lamh35
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/09/09/obama_widens_lead_in_ohio.html
zombieflanders
PPP says Obama up 5 in OH even with a D+4 weighting (compared to D+8 from 2008 exit polls).
Anya
@Suffern ACE: Some of it might be attributed to buyers remorse, but 2010 was a low voter turnout and from what I read, midterm voters usually skew old and republican.
gnomedad
My imagined slogan for Dole in 1996 was “Bob Dole – It’s His Turn, I Guess”. This may be even better.
eemom
omg, I LOVE this.
Anoniminous
@Suffern ACE:
Voter turn-out in Ohio in 2010 was 45%, above the national average of ~42%. In 2008 Ohio turn-out was 66.9%.
So it’s not a question of changing their minds as not voting in off-year elections.
Mike in NC
@Anya: You need to hook up with Gogol’s Wife to keep up the annoying Chicken Little bullshit on this blog. Moron.
Anya
@Mike in NC: :-/
gogol's wife
@Mike in NC:
I welcome your hatred. Moron.
gogol's wife
@Anya:
Don’t take it personally. You had every right to ask your question. There was nothing wrong with it.
Shawn in ShowMe
@spiffy:
I keep hearing this sentiment and I don’t understand it. What presidential election have you ever heard of that overconfident voters decided to stay home?
Humanities Grad
@Anoniminous:
This is it exactly. I was watching the election returns in Ohio in 2010. John Kasich won the statewide popular vote by about 2% over Ted Strickland (and within two months of Kasich taking office polls were already showing Strickland would win in a landslide if he got a do-over).
Turnout in the traditionally Democratic parts of the state, particularly Lucas County (Toledo) and Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) was VERY low. If they’d had even close to 2008-level turnout, Kasich never would’ve won.
I don’t think this was a case of vote suppression or some other shenanigans at work, just the typical (and very unfortunate) drop-off that often accompanies off-year elections. It hurt the Republicans badly in 2006, in 2010 it was the Democrats’ turn to get hammered.
Anya
It’s official, Ohio Republicans are really, really dumb and ill informed.
The Dangerman
@danimal:
That was so 10 hours ago; clearly, a pre-9:11am mentality. I understand Mitt walked back his Obamacare quote tonight. He may have changed it again in the past few minutes, so it would probably be worth checking to be sure.
As i said a couple nights ago, this has to be performance art, not a serious campaign.
Anya
Thanks @gogol’s wife: for the support. But I am truly baffled by what his gripe is.
dmsilev
@Anya: It’s not often that you see a pollster flat-out ask “are you a moron?”, but I guess it’s worth doing now and again. I mean, I suppose one could argue the case that Obama doesn’t deserve any credit for the bin Laden raid (giving all credit to the military), but how in God’s name could anyone believe that Romney deserves *any* credit for it? What, did he outsource Osama’s security to a cut-rate third-party organization or something?
Edit: Maybe 15% of Ohio Republicans believe that Romney is currently the President and Obama is the usurper, I mean challenger.
Jibeaux
I love that quote, but no Republican I know of has a 53- point plan for anything, unless he’s identified separately 53 types of taxes to cut.
gogol's wife
@Anya:
Me too. But I’m not that interested in finding out.
Irving
FWIW, Kasich is improving. Apparently he’s smart enough to realize that you actually need to get things done as Governor. He’s getting road improvements that wouldn’t be done until 2016 back on track, he’s trying to bully the Ohio House into taxing frackers. He’s not perfect, but he’s better than I expected.
Ash Can
OK, I’m not going to take the time to check to see if anyone else has linked to this, because it doesn’t matter; this can be repeated again and again. You owe it to yourself to click on this link to LGF — these three photos will make your day, if you care anything at all about Obama and Biden as both candidates and people. Enjoy.
TooManyJens
@Anya: The only explanation I can accept and still sleep tonight is that 15% of Ohio Republicans are straight-up trolling PPP.
Suffern ACE
@Jibeaux: I thought it was 96 principles rather than 53 points. At least there’s some focus.
Shawn in ShowMe
@dmsilev:
According to a recent Ohio poll, 30% say No, 27% say Yes, 43% Unsure.
magurakurin
@Anya:
I’m guessing that the difference between TPM’s model and Nate’s is like the difference between the ENIAC and the IBM Sequoia. World’s apart. Nate’s model doesn’t just crunch the polls. He has the model consider a large number of other data points such as job numbers and the stock market. It also takes into consideration the ticking of the clock so that polling data in September has more impact than those from July. The different pollsters are also ranked based on how they have polled the candidates in the past and how the most recent data compares to these trends. He used to work for baseball running numbers for pitching staffs and things like that. TPM’s numbers are just and aggregate average of various polling numbers. No comparison.
If you are bored one afternoon and are curious, if you look through Nate’s archives he has written some articles about how the model works. It’s fairly interesting, in a dry numbers obsessed kind of way.
Of course, his numbers aren’t gospel. It’s just a model. Rmoney can still win. But if I had to bet the farm, I’d bet on Nate’s numbers before I bet on Josh’s.
Anya
@dmsilev: I wonder if polsters in the past asked about stuff like that. I mean, why even poll on something like that. Also, I would be interested to know what the exact question was.
When I was in high school I worked for Ipsos Reid and many people were really dumb. Most of the time they didn’t understand the question, even the simplest ones.
Anoniminous
@Humanities Grad:
Lucas County: 2008 67% 2010 46.4%
Cuyahoga County: 2008 ~55% 2010 ~42%
(Couldn’t quickly find hard info on Cuyahoga County.)
Standard result: poor people and minorities do not engage in off-year elections.
hhex65
Well, we’ll see if this holds up. The controversial former-President Bill Clinton will be campaigning along the Mansfield to Dayton corridor soon and his presence has the potential to further alienate the important “Coal-hio” voters in that crucial region south of Columbus. No left handed President has ever won re-election without winning Ohio.
/i can haz pundit job now
Todd
I’ll add this – making that popular vote count as high as possible legitimizes him even in Teatard states,and makes it less likely that this election will be stolen through skulduggery.
Put another way, my operating theory is that all those “principled Nader votes” in safe blue states in 2000 helped blunt any fear of public backlash by the Supreme Assholes. Put those 2000000 votes in column D for Gore, and there may have been more fear about fucking around.
This is why I mock the principled pure progressive voters in already decided states.
Comrade Mary
@Randy P:
Even in Canada, the “responsible, centrist” Globe & Mail and the CBC are pretty much telling the same story about “lackluster” Obama locked in a tight race because he’s just lost the confidence of so many people who wanted hope and change.
It’s gotten to the point where I turn off the hourly news on the CBC if they start to play what sounds like any kind of American election story. I like my radio and my drywall and would rather not damage either.
Lojasmo
No real path for Romney without Ohio or Virginia, right?
My call: Obama >Romney.
Anya
@TooManyJens: That’s a good theory.
@magurakurin: Thanks, I’ll do that. But from now on I’ll just ignore TPM’s poll tracker. It’s as useless as Clear Politics and Huffpo.
Anya
@Comrade Mary: I haven’t listened to CBC radio in ages, is Michael Colton as sarcastic as ever? My mom believes he’s anti-American.
Anoniminous
@Todd:
And the confusing ballot in Fort Lauderdale (?) where Buchanan picked up 20,000 votes that probably should have gone to Gore.
It’s to avoid these kinds of losses that a campaign needs to get their people out pounding the pavements. Gore had a 2nd rate national campaign staff. Brazile wasn’t up to the job.
max
With talk like this from other Republicans, it’s little wonder.
In Mormon, ‘Willard Mitt’ means ‘dead meat’.
max
[‘”Mitt Romney always looks like he’s about to get a lesson from the Twilight Zone” — some guy on the intertubes.’]
Comrade Mary
@Ash Can:
/cries
It’s OK: spread the love!
PurpleGirl
@Roger Moore: The term of art is capacious coattails.
ETA: Had a professor in college who could make that term soar. FDR had capacious coattails.
magurakurin
@Lojasmo:
indeed. No real path without Ohio, Virginia, Florida and North Carolina + one more small state (CO, IA, NV) Rmoney has to have a sweep. Obama needs only one of the lot to get 270.
If the call Virginia for Obama on election night. The party is over for Rmoney.
JayJohnstone
TPM just averages all of the recent polls, right?
Jibeaux
@Ash Can: I’ve seen pizza joint Obama on yahoo, but um, that one of Biden….
Comrade Mary
@Anya: He’s not anti-American, he’s just an all-purpose dick. I know that my radio is in extra danger when I tune into World Report.
PurpleGirl
@Ash Can: The first and third pictures have been linked to by others in other threads; the middle picture is new to a link.
Anoniminous
@Lojasmo:
Romney needs Ohio and Florida. If he takes both he’ll most likely take Virginia as well. If he loses either he absolutely needs to take Virginia and flip Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, and a couple others to the R column, as compared to 2008. If he loses Ohio and Florida Virginia will most likely go Obama.
freelancer
@Lojasmo:
It’s worse than that. Romney has to keep every state that McCain won in 2008. He’s likely to flip Indiana and that put him at 191 Electoral votes.
In order to keep Obama from crossing 270 at that point, Romney will need to sweep Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. He’ll need to go 5 for 5 because Obama will already be at 266 and any 1 of those swing states will push him over.
http://www.270towin.com/2012_election_predictions.php?mapid=xtF
ETA: and I see many, many people are already there.
Jim, Foolish Literalist and Fact Checker
@Anya:
Apparently, you’re not the only one asking. I skimmed Marshall’s response, and I think it’s a CYA for “I taught Arianna how to hit-troll”, but they are aware that their readers are growing skeptical.
Culture of Truth
Let the finger pointing begin!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mark S.
@JayJohnstone:
I think so. So there’s a ton of Rasmussan and Gallup. Everyone knows about Ras, but apparently Gallup has some weird system that overrepresents whites.
ChrisNYC
@Anya: I think the TPM average is really bad. They did an explainer when they introduced it and talked about how it would be super sensitive because they wouldn’t do any massaging of the numbers and would include most polls. It’s sort of the anti 538.
The current reason it shows a small Romney lead is that they don’t count tracking polls in the average. So the yesterday Reuters Ipsos poll was a tracking poll, showing O up 4. TPM shows the poll in the list but does not include it in the average. The last polls they include in their average are from just at the start of the DNC and prior. Also, since they don’t make any distinction between good and bad polls or pollsters, Rasmussen’s and Resurgent Republic cooked polls get the same status as other pollsters and Ras polls constantly (in order to skew averages, I think) and so their effect is increased.
I think they’ve ended up with an average that isn’t reliable to begin with and is also not particularly responsive to current state of the race.
Another Halocene Human
@Hill Dweller: Willard didn’t hoodwink anyone. His opponent on the Dem side was a fraud, too.
I voted for a South Boston machine fraud over the lightweight bidnis man New England Republican fraud, although I was holding my nose. A majority of the state picked otherwise.
He did a small amount of damage, what was in his power, but it’s a weak governor state. Despite his campaign promises to the suckers in the exurbs, he didn’t battle with the lege all that much, preferring to shake up all the executive agencies to make it look like he was doing something.
One example which disgusted me greatly was renaming the Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) to Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), and spending a couple thou repainting all the trashcans on the Esplanade.
MDC was a traditional Bostonian name, and it sort of hurt to lose it… we’ve lost so many (The Registry, The El, etc). The renaming and repainting makes perfect sense now that I realize he’s a narcissist. That kind of shit is another way to obtain narcissistic supply. (I had an NPD boss whose “big ideas” at work consisted of changing the uniforms every two years.)
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@spiffy:
I would like for someone, anyone, to find any examples of where someone actually had a visible lead and then lost because people were complacent. From what I have seen, most of the time people like to be part of a winning team.
Jim, Foolish Literalist and Fact Checker
@Culture of Truth: I always thought 2008 was gonna be a boiling crab pot–Giuliani, Huckabee, McCain, ego-palooza. But it’s looking like 2016 could be an internecine bloodbath: Jebbie, Santorum, Christie, Rand Paul and at least one to make Michelle Bachmann look normal: Steve King or somebody even nuttier. I’m not a great predictor– I never thought McCain in ’08 or the Mormon in ’12 would get the nom– but if I had to be I’d say Ryand will never win a bigger office than he has now.
Joel
During my NFL broadcast, I was subjected to approximately a million GEICO advertisements. Because sports is the only thing I don’t DVR these days, I was ill-prepared to deal with this. Needless to say, I now fucking hate GEICO and wish those fuckers would DIAF.
On a related note, I don’t think Mitt Romney’s AIR BLITZ is going to go as swimmingly as he thinks it will.
Ash Can
@Comrade Mary: I certainly didn’t want to make you cry. :) It’s just that I thought those photos were too good not to share, and even not to repeat. And being preoccupied as I am this evening with laundry, chasing mice out of my kitchen and Bottle Rocket to bed, and keeping an eye on the teachers union situation here in Chicago, I know darn well I’ll never get around to reading through today’s threads.
nitpicker
See also: New Mexico, where Obama leads by 5.
Ash Can
@Jibeaux: That pic of Biden and the bikers slays me dead.
Anoniminous
@Mark S.:
I’m not a statistics guru but — jesus — a jump of 4% in whites in 2012 over 2008? From where? The Moon? (Their asses, I suspect.)
Also, once Romney has won Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky NONE of those white people votes mean shit. Can increase the white vote by 4% or 400% in those states and the effect on who wins/loses the presidency is zilch.
National polls, after the end of this month, mean squat. And they don’t mean a whole bunch now.
burnspbesq
Anyone know where to get one of those “Proud. Catholic. Democrat.” t-shirts that were being sold in Charlotte during the DNC?
I especially like the “union made” logo right underneath the slogan.
Randy P
@Joel: Here in PA (in 2008 I think) there was a very effective robo call that started out “I’d like to tell you about [dem candidate].” It called people during dinner and would immediately call back if you hung up. It infuriated many people and caused a lot of them to switch their vote.
It was a Republican sponsored robo-call.
I hope it doesn’t occur to Romney to pull that sort of ad blitz.
Bobby Thomson
@Anya:
It sucks. SATSQ
Anoniminous
@nitpicker:
Yeah. The GOP has yanked funds from Heather Wilson so the open Senate Seat will be a Dem Hold. Which sucks for the GOPpers as they were counting on flipping it to take control of the Senate.
danah gaz
538 is a bloodbath. Obama is currently at 80.7% chance to win (projection at Nov 6.) and over 83% on the “now cast”.
The electoral map is similarly brutal.
? Martin
@Bobby Thomson: Yeah, I just looked at the polls listed and I have NO idea how they have the current aggregate. Sure, there are some polls lately showing Romney leading, but for each of those there’s at least one more recent poll showing Obama with a larger lead. It’s just busted. Go read Nate.
BillinGlendaleCA
This thread is giving me an ear worm and causing a mental image of Rush Limbaugh. Please, someone send some brain bleach, quickly!
piratedan
oh I ran for office… but my party was gone, there was no train stations….
Bobby Thomson
@Ash Can: Thanks. I needed that. Hadn’t seen real Joe Biden meets Onion Joe Biden.
brad
Slightly off topic, Jennifer Rubin is now claiming in her TestPrep blog that there will be ad buys in Wisconsin by Romney, contrary to what seems to be a surprising capitulation there.
But the same sources seem to be telling her that Michigan is about to become competitive and that Obama’s road to victory is currently narrowing, so the real question is whether they exist outside her head.
Oh yeah, link.
grandpa john
@JayJohnstone: yes and without any regard to the actual credibility of the poll
smith
You guys are turning me on with all this polling talk, do you know that?
I’m a sucker for the weirdest things.
Joel
@Anya: Setting aside any problems with how current the TPM polling aggregator is, Silver’s model is different: he weights polls by their dates, precision and house effects. This is why he’s so much better than the alternatives (RCP, TPM, Pollster).
Here’s a good explanation of the 538 methodology:
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/methodology/
Unfortunately, he stopped making his pollster ratings public. I think the NYT must have put the kibosh on it. Probably because poorly-rated pollsters cried foul (he did effectively kill Strategic Vision and Research 2000).
MikeJ
@brad: Actually she says he’s going up in WI, MI, and PA, all of which he had given up on. I think you really will see some ads there, but it’s more a matter of not demoralizing the troops by telling them you’ve ceded 265 of the needed 270 before election day.
The only battleground state that couldn’t tile it Obama by itself is NH. If you put the some of those Romney has already lost back in the mix Obama needs to win at least two “battleground” states. Unless he takes FL.
Here‘s a fun map, starting point is polling.
grandpa john
@ChrisNYC: Yeah its a hell of along way from being in the class with Nate and 538, another highly recommended site is Princeton Election Consortium which like 538 does more than just average polls.
http://election.princeton.edu/ is the link
cokane
YES DIE PISSBURG!!!
feebog
@ Mark S:
From the article you linked to:
So here is my question, not just for you, everyone can chime in; if the percentage of white voters has dropped 13 percent in 16 years, why is Ron Brownstein (or anyone else for that matter) assuming that the percentage of the white vote will be the same as four years ago?
Anyone with half a brain and a basic math class could tell you that the trend suggests a two or three point drop to 71 or 72 percent in this election. Which means that the Romnneybot 2.0 will have to have about a 25% edge in the white vote to have a chance of winning. Not 20% or 22%, A FUCKING 25% EDGE.
smith
@Joel:
That’s too bad. I liked seeing the pollster ratings. If polling firms got embarrassed, too damn bad – they should have done a better job and not be suck-ups to certain political parties.
Rekster
@Biscuits: +1,000,000
grandpa john
here is link to that site; http://election.princeton.edu/
grandpa john
@Jim, Foolish Literalist and Fact Checker: Good point about Ryan and the fact is He has never run for a bigger office ,that is he has never even run for a statewide office which shows when he is put in the national spotlight.
Joel
@Mark S.: Gallup still uses live pollsters, right? Given the relative antiquity of that system, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are behind on getting people whose phone numbers changes (i.e. mobile users).
smith
@grandpa john:
Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought I saw a story somewhere that Ryan’s polling numbers were on par with Dan Quayle (and not in a good way).
Ryan is fine when confined in committee meetings with GOP cronies, but put him on a big stage and he is really, really unappealing to a vast majority of humanity.
Dennis SGMM
@grandpa john:
Thanks for the link. This part was delightful:
TooManyJens
@feebog:
Just spitballing, but maybe they are forecasting a decrease in voter enthusiasm/turnout among people of color compared with 2008, plus factoring in the effect of voter suppression efforts. I think the former is overrated, and we’ve been winning court cases regarding the latter (and according to Kay, OFA is doing a ton of voter education), so it may not have as much of an impact as originally believed.
Tom Q
@feebog: I think the presumption is that, though the white share of the electorate will clearly be a bit smaller, non-white participation may not quite hit the historic percentages it did in ’08 when Obama was a once-a-lifetime motivator for African American voters.
This presumption, of course, was formed by mostly white pundits/academics, and may be completely wrong.
angelfoot
I’m nearly to the point of giving up on TPM altogether. I can’t quite put my finger on it but they seem to be drifting in the wrong direction, like it’s more about the business model than the reporting.
Anoniminous
@grandpa john:
From the link:
From the speech Obama’s approval rating shot up 9 points!
1. Whoa. Didn’t know that.
2. Lets us know why the RomBot has recently taken to carting the AnniMatron around where ere he goes. “If that Negroette (Negroatrix?) can get 50 million eyeballs a White Woman should get 150 million!”
3. Advice to OFA, which I’m sure they don’t need: UNLEASH THE MICHELLE!.
piratedan
and hence why there is such outrage and panic on behalf of the uptight white underwear brigade because they lump all minorities as being folks that don’t work hard and exist only to suck at the teat of the government looking for a handout. This is why they are so desperate and why they are pulling out all stops, they don’t want to be wage slaves to the government to let these undesirables live off the tax backs of these middle class white families, placing them in eternal bondage. Obviously, some folks need to expand their circle of friends to include a bit more color.
Mark S.
@feebog:
Republicans think they can win elections just with the votes of Fox news viewers. Shit, it’s not like any of this is a big secret, but they keep doing it.
FIRE UP THE BASE
The prophet Nostradumbass
Stay classy, Keith Olbermann.
? Martin
@feebog:
Turnout. Minorities turn out as low as at half the rate for whites. The assumption is that they turned out more in 2008 than they will this year. Voter suppression might be a factor in that as well. Further, the assumption is that white Republican voters would turn out at a higher rate than 2008.
But within the last month, that is looking less likely to be the case. The LV models are shifting away from that 74% model toward something looking a lot more like 2008. The GOP are starting to recognize that Mitt has lost this, and the Senate which looked like a sure thing is sliding away from them. Even the GOP base thinks their candidates suck at this:
Meanwhile, Dems are looking organized and focused and the base is getting more energized, and the suppression efforts are getting defeated left and right in the courts.
grandpa john
@TooManyJens: @TooManyJens: Oh yeah, the pundits and MSM has been pushing that Dems less enthusiasm crap for a couple of months, did we look unenthusiastic at the convention. also R&R’s campaign idea of continual massive and open barrage of just lie,lie lie and more lies has backfired to increase Dem anger and enthusiam.
smith
@Anoniminous:
I laugh out loud every time a Romney advisor or Romney supporter says crap like “Ann Romney is Mitt’s secret weapon.” No she’s not, in fact I’d venture to say she turns off more people than she turns on.
Michelle Obama is a smart, educated woman who worked her ass off to get where she is today. She also learned from her strong parents and was inspired by their morals and ethics. She appeals to all races and backgrounds.
Ann Romney is a crashing, entitled bore who can’t help talking down to people as though they’re the help, there to do her bidding. I fully expect her to snap her fingers at someone or somebody during the duration of the campaign.
? Martin
Josh just posted TPMs methodology and explained why the average is what it is. Now that I see that I can understand why the result is what it is. It’s not a bad methodology in abstract, but given the result and the latest polling data, it’s a bad model. Most poll watchers are actually more interested in the trend of the polls than the moment in time score, and his methodology actually tosses that information out. I think that’s a mistake.
But the model isn’t broken.
angelfoot
Nice Pretenders reference, also, too. I loved that single.
grandpa john
@? Martin: Maybe not, but its not a 538 or Princeton Consortium either
Smiling Mortician
@? Martin:
This would make sense if the data showed 2008 as an outlier, but it wasn’t. The linked article showed the white proportion of the vote dropping roughly 3-4 points for each successive presidential election year from ’92 on, with ’08 fitting neatly into the pattern.
GregB
@brad:
Shorter Rubin: The GOP-ers tell me Obama is arrogant.
That post of hers tells me that the GOP establishment is reacting to a five alarm fire.
I hope they keep talking to her, it makes me think the ship is sinking fast.
P.S. I didn’t see one Romney ad during the Patriot’s game in NH today.
ExurbanMom
@brad: The same Jennifer Rubin who called Obama “slovenly” in a tweet the other day?
Jennifer Rubin@JRubinBlogger
Good grief Get you rear end off JFK desk, Mr. president .. And jeans in the oval office?! .. Slovenly inside and out http://wapo.st/QsE4vf
I wouldn’t trust her analysis…just sayin’.
trollhattan
At LGM, Ohio somehow lead to this.
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2012/09/new-internet-tradition
Please enjoy your pancakes and do make an effort to yell at the cashier.
trollhattan
@ExurbanMom:
Surely (stop calling me “Shirley”) Jenn meant there’d be a cheese buy. Something for Willard to pluck off his pizza.
Mnemosyne
@Ash Can:
I’m convinced that what Biden said right before that picture was snapped was, “This one’s for the Onion!”
Suffern Ace
@feebog: I’m guessing they’ll get the 22 and not much more. I mean eventually they would have to start pissing off their base to shave off more voters. So you have David Koch talk about how he’s for gay marriage and Paul Ryan talk about how he’s for leaving medical marajuana to the states like they both did last week. That may help with white libertarians but I doubt it’s going to move white liberals who also care about those issues. It’s not going to swing another 3 percent, unless they start broadcasting that more, at which point the evangelicals stay home.
The Moar You Know
@Suffern Ace: What an incredible signal of weakness, that degree of pandering. Everyone knows that Mr. Koch and Mr. Ryan would give queers or pot smokers the chair if they could.
mdblanche
@Anya: I interpret this as 38% of Ohio Republicans are honest, 15% are willing to lie, and 47% know the truth, but won’t admit it.
ImJohnGalt
@Comrade Mary: Conrad Yakabuski, who covers the Presidential campaign for the Globe, is the brother (I believe) of a Conservative MP. I can barely stand to read him anymore, his unsupported assertions piss me off so much.
xian
@brad: a commenter on the PEC blog suggests that Republican internals show Wisc moving out of reach. (fwiw)
xian
@Joel: PEC claims much of Nate’s model is unneded and taking medians of state polls yields a more accurate prediction, fwiw.
Another Halocene Human
@The prophet Nostradumbass: Yes, Keith, actually I was aware that she was on Current TV (hell, they were pimping segments of her show before her speech night… seemed like two different people, so maybe there’s something to the drunk theory? but it was a good drunk), the same network that shitcanned* you.
*or did they allow you to publicly flounce, knowing that everyone but everyone would see right through you anyway, Keith?
Suffern Ace
@ImJohnGalt: Your lucky if you have choices. If we stopped reading pundits who made baseless assertions, Our papers would be Paul krugman and classified ads.
Another Halocene Human
@Smiling Mortician:
If only it were that simple. African American births per household have plummeted and Latino population growth has leveled out as well.
Anecdotally, I know a number of African American people who registered and voted for the very first time in 2008. (Note that MOST of the Black people I know were longtime voters already.) Also, I know of a couple who crossed party lines to vote for Obama. Four years later, the ones I’m still in touch with are still voting, and the former Republicans have switched parties to Democratic. Yeah, it’s anecdata, but still. I think the racial voting makeup stays pretty steady over 2008.
Another Halocene Human
Also, too, there was a movement in the 2000s to “reclaim the Republican party” by Black politicians in particular but the recidivists and revanchists have made a hash of that.
Susan K of the tech support
@Ash Can: That third one (Onion?) is funny when you click to enlarge. Look at the guy on the right. His vest says Troll. Troll! That’s a photo made for blog comments.
Matt McIrvin
@grandpa john: The reason I like Princeton Election Consortium (aka Sam Wang) is actually that he does less than 538. Silver’s model incorporates all kinds of plausible-sounding but poorly-tested assumptions on top of the polling (which risks double-counting some effect that’s already baked into the polls themselves), and he constantly tweaks it. Wang just combines state polls according to a relatively simple mechanism, though this year he’s added a slightly more speculative forecast based on a model of how the count evolves in time.
The one time he added an extra assumption to his basic poll aggregation was 2004, when he assumed undecideds would break for Kerry at the last minute, and he discovered he was wrong and vowed never to do that again.
James Hulsey
@BillinGlendaleCA: As if there wasn’t enough reasons to detest Limbaugh, he took one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands about my hometown of Akron, and used it for his own nefarious purposes.
The bass line is great and certainly earworm-inducing. Just get the album (the song’s on Learning to Crawl) and listen to it that way, and Limbaugh will be purged.