Ran across this (via) in the wee smalls last night, from the great Nate Silver:
On Friday, we began to see reasonably clear signs that President Obama would receive some kind of bounce in the polls from the Democratic convention.
Mr. Obama had another strong day in the polls on Saturday, making further gains in each of four national tracking polls. The question now is not whether Mr. Obama will get a bounce in the polls, but how substantial it will be.
Some of the data, in fact, suggests that the conventions may have changed the composition of the race, making Mr. Obama a reasonably clear favorite as we enter the stretch run of the campaign.
gogol's wife
Dear God please let it be so.
geg6
I read that and it’s even better than what you pasted (MATH!).
His analysis shows Obama may have gotten as much as an average of +8.
Fired up and ready to go!
The Ancient Randonneur
My Favorite part:
[Emphasis added]
What an absolutely delicious breakfast for this beautiful Sunday morning.
TS
The MSM will fight the maths every step of the way. Nate has been painful in his “both sides” analysis for months – it really must be an over the top bounce for his last 2 posts.
Valdivia
I check Nate everyday and also The Princeton Electoral Consortium site. They both have Obama winning. And Wang found Romney had a negative bounce. Loved that.
aimai
I saw that “Fired UP and Ready to GO!” video and I have to admit I fell in love again. I’m showing it to my daughters today. It really struck my 80 year old mother, who was already a major supporter of the President. Far from being a campaign that pits “the olds” against “the youth” this is a campaign and a party that is asking older voters, of all races and ethnicities, to step up and fight for their children and grandchildren. A lot of older women align themselves with Sandra Fluke and the President as people who both need help.
aimai
arguingwithsignposts
Nate is not following the horse race script. Also UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH!
Tim I
Congratulations to the Romney campaign staff for providing the clearest possible example of how not to run a Presidential campaign.
Of course they couldn’t have done it without Mitt’s robotic idiocy. He is perhaps the worst candidate for public office since Ross Perot’s running mate, James Stockdale, whose opening remarks during the Vice-Presidential debate of 1992, “Who am I? Why am I here?”, could very well summarize the Romney campaign to date.
Elizabelle
But did Nate clear his post with Adam Nagorney, the Times’ senior national correspondent, who probably wrote his current “Democrats in disarray” and “Oh noes!” articles last March?
FYI: canvassed yesterday in a wealthy, usually red area outside Washington, DC. We were finding Obama supporters, and more than you would expect.
Talking to parents of two college students away at school. The (Republican) dad was trying to tell me his son was not into politics; the little brother shouted from the driveway “He’s for Obama!”
Identified numerous Obama supporters among the adults who came to the door. One man thought his family might be the only ones in the neighborhood. Take heart. No longer!
WereBear
It’s down ticket races, now. Romney is melting before our eyes.
Taking your wife onto Meet The Press? Another one of those sons saying she is the “Mitt Stabilizer?” (I’m not usually sympathetic to the crazy-eyed, ridiculously rich brood of Mitt and Ann’s, but dayum; these people are messed up.)
The distant screams you hear are the wingnuts realizing what a weak sauce candidate they have been handed.
magurakurin
I don’t think it’s fair to call Nate out on the both sides do it claim. I remember Nate from way back in the day when he was Poblano over at the GOS. He was a numbers guy then and he is a numbers guy now. From what I have seen of him on his appearances on tv and what I gather from his writings, Nate is so consumed with the numbers, that I don’t think is all that caught up in the pundit rodeo. Kind of like that character Grisom on CSI LV. Ezra Klein, on the other hand, yes, he’s gone all “above the fray,” “both sides do it,” at least as compared to what he was when he was a lowly blogger.
Nate’s one of the good guys, I figure.
And speaking of the GOS, has anyone else noticed that a good amount of the diaries are actual readable and useful these days? I still never wade into the comments anymore, but it looks like Comrade Kos’s purge of the over the top elements has helped over there.
WereBear
Good. Waaaaaaaaaaaay overdue; comments became a swamp years ago and drove me away. And while I read many excellent articles there, it’s not like they got on the recc list too often. If the ratio has improved that is encouraging!
geg6
@WereBear:
Disagree, a bit. The wingnuts KNEW what a weak sauce candidate they had, which is why they still haven’t really gotten on board with him (otherwise, why can’t he do the usual pivot to the middle?).
Their mistake was in thinking that UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH! would solve everything. And it seems that it can’t and won’t. It’s not just that Mittens is weak, it’s that the bubble they live in distorts their ability to see reality.
Mary G
I love going to 538 to see the blue line pulling up and the red line pulling down, the electoral vote estimate is up 11 from the end of August, and the president’s chance of winning up to 79.8%, up 6 since September 1!
Now we need to work on the Senate.
KD
As a foreigner who would prefer a world with fewer nutters in positions of power, may I suggest that Democrats now turn their attention to regaining control of the House and holding onto the Senate?
magurakurin
@Mary G:
agreed.
You have to figure that the RNC has all but written off Mitt by now. I would guess they are turning their attention to the Senate and the House as well. They have to make sure this doesn’t turn into a down ticket slaughter. It has all the potential to be so. If Mitt keeps stepping on his dick, he’ll end up making enough of his rabid base to stay home so that they start losing House seats they shouldn’t.
But, I’m not getting cocky yet. Not until I see Virginia called for Obama on election night. Once I see that happen, I’ll take a breath.
Comrade Jake
Romney is really just starting to unload his cash advantage though. I think we are about to find out whether or not someone can buy an election.
arguingwithsignposts
@Elizabelle:
I wonder how much of this “I’m the only one” sentiment there is out there. The nutters aren’t at all ashamed to put their One Bad Ass Mistake America (or whatever it is) bumper stickers on their trucks (it’s almost always a truck) while the Obama signs I’ve seen around town have mostly been close to the house or in windows.
Of course the flipside of that is that the county Dems opened a storefront on the square a month ago, and there’s neither hide nor hair of a GOP office in town. Ground game, bitchez.
The Dem office has signs for state and national offices other than O, but fat chance of wins in a rural purple area.
shortstop
@magurakurin: All I care about is Nate’s numbers. His verbal analysis is largely unreadable now that the Times makes him muddy it up with ridiculously vague and comvoluted statements designed to hide the fact that this is no race, in a misguided attempt to appear “unbiased.” He wrote a piece last week in which he used historical weather data to “analyze” whether the Dems were likely to be lying about the real reason for moving Obama indoors. I was horribly embarrassed for him; there is no way in hell this crap would have appeared on his indy blog.
But he is a statistician, and he does not fudge the numbers and will not compromise his model. So his right column is gold and I check it almost daily.
MattF
It looks like Romney has (and has always had) an upper bound– he just can’t get above a certain level. OTOH, Obama has (and has always had) a lower bound– even on a bad day he doesn’t go below a certain level. So, it may look at times like they’re close, but in fact, they’re not.
geg6
@KD:
As a US citizen, I would agree. But it goes even further than that, depending on where you live. Myself, a proud resident of the great commonwealth of PA, I know that I also have to work to get more Dems into our state legislature. Between voter ID and cuts to education and services and papers please and forced vaginal ultrasounds and personhood laws and dozens of other insane state we need to take back our states, too.
arguingwithsignposts
@MattF: Romney has a lower bound, too. It’s 27 percent.
beltane
@Elizabelle: I’m still waiting for my Republican neighbors to put up their Romney signs. They had McCain lawn signs in 2008 (until Palin was added to the ticket) and they used to put up supersized Bush signs in 2000 & 2004, but no evidence of support for Romney to be seen. Other people are still clinging to their guns and Ron Paul signs. I guess none of them is fired up for Mitt.
hueyplong
Oh, dear. Is conservatism about to be failed once again?
I never understood how one could come up with the acronym RINO for “Republican trailing in the polls.” Perhaps a real Republican simply can’t trail.
SiubhanDuinne
This is very optimistic news. And it’s a beautiful Sunday morning. And according to the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, Michelle Obama’s DNC speech was written seven grade levels above Ann Romney’s RNC speech. Since candidates’ spouses began giving convention speeches, MO’s ranks at the all-time highest grade level while AR’s is the all-time lowest. It is only one metric, and quite likely a flawed one in many ways (word-count formulas), but on the surface it sure makes it easy to infer that the First Lady interacts with us like intelligent adults while the First Plutocrat treats us like not-very-bright children.
Or like the Help.
Analysis here: blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/smartpolitics/2012/09/michelle_obamas_dnc_speech_wri.php
SGEW
He came up on the left like a streak of light, indeed.
gogol's wife
@magurakurin:
Yes, I started reading it again (but not the comments).
WereBear
@hueyplong: Republicanism cannot trail; it can only be trailed!
WereBear
@SiubhanDuinne: Perhaps they were accurately aimed at their respective constituencies.
magurakurin
@shortstop: I think that your criticism of his verbal analysis is fair, but I don’t think it is really anything new. I suppose he has to be feeling pressure like you say to produce some “unbiased” crap that his punk editor demands. But even when Nate first struck out on his on, with 538, his political analysis outside of strict numbers analysis just wasn’t all that.
I guess I don’t really disagree with the complaints more than I feel he is so good at running the numbers that the other stuff doesn’t really matter.
And yes, the thing about the weather was silly, but again it seemed to show to me how his mind is so overwhelmed with numbers. But shit articles like that are cheap price for the numbers analysis he can now do with the big money he now has behind him. I don’t bother clicking through on those sorts of articles anyway, since that would use up one of my ten free articles. While I’m glad Nate got a hold of a ton of money to do what he does, it doesn’t come from me because the New York Times can fucking bite me before I give them a dime.
SiubhanDuinne
@WereBear:
Yes, this.
Elizabelle
@beltane:
In Virginia and Maryland, am seeing lots of Romney, George Allen (Macaca in Virginia), and GOP congressional candidates’ signs. They popped up about a month before the convention.
Am seeing more Obama bumperstickers.
Per the OFA organizer: they’re not spending their money on signs at this point.
I am happy that we have OFA offices, even in red areas, and feet on the ground.
Romney supporters can have their Potemkin village of yard signs.
TS
@magurakurin:
I followed him before he joined the NYT and he was a numbers guy – also admitted to being slightly to the left. Then he joined the NYT and ever since his stats are good – but his pundit comments – so very careful to give both sides equal time. The last 2 posts – he is giving the President the edge – very different.
SiubhanDuinne
@magurakurin:
Somebody around these BJ parts (can’t remember who it was or I would give them a big wet thank-you kiss) mentioned a couple of weeks ago that if you delete everything in the NYT code after the HTML and then refresh the page, you can read free articles to your heart’s content. Works like a charm.
Elizabelle
However:
I saw many Obama signs in rural SW Virginia, between Lynchburg (Jerry Falwell-land) and Roanoke. Many more than I was expecting, and big ones in yards.
Which is great, when you’re on numerous acres.
And to counteract the constant anti-Obama advertising on TV. Savage. (Although I was visiting a beloved wingnut relative.)
Bobby Thomson
@magurakurin:
Then how do you explain his ridiculous post the other day on weather forecasting and moving Obama’s speech indoors? It certainly wasn’t grounded in reality.
That was classic villager bullshit and beneath him.
shortstop
@magurakurin: When you use up your 10 free stories and get The Notice, just remove everything in the URL from the question mark on and refresh the page. Read to your heart’s content.
Elmo
@Elizabelle:
Out here in the hunt country of Loudoun, I see nothing but Rmoney and Wolf signs. Some of them big banners hung on pasture fences.
I want to put a big Obama sign on my own pasture, but frankly I’m afraid for my horses if I do. Isn’t that awful? But I can’t shake the anxiety.
magurakurin
@TS:
again I agree. I felt the same way. He is really starting to get more and more sure of an Obama win. Everything in general this week feels like things are turning. Of course I view your world through the online haze as I’m an ex-pat.
But Clinton’s speech made a big impact here in Japan. I was amazed that even my 76 year old, salt of the earth, father-in-law knew that Clinton had strongly endorsed Obama. The Big Dog’s reach is long indeed. Dad told me tonight that with Clinton backing Obama the election is a lock. I laughed, because, I mean what the fuck does he know. But the very fact that he does know speaks to the impact of Clinton’s speech. I have to believe the impact must be large indeed in the Homeland.
gelfling545
@arguingwithsignposts: Supposing the President wins re-election in spite of all the “unlimited corporate cash”. I wonder if the high dollar folks might then decide to keep the money in the old oak chest next time. It would be nice to see Citizens United made irrelevant.
magurakurin
thanks to all for the NYT tip.
gnomedad
The crazies are counting the days until we are rid of One Big Ass Mistake America and will roll out ACORN / voter fraud / illegal alien / America is Finished hysteria the day after the election. I’m hoping I’m wrong, but I’m thinking this is gonna be scary.
Elizabelle
@Elmo:
Understand.
Have had discussions with fellow Democrats on how we don’t put bumperstickers on cars lest they be keyed or ragtops slashed.
Meanwhile, people with Bush-Cheney ‘stickers drive around to their heart’s content.
Maybe talk with your local organizers about whether the horses/other animals actually are threatened. Might be rural myth.
I hope you can put up a sign. Even if it’s just while you are near enough to your horses to protect them.
It’s terrible that Democrats feel threatened, and that Republicans can do anything they want because Democrats just do not tear down signs and vandalize. Have never heard of a case.
Josie
@Elmo: It is sad, but I feel the same way about putting a sign in my yard. I live alone and feel nervous about the hate that some people feel. At one point several years ago, somebody had a political sign in the yard, and someone cut down all their trees one night.
Davis X. Machina
@gelfling545: No. It still gets spent. The marginal cost to them from spending this money, or the gain to them from sitting on it, is minimal. The sums involved, once deducted from their piles of cash, aren’t going to change their standard of living. The sums involved are huge, but the aggregate wealth backing the expenditures is insanely colossal.
It’s an expensive hobby, like owning a sports franchise, or bankrolling an opera company. The difference is your strong feelings about how to stage La Boheme, or 4-3 v. 3-4 on defense, aren’t a threat to the republic.
Shawn in ShowMe
@KD:
I don’t think it’s enough to just “hold on to the Senate” if we hope to see anymore progress in Congress than we’ve seen in the last two years. Unfortunately I don’t see where the numbers to achieve anything more than “holding on” are coming from. Jon Tester should be winning easily in Montana, but he’s locked in a death struggle with a popular six-term congressman in a state where Obamacare is unpopular.
And the Blue Dogs that we’re relying on, like Indiana’s Joe Connelly, have GOP stances on a number of the key issues (deficit, immigration) we need to address in the next four years. And the ensuing compromises will be blamed on Obama. Same crap, different day.
Foregone Conclusion
Nate Silver is cautious because his whole business relies on him being accurate. If he were to have thrown caution to the wind in July and said ‘yeah, Obama’s going to win this’, and he hadn’t, he’d be pretty much dead as a pundit. Lately the polling has shifted, and so he’s become much more bullish. No mystery here.
Geeno
@gelfling545: CU is only irrelevant this election, because they have such a loser of a candidate. A better candidate would know what to do with all that money.
We still have to get of that nonsense.
TS
@Foregone Conclusion:
I think Nate is way the best on stats – ever since I found his blog – but his pundit chat is often not related to the stats. He has given the GOP way too much “benefit of the doubt” – obviously only my opinion – and regardless of what we think, the voting is what will count.
J.D. Rhoades
@arguingwithsignposts:
I spoke to a Democratic women’s organization yesterday, and I can tell you: there’s a lot of it, at least in this corner of NC. People who come up to me on the street and tell me they’ve read my column almost always tell me, “I didn’t think anyone else around here thought like I did.” So my advice is, even if you’re in a red corner of a red state, MAKE SOME NOISE. Write your paper. Tell people what you believe, and don’t be shy about it. You never know who you mind find, or might inspire to do the same. Wingnut bullying is all dependent on their feeling that they’re not just a majority but an overwhelming one. Show them they’re wrong.
Cervantes
@Tim I: But Stockdale’s “Who am I? Why am I here?” was honest. Romney is anything but.
Steve
I think when most people heard both Obama’s and Romney’s speeches and then observed the makeup of the crowds of both the RNC and DNC, they could see who most represented the real America.
J.D. Rhoades
@Cervantes:
Honest in a way. The whole point of it was to telegraph that he wasn’t a pro, that he was an outsider like Perot. I think it was calculated to endear Stockdale to the anti-politician crowd that Perot was trying to appeal to, but it didn’t work.
WereBear
I love this with the heat of a zillion suns:
Nate Silver.
Oh, may the FSM bless us and keep us!
Elizabelle
@J.D. Rhoades:
Excellent advice.
And fun, too, gently rattling wingnuts’ cages. No need to be rude.
J.D. Rhoades
@gnomedad:
They’re already here. At the meeting I was talking about earlier, a young man told me about a speaker he’d heard the day before who insisted that ACORN had gone “underground” and they were plotting to steal the election from Romney. Turned out she was being flown all over the country by Americans for Prosperity to spread this paranoia.
Ohioan
@Elizabelle:
In 2008, had my Obama yard sign burned while out of town on a business trip. Luckily, the burned patch of grass was about 20 feet from my house.
MikeJ
@TS:
On the other hand, even when you assume good faith from Republicans, even you argue against the best version of their argument rather than the straw man version, Democratic policies are still better.
If you can get your audience to notice that you’re giving the opposition every break possible and you’re still better, it’s much more convincing than shouting epithets. Wouldn’t it be nice if the low info voters started to recognize that the guy who’s yelling about soçialists doesn’t have a real argument to make?
dmsilev
Another sign that Romney is screwed (Politco link):
So, if Romney has abandoned Pennsylvania and Michigan, and now it appears that Ohio is moving away from him, he’s spotted Obama something like 265 Electoral votes right off the bat. With that sort of starting point, hitting 270 doesn’t take much.
scottinnj
Serious question – if you want to know where the race stands, read Mr. Silver first, but is there any other (data driven, transparent in assumptions) site that is even a close second?
MattF
@scottinnj: Princeton meta-data:
election.princeton.edu/
MikeJ
@scottinnj: pollingreport.com aggregates polls, but Silver does much more than aggregate.
The other night I suggested Ladbrokes, which is a bookie site. They have their own real life money riding on getting the odds of the outcome right. They have Obama at 1/3. A $10 bet wins you $3.33 (plus your $10, of course). Romney is at 21/10.
MikeJ
@MikeJ: Forgot to add, Ladbrokes had Obama at 4/11 yesterday, so 1/3 is a shift towards Obama.
WaterGirl
@magurakurin:
I stopped going there completely, so I know nothing of this purge of over the top elements. Can you say more?
scottinnj
@MattF:
Thanks, will check that site out.
Lojasmo
@gnomedad:
I can’t wait. The trolling will be epic.
JMS
@magurakurin: Nah, I wouldn’t say Nate’s *just* a numbers guy. I remember trading 4s with him on GOS back when he was Poblano. (Do I get credit that he rated many of my comments as 4s?) He’s definitely partisan, and I don’t think working for the Times has changed that, at least on a personal level. Mind you, I don’t think he ever foamed at the mouth–neither do I–but that’s more a matter of presentation than conviction.
Like Ezra Klein, though, I’m sure that working for a “neutral” outlet surely muzzles how partisan he can sound, since he wasn’t hired to be in the opinion section. Rest assured, behind that dry sounding report, I could almost hear “Poblano” cheering away for the president.
Anonymous
@scottinnj:
Be sure to see the comparison of 538 and Sam Wang in 2008: election.princeton.edu/2008/11/11/post-election-evaluation-part-2/
xian
@Ohioan: that’s terrorism
xian
@MattF: and Sam Wang there makes an aggressive argument that his own method is cleaner than Nate’s model, that the 538 econometric variables are adding noise because those factors are already reflected in the polling data.
you know, the more anti-math the wingnuts become the easier it’s going to get to beat them. it’s like shrum not understanding the Dem nomination arithmetic in ’04 writ large.