Election Prediction Tracking, Oct 27: Storm Winds A-Brewin

I got a fully stocked liquor cabinet. Bring on the storm.

First up, popular vote polling:

Let me explain that outlier for Unskewed Polls, which I'm going to leave there: that is their own prediction of what the popular vote will be. I don't think they'll update that guess except to ratchet it higher. I'm keeping this point on the graph so I can compare against the final result.

The other points on the Unskewed Polls graph are their average of the other polls, just as RCP also does an average poll result. I'll keep that, as it updates daily.

RCP: Obama, 47.0%; Romney, 47.9% (no change)

Nate Silver: Obama, 50.3%; Romney, 48.6% (barely moved for Obama)

Unskewed polls: Obama, 45.8%; Romney, 50.0% (same as yesterday)

Electoral College projections:

RCP: Obama, 201; Romney, 191; Toss-up, 146 (no change)

RCP No Tossup: Obama, 290; Romney, 248 (changed Colorado to Obama…hmm)

Nate Silver: Obama, 295.4; Romney, 242.6 (shift of about 1 electoral vote to Obama)

Unskewed polls: Obama, 179; Romney, 359 (no change)

Win probabilities: (will not necessarily add to 1)

Nate Silver: Obama, 74.4%; Romney 25.6% (movement of 1 percentage point to Obama)

InTrade: Obama, 63.5%; Romney, 36.5% (movement of 2 percentage points to Obama)

So, let us look at some things to have fun:

Kevin Drum on not being fooled by number of field offices. He doesn't entertain another possible explanation as to why Romney doesn't have as many field offices: Republicans are more efficient at running operations.

Axelrod: Trajectory of Race is Set. I totally agree. It was set in 2010. How did that turn out?

Romney-linked voting machines set to sway Ohio vote? Or that people really hate Obama? You make the call.

But more seriously, I highly recommend the type of voting set up we currently have in New York: Scantron type sheets that are fed through a machine. If you screwed up, it spits the ballot back out at you. You can do a handcount of the paper ballots afterwards, too.

That may be the upside of a Romney blowout: there will definitely be screams of stolen elections (no matter how big the margin… "The fix was supposed to be in!"), and then Republicans in all sorts of states say "You know, it is disturbing. Let us put in these safeguards: paper ballots, voter ID requirements, no early voting, etc." There will be Obama supporters who honestly worry that the election was rigged and would go along with that. The disingenuous lefties… not so much. But maybe they'll be willing to demand the paper ballot fix.

Finally, Obama isn't all that great of a ball player, which I think most people knew already. Very few people bought that particular bullshit.

About Meep

Mary Pat Campbell, aka Meep, mainly blogs on public pensions, unions, and finance. She's conservative Southerner who chose to live in liberal Yankeeland. Crazy lady.

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8 comments

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JimK on October 27, 2012 at 4:27 pm said:


Scanned paper ballots are the only "safe" way of running elections. Everything else can be scammed one way or another. A supersized Romney victory might help convince the Dems that this is so.

jefferson101 on October 27, 2012 at 4:58 pm said:

"Kevin Drum on not being fooled by number of field offices. He doesn't entertain another possible explanation as to why Romney doesn't have as many field offices: Republicans are more efficient at running operations."

Of course they are. If their help is there for the purpose of hooking up with the volunteers during working hours or stealing money, the Republicans usually send them home.

Note that I said "usually" there.

Productivitity is probably somewhere between six and eight times the Democrats average. But I'm belaboring the obvious here.

ModeratePoli on October 27, 2012 at 6:24 pm said:

I started coming to this site to find out the Nate Sliver predictions without worrying about the paywall. I like that you report this and other sources honestly. But the comments don't acknowledge that Romney is likely to lose.
Why is there a disconnect between what you report and what you and your conservative readers seem to glean from it? There is no chance of a Romney blow-out. There's no chance of an Obama blow-out. Please stay reality-based and comment on that–it'll make for much better reading.

Meep on October 28, 2012 at 6:44 am said:


Of course there's a =chance= (always a chance)… depending on what you define to be a blowout. It may be that what I'm calling a blowout is what you consider a moderate win. (I'm going for Romney w/ more than 300 electoral votes, and 53% of popular vote… fine, not exactly a blowout, but not as close as people are talking about.)

I do think Unskewed Polls is smoking crack with their electoral vote prediction. That's a bridge too far for me.
- Meep on October 28, 2012 at 6:47 am said:
  
  
  Oh, and I have no problem with being wrong. I'm doing this tracker more to see how it actually pans out.
  
  All of these, except InTrade, are an "average of polls" type of prediction (and InTrade's is sort of an averaging of opinion as well, but not necessarily based on polls), and they're using different weighting for their averages.
  
  The final graph I do will be the actual result against the predictions (for the electoral votes & popular vote %ages), and we can see how well that worked.

ModeratePoli on October 28, 2012 at 9:29 am said:

I disagree that there's a chance of a blow-out. But that's because I like to stay within the 'reasonable doubt' arena when accessing probabilities versus the infinite-improbability-drive arena where even Gary Johnson has a chance.
When it comes to admitting that you could be wrong, I strongly agree. I hate it when people are so sure–as though the other opinions and possibilities didn't even exist.
So, what did you think of my blog? Come back anytime, and please share your opinions. I actually listen. I'll be looking at yours daily for a while.

Meep on October 28, 2012 at 11:22 am said:

It's okay. Sorry, getting ready for the storm right now. Mainly doing a bunch of laundry and making sure I know where all our blankets are.

I will admit that in 2008 I thought the race would be a lot more close than it actually turned out to be. And in 1995 or 1996 when somebody first pointed out Amazon.com to me I pooh-poohed the concept of buying books online (I was ordering from them within the year, btw)…. so my track record for "gut feel" of trends outside the actuarial world is poor. (Within the actuarial world, I'm doing great… but that's a very small world indeed..)

I agree with your skepticism on bipartisanship in the next Congress (looking at your most recent post). But look at the prior paragraph and try to think about my credibility in this arena.

ModeratePoli on October 28, 2012 at 2:08 pm said:

As I said before, it's great that you can admit to the possibility of being wrong. You get credibility points for that.

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