11.09.2008

Obama's Electoral Cushion

Throughout this election cycle, there was some debate about whether either candidate had a structural advantage in the Electoral College, with our model generally insisting that Barack Obama was more likely to win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote rather than the other way around.

Obviously, this became something of a moot point once the vote began rolling in on Tuesday and it became clear that Obama was going to win decisively. But nevertheless, there is evidence that if the race had tightened significantly, Obama had an electoral cushion of between 2-3 points. Specifically, while Obama won the national popular vote by 6.5 points, he accumulated 269 electoral votes -- guaranteeing him at least an electoral tie -- between 22 states and the District of Columbia which he won by 9.3 points or more. And he went over the top to 278 electoral votes with Colorado, which he won by 8.6 points.

In other words, if you had subtracted 9.3 points from Barack Obama's margin in every state, he would still have tied the Electoral College -- even while losing the popular vote by almost 3 points. And if you had subtracted 8.6 points, he would have won the Electoral College outright, while losing the popular vote by 2.1 points. McCain's strategy of in effect conceding Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, while trying to compete in states like Pennsylvania and Iowa where Obama was already comfortably over 50 percent in almost all pre-election polls, was in retrospect a complete disaster.

126 comments

STepper said...

Strange that no one has yet picked up that one electoral vote in Nebraska except for you, Nate.

UnfriendlyGhost said...

Oooh the novelty of posting at the start of the thread!

Nate, I'd love to see an article on what patterns to look for to spot potential electoral fraud and what patterns are just artifacts of the process.

Uma said...

Hi, Nate

If you have plans for 538.com you should make an announcement fast before the traffic disappears.

Thank you for all your efforts.

Juris said...

TYPO: "Add he went over the top. . . ." Sentence should begin "And," not "Add."

wv: ingsturi. Angostura Or a small village in Finland?

eve said...

.

Eric said...

This is important to note for 2012. About 6 electoral votes will be moved over to the Red colun due to the 2010 Census. You also have the prospect that a GOP candidate from a light blue state could flip it. That said, in 2012, if the GOP has a chance against an Obama that has a half-way decent strategy, they'll have to come up with a vastly new strategy because of said cushion in electoral votes. Ironically, it seems Jeb Bush might be a decent choice. Flip florida back and fluent in Psanish. The Bush name is extremely stale, but the smartest Bush, and an appeal to the hispanics might be their best play.

Charlie Tuna said...
This post has been removed by the author.
Nour said...

Hello Nate and Sean,
As one of your quiet but devout followers who's still checking in daily, it would be wonderful to have an rss feed going to keep us in touch with you. Thank you so much for keeping us informed and sane this election season. I was, for the first time in my adult life, radiating what seemed like irrational optimism in the weeks leading up to the election, and I can chalk it all to you.

Charlie Tuna said...

wikipedia has the electoral vote from NE-2 for obama

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2008

Juris said...

@Nate: Another suggestion for future of this site. A regular "column" on media and numbers. How they interpret economic statistics (including consumer confidence, GDP, unemployment, presidential approval, inequality, policy impact, deficits, trade imbalances, public opinion polls generally).

So in addition to your idea of developing "player cards" for members of Congress (a bit tricky given the complexity of some votes, on amendments, continuing resolutions, etc. etc.), you might deal with Numeracy in the Media -- not just a "fact check" but a also "logic check".

BTW/ on the Congress thing you'd help a lot if you also linked up the various "scorecards" by different advocacy organizations that rate on pro-labor, pro-growth, pro-conservative, proenvironment, etc. criteria. You could be come the "go to" site for such ratings, or a meta rating of some kind.

Listen to my Hype said...

Still coming on here a few times a day. I am not a stat wiz so I do not participate in the discussions as much as I did when it was just common sense or point of view that could spice things up. I still check in until a headline says what the next steps are.

jonathan said...

Jeb Bush? That fish won't fry.

Jindal won't do it.

Palin's rebirth is so absurd it just might work.

Romney showed he has no soul.

William Weld? Maybe Curt Schilling.

George said...

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/11/04/114-america/

Urban whites, so hot right now.

Also, I don't know whether Coach decided to bench Sean for a couple of drives or what, but I think it's the right move. 538, as we do love to point out, is a brand, and needs to be protected as such. We all really liked Sean's hard work and insight during the campaign, but there was occasionally a sense that 538 was his pulpit. There's no point denying your Kos heritage, but this site is, and should be, distinct from that site in its mission and in its tenor.

Which is all by way of saying that we love Sean, but, speaking at least for myself, we prefer Nate's semi-detached professionalism.

So, I don't really know where that came from.

billybear said...

Hey Nate,

THANKS for making this election so much fun and so much more interesting.

I'm giving you super star status, just like Grady, who will def go 40/40 this year.

[ tyler curtain ] said...

I hope that you don't mind this turning into a request line.

I would love to see an entry about the internals of the vote on Prop 8. Given the vociferous reaction to the passing of the proposition, I wonder if you would just talk about the numbers / margins / populations who voted.

Matt said...

Nate/Sean -- what happened in Virginia-5? In a rural Southern conservative district, liberal lawyer who lived in New York until 18 months ago beat popular conservative Congressman Goode who always won by 20% or more. The rule is incumbants never lose. Those few that break the rule -- how do they do it?

Lior.K said...

Nate- what about showing us what the electoral college would have looked like, if all states would have split their vote, like Nebraska and Maine?

PS Great work, great site, great math (from a fellow math-buff).

Andy JS said...

Thanks for those figures. It shows how difficult it will be for the GOP to win the next election; they have to win back states which Obama won extremely comfortably.

Obama's popular vote lead has just hit 8 million. Actually, the networks are giving Obama a lead of 7,997,871 votes at the moment, but they've forgotten to update their totals for Hillsborough County, Florida, whose own website has published the updated results.

The networks still have this result for Hillsborough County:

Obama - 219,580
McCain - 209,503

Hillsborough County's website has these updated figures:

Obama - 272,461
McCain - 235,819

That means the national totals are:

Obama - 65,484,836
McCain - 57,460,400

Obama lead - 8,024,436 votes

livemild said...

apparently Joe must be being shown the door-this latest from him sure smacks of gotcha on the way out

how NOT to keep your job-
lieberman aide claims country is at risk if Joe doesnt keep his chair.

right- so now we have ANOTHER lieberman version of democrats (apparently the whole senate Democrats not just Obama as before) putting party ahead of country.


can joe get lost fast enough?

sfergus483 said...

Two more possible 2012 GOP candidates:

David Petraeus
John Thune

I can easily see Petraeus being a consensus candidate among Congressional Repubs if he has an inkling to get involved in politics (no idea if he does, what his political beliefs are or what kind of a candidate he'd be of course).

He has the kind of presence that could knock the other candidates off the map.

The Obama/Petraeus interplay in the months ahead is going to be very interesting irrespective of future political possibilities.

Juris said...

@lior.k: That's a good idea but a little tricky to do, in that to do it right Nate might have to look at presidential vote by, say, congressional district. Then he's have to use some allocation rule, such as what the Dem party used in the primaries.

But it would be instructive to do this.

BTW/ I think that in addition to the advantage that Obama had from an extended primary season, the Democratic Party's PR allocation of delegates to the national conventions was probably a real net plus for Obama (and presumably other Democrats as well, had they won), because this required that the candidates get organized in the field in every congressional district within the primary states.

I'm a bit concerned that the Dems might give up the PR thing -- thinking that it ended up being too complicated and even prolonging the primaries. But I think it's a fantastic innovation that may have helped Obama down the line.

(Hint: Nate--could you consider this idea?)

Colorado Liberal said...

We Colorado residents are glad to take credit for pushing Obama over the top in your analysis.

I kept telling people that if Obama can't win Colorado, he can't win the election. The reasoning was simple: Obama benefited in CO by uncounted free GRPs by having the convention in Denver. Turns out it was a brilliant strategy to do the DNC in the west, which may have actually helped flip New Mexico and Nevada as well.

Now, the debate is whether the 6.5 percentage point margin, i.e. by 8 million votes, constitutes a "landslide"? Or whether this gives Obama a "mandate"?

What say you, Nate?

Jason said...

I read this to mean that Obama really could have afforded to sacrifice a few votes and come out a bit more strongly against Prop 8 in CA. For a man of integrity, he played this one too safe, IMO.

sfergus483 said...

For those going through Gallup midday withdrawal, they have a daily tracking poll on Obama's favorability (not sure it is 7 day; unclear from the website).

Anyway, the latest is 70-25 favorable.

How is this important? There are signs that unlike FDR in 32-33, Obama may on the economy start outlining objectives and plans that he'd like movement on during the lame-duck Congress. I'm not sure the current line-up in the Senate (or the House that matter in terms of veto override) can really do much, but his figure, compared to Bush's, might make a difference.

Another point - Senate Dems might try to hold some votes that could make Saxby Chambliss vulnerable, although chances are he just won't show up (not that this can't be made an issue as well).

CA Hawkeye said...

Thanks Nate,

McCain's strategy was a complete disaster.

The understatement of the year.

I still think that with a better strategy, ground game (utilizing his 5 month cushion), and VP pick, this could have been a competitive race.

Thank goodness he was inept.

Rodney Peterson said...

Hasn't John McCain's entire life been a disaster? An "untouchable" admiral's son who graduated 894th out of 899, regardless. A reckless pilot who crashed several times and nearly lost his life and may be responsible for the deaths of others through carelessness-finally to crash again and be captured-then for whatever reason deciding not to use his father's connections to end his imprisonment in Vietnam when he could have done so-badly injured because of his own carelessness for years-ditching a wife he had married when she became injured and disabled-something you think he would have understood-marrying a drug addicted wealthy woman for convenience-tiptoeing to a Senate seat where he displayed explosive temper on many occasions, made crude jokes to reporters and generally acted like an arrogant ass for years? Then instead of picking the turncoat he wanted for his running mate picking a little known Governor who only made things worse and worse as time went on and when the election was over we discovered she was so ignorant whe didn't even realize Africa was not a country?

What an insult it would have been to the entire country to elect this idiot. It's amazing the much better qualified and far more honorable individual Barack Obama didn't walk away with this election any more than he did.

Some maverick.

www.cuttingconfessionsfilm.blogspot.com

www.myspace.com/370392338

larrycowan said...

From someone too lazy to do the math, what would Obama's electoral total have been if the states' EV were apportioned by percent of their popular vote instead of winner take all?

eve said...

I don't think Petraeus is a great idea for the repubs. Iraq just is too much of a negative that reminding people of the war with the candidate sounds like a losing proposition to me.

Although the repubs may like having a general run, it's been a long time since being in the military made a difference in the vote.

Pickled said...

Nate,

Fine post as always, but I think you meant mute point. ;)

ogmb said...

Three open questions:

1. What is going on in Missouri?
2. Why did Southern Arkansas shift red?
3. Why did Eastern Oklahoma shift red?

Southern Arkansas is predominantly African American. Eastern Oklahoma is predominantly Native American. Both, one would expect, should have shifted blue.

tkk13above said...

Nate --

could you do a ranking of states like this one, but including all of the other states, too? I want more postmortems in general. I'd love to see analysis of how well you did with your predictions, examinations into swing counties, comparisons to Kerry and Gore, what you'd change (if anything) for next time, etc. You have so much data; I'd love to see you unpack it all.

picked --

Actually Nate was right, it is "moot" point.

RufusRules said...

@Pickled:

No, it really is "moot." Check your dictionary.

Andy JS said...

When I first saw the results from Oklahoma, I thought it was strange in a way because they're almost identical to 2004. But, as ogmb says, there were significant changes in different parts of the state. It's just that they canceled each other out.

SHERWICK said...

"UnfriendlyGhost said...
Nate, I'd love to see an article on what patterns to look for to spot potential electoral fraud"

Simple: Look for a State with a Rethuglican Governor and SoS.

Pickled said...

This must explain why the moot button on my remote doesn't work...

Sorry, was trying to make a funny about the mute/moot wars!

sfergus483 said...

And a moot point used to be until so many people misused it to mean "irrelevant" actually something that never could be proven one way or another - as in moot court in law school, where the point is not definitive proof, but just figuring out how to make the strongest case on either side.

ogmb said...

Actually, it seems like McCain was heavily courting the Native American vote. This also matches a few other counties that have shifted red. Seems like Western Oklahoma followed the other Western States.

marc said...

I am still floored by
How BIG was Obama's victory? As it now stands, with North Carolina upping his total to 364, he could've spotted McCain New York and California and still won with 8 to spare http://crooksandliars.com/bluegal/open-thread-16

donz said...

ogmb asks: "What is going in in Missouri?"

At 100% precincts reported:

McCain: 1,442,673 (49.4%)
Obama: 1,426,814 (49.2)
Nader: 17,769 (0.6)
Barr: 11,355 (0.4)
Baldwin: 8,181 (0.3)
McKinney: 958 (0.0)

http://www.sos.mo.gov/enrmaps/20081104/pres_map.asp?oTypeID=1&Sunday,%20November%2009,%202008

McCain's lead over Obama: 5,859

Nader's tally: 17,769

Barr's tally: 11,355

If we give 100% Nader votes to Obama, and 100% Barr votes to McCain, we get:

McCain: 1,454,028
Obama: 1,454,583

Obama: Up by 555

Of course, there's no way to tell how the Nader and Barr votes would have gone, if they had gone to anyone else in the first place, but there ya are.

dingojoe said...

Southern Arkansas is not predominantly A-A. Eastern Oklahoma is not predominantly Native American.
Obama did poorly with Southern rural whites no matter where they were.

Re:Arkansas. There is actually a documented effect that when a home state candidate loses a close primary election, the losing candidates home state tends to vote less enthusiastically for the party's nominee. If you accept Arkansas as Hillary's home state then disappointment in Obama being the party nominee probably had an impact.

joel said...

2012 won`t even be close. Either Obama will be a wildly popular president who led us out of a terrible situation and will be unbeatable or he would have been a failure and anyone the GOP puts up can probably beat him the way Reagan beat Carter.
My guess is Obama will be unbeatable and no legitimate republican with a future will bother to run.

sfergus483 said...

The MO total as I understand is 100% of the precincts reporting initial results , but with some indication that there are other ballots from within some precincts for a variety of reasons not accounted for.

If the final tally is similar, I doubt there will be a recount - we aren't talking any difference in who wins any office, only bragging rights. And in any event, it's too large a margin on its own compared to the number of votes cast that normally would reverse an outcome.

Redshift said...

George:
Also, I don't know whether Coach decided to bench Sean for a couple of drives or what, but I think it's the right move. 538, as we do love to point out, is a brand, and needs to be protected as such. We all really liked Sean's hard work and insight during the campaign, but there was occasionally a sense that 538 was his pulpit.

Speak for yourself, don't try to make it sound like you represent a lot of the rest of us by claiming "we" believe these things.

Both Nate and Sean made no secret of the fact that they were Obama supporters from the beginning. The site's "brand" is that the numbers stand on their own and are not manipulated to fit our hosts' political leanings (unlike some other sites that shall remain nameless), but Sean's and Nate's opinion posts are indisputably part of the "brand" as well, and the site would be much poorer without them.

The complaints during the campaign from those with contrary views that Nate and Sean shouldn't post about anything but the numbers were silly, but it is even more silly to suggest that at a point when there will soon be no projection model to write about and no polls to speak of, that the site's "brand" will somehow be protected by eliminating almost everything else.

That might in the view of some "preserve" the brand much like a fly preserved in amber, but I would much prefer a living site, myself.

sfergus483 said...

--Re:Arkansas. There is actually a documented effect that when a home state candidate loses a close primary election, the losing candidates home state tends to vote less enthusiastically for the party's nominee. If you accept Arkansas as Hillary's home state then disappointment in Obama being the party nominee probably had an impact.--

Not sure if this applies, but Huckabee was from Arkansas. And I don't know if there is any basis from this anyway.

dingojoe said...

Once everything is tabulated Obama will have won by somewhere between 7 and 7.5% with a vote margin of around 9 million.

Virginia just about finished their vote totals and Obama's margin has stretched out to 6.25%

Maryland's margin for Obama will stretch wider and Arizona's margin for McCain will shrink. And of course California still has 2.7 million or more votes to count.

raizen2kids said...

[ tyler curtain ] said...
I hope that you don't mind this turning into a request line.

I would love to see an entry about the internals of the vote on Prop 8. Given the vociferous reaction to the passing of the proposition, I wonder if you would just talk about the numbers / margins / populations who voted.

Here's a breakdown, I received from a relative in CA (but I have no idea of the source of this info):

White (63%): 49% yes 51% no
African-American (10%): 70% yes 30% no
Latino (18%): 53% yes 47% no
Asian (6%): 49% yes 51% no
Other (3$): 51% yes 49% no

Prop 8 passed 52% to 48%. Ironically, the high black turnout may have helped to pass prop 8.

markymark said...

Obama had better strategy and the results show it. I think part of the Dems big advantage in the electoral college this year was the amount of states Kerry nearly won last time. This time the close states seem more evenly spread. Obama took a few states by not much, McCain won a few squeekers. What all that says to me is that Obama has a few interesting targets to aim at for the re-elect. (Missouri, Georgia, asa couple of examples).

The GOP are potentially in a lot of trouble already for 2012 I feel. They don't seem to have a particular consensus as to why they lost, and seem certain to go into a period of soul searching and introspection. Personally I think they NEED to get over the whole social conservatism thing and head back to a party based more on the principles of Goldwater and Buckley, although not maybe to that extent.

I think the Dems have moved some policy areas, especially social issues. Gun control and abortion didn't really play any part in this campaign, certainly not from the Democratic side. The platform saw some level of compromise, people like Bob Casey Jr seem more accepted in the party that hs father was in 1992. All of those things have to be positive.

Scott said...

McCain's plan of taking PA was a disaster not only in retrospect but in real time. I think they were packing up already anyway. In the Newsweek 7-part piece it was mentioned Davis and Schmidt were ready to tell McCain it was over on the eve of the 3rd debate. Wow.
btw I love you 538 and all the ground game coverage was beautiful. thanks

dingojoe said...

FWIW, St. Louis County came up with another 3000+ votes (not provisionals) and Obama won those by a margin of 699. Brings the margin down to 5100 or so. Probably not enough though.

Blame said...

At first glance it looks impressive. Obama alocated resorces so well he would have won even with up to a 2.8% deficit in popular vote. W

Had it happend like that it would have been revenge for 2000 in spades, or at least by a spade. lol.

I am not sure however that this is entirely reality based. Some states seem more volatile than others. The ones that moved most towards Obama probably were the ones that would have dumped him just as fast if the Gods hadn't favoured him.

It rather helped that the Gods had it in for McCain. "He who the Gods wish to destroy they first drive mad". Mission acomplished there. McCain chose Palin.

subcug - not even good enough to be a cug.

sfergus483 said...

--Prop 8 passed 52% to 48%. Ironically, the high black turnout may have helped to pass prop 8--

Let's kill this theme once again.

If you take all the black voters out of the prop 8 totals, it still would have passed (even if the exit polls with their huge MOE in a small subset are to be believed - the final poll which showed 8 losing by 5 points have blacks favoring it by 5).

And the INCREASE of turnout is even less of a reason - the turnout was higher, but a large majority of the black voters would have voted anyway.

The apparent black vote against 8 is saddening and an indication of work to be done, but it did NOT change the result. And even less did the increase of the turnout.

dingojoe said...

One last thing. Ohio's turnout still bugs me--and I'm not the conspiracy type. I do think some Midwest Republican voters chose not to show up, I also think some blue collar Dems in West PA, East OH, and WV chose to take a pass also. What I don't get is why turnout in Franklin (Columbus--Ohio State--a modest size A-A community) and Athens (Univ of Ohio) failed to match 2004. Maybe they still have votes to be posted, but I just can't find any place demographically equivalent to these areas that didn't beat 2004 turnout.

micah said...

If electoral votes are allocated proportionally by state, Obama wins 288-250. The states that don't tie or give exactly one extra vote to the winner:

Arkansas (2-4)
California (34-21)
DC (3-0)
Hawaii (3-1)
Idaho (1-3)
Illinois (13-8)
Maryland (6-4)
Massachusetts (8-4)
Michigan (10-7)
Minnesota (6-4)
New Jersey (9-6)
New York (19-12)
Pennsylvania (12-9)
Rhode Island (3-1)
Texas (15-19)
Wisconsin (6-4)

Andy JS said...

dingojoe:

Thanks for those latest figures. The networks don't seem to have picked up on the latest Virginia numbers that you quoted.

The absolute best-case scenario for Obama would be to hit 53.6%, (rounding up to 54%), a 7.6% lead (rounding up to 8%), 70 million votes, and a 10 million vote lead. It depends how the uncounted votes in California break. California voted 61% Obama so far; I'm not sure whether the uncounted ballots will be even better for Obama than that or not. It also depends exactly how many votes are left to count in this rest of the country. If a lot of states have some uncounted votes like California, there could be a few more million to come.

McCain's strategy to target PA was very ill-judged, when you consider that even New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Iowa had closer margins of victory for Obama.

Simon said...

"The site's "brand" is that the numbers stand on their own and are not manipulated to fit our hosts' political leanings (unlike some other sites that shall remain nameless)?

ooh! ooh! RCP! RCP!
am i right?

But seriously that guy that wrote that Sean should be dropped from the site is an idiot. I 2nd what Redshift said in his post.

Simon said...

and that should be a " not a ? at the end of the quote

Blame said...

Do not bench Sean.

Nate & Sean are the perfect team.

An understanding of a situation depends on two things.

First is knowledge of the quantafiable factors. That is Nate's area.

Second is a feal for all the unquantifiable factors. That was what Sean brought us on his tour.

I would argue that sean was every bit as unique as Nate. While other reporters vied against each other to print the slightest trivia on the main players only sean was out there telling us how the battle was being fought. Meanwhile ever other news source was happily detailing the number McCain officies as if they were functional.

infuzzle - a warm fuzzy feeling brought on by central heating, stale air and beer.

Andy JS said...

dingojoe:

I agree with your doubts about some of the Ohio results.

The turnout in Cuyahoga County, (Cleveland), was very odd as well. Despite having a large AA population, the number of Democrat votes fell from 448,503 to 441,636.

Also, the drop in turnout in Ohio involved BOTH the Dems and GOP losing votes, which is strange. I wonder whether there are any more votes to come from the state.

Redshift said...

raizen2kids:
Here's a breakdown, I received from a relative in CA (but I have no idea of the source of this info):

White (63%): 49% yes 51% no
African-American (10%): 70% yes 30% no
Latino (18%): 53% yes 47% no
Asian (6%): 49% yes 51% no
Other (3$): 51% yes 49% no

Prop 8 passed 52% to 48%. Ironically, the high black turnout may have helped to pass prop 8.


The source is a CNN exit poll of "randomly selected precincts." I'd recommend reading (and forwarding to your relative) Nate's post from a week ago about why you shouldn't trust exit polls.

Short version: African-Americans voted for Prop 8 at a higher rate than other groups, but they aren't 10% of the voting population of California. Even if none of them had voted for it, it still would have had enough votes to pass.

ogmb said...

If you accept Arkansas as Hillary's home state

I don't. Also, Clinton won Ohio, New Mexico and Pennsylvania, to name but a few, and we didn't see a loss of enthusiasm there. One explanation might be that Southern Arkansas experienced AA emigration after Katrina, which would match Southern Louisiana and Mississippi. But Northern LA and all of MS turned blue...

Robby said...

Scott

McCain's plan of taking PA was a disaster not only in retrospect but in real time. I think they were packing up already anyway. In the Newsweek 7-part piece it was mentioned Davis and Schmidt were ready to tell McCain it was over on the eve of the 3rd debate. Wow.

Actually, I think you've hit on the rational for the boneheaded PA strategy: the GOP knew McCain wasn't going to win, so they were looking at 2010 and beyond.

Of course, if it were me trying to build a party for the future, I'd be focused on young social moderates and Latinos, but if you're only thinking about short- to mid-term GOP house gains and a more favorable electoral map for 2012, a strong focus on central Pennsylvania isn't a bad idea.

(abilidg - Governor Palin's current name for the president of Iran.)

Glix said...

My thoughts on McCain's strategy was that he would put all the chips into PA while the Republican SoS's would purge enough voters from the swing states to eke out a win. For example: SoS Coffman in CO continued purging voter rolls even after the court told him to stop and as a result CO had a pretty large number of provisional ballots. If the margin had been closer, that could have changed the outcome. Some first time voters here also received the 'you can vote by phone' robocalls.

Robby said...

Micah-

Good work, but are assuming proportional allocation, like the Dem primaries, or are you assuming distribution by congressional district, which is what Nebraska and Maine does?

ogmb said...

Southern Arkansas is not predominantly A-A. Eastern Oklahoma is not predominantly Native American.

Census map

Blame said...

joel

"2012 won`t even be close. Either Obama will be a wildly popular president who led us out of a terrible situation and will be unbeatable or he would have been a failure and anyone the GOP puts up can probably beat him the way Reagan beat Carter.
My guess is Obama will be unbeatable and no legitimate republican with a future will bother to run"

So it's Palin 2012 ether way? Ouch!

prool - large garden feature for those with a love of swimming in prune juice.

ogmb said...

FWIW, St. Louis County came up with another 3000+ votes (not provisionals) and Obama won those by a margin of 699

Disappearing ballot boxes is a common problem in close elections when the key players all come from the same party. I wouldn't give up on Missouri just because election fraud cannot be tolerated. Not all elections will be as decisive as this one.

micah said...

Proportional allocation--that's what larrycowan was asking about.

I don't think we have the numbers to do Maine/Nebraska style allocation, at least not easily. At least, swingstateproject doesn't seem to know them...

Blame said...

Robby

"Of course, if it were me trying to build a party for the future, I'd be focused on young social moderates and Latinos, but if you're only thinking about short- to mid-term GOP house gains and a more favorable electoral map for 2012, a strong focus on central Pennsylvania isn't a bad idea."

Then again camping Palin in a state that is always going to stay Blue was an inspirational way of minimizing the lasting damage.

goingedi - going steady, but abreviated. Sort of like a one night stand that lasts all weekend,

northriver said...

I'm no math whiz, but I believe the following is important to clarify Nate Silver's astute observation:

When he says that Obama would have won even if 8.6% of his margin were eliminated in every state, that means that he would have still won if he'd received 4.3% less of the vote in each state -- assuming all of that 4.3% drop for Obama went into McCain's column, and not to a third-party candidate.

In other words, the actual "cushion" in terms of raw votes for Obama is half of the margin.

Still, 4.3% is a lot.

Or did I miss something? Check my math, y'all.

masbury said...

Some regard the fact that a candidate could win electorally but not popularly as a weakness of the system. But, as you hint, a wise candidate knows that it's ev that wins, and creates strategy to win in the states that will give it, conserving resources in the states that won't - at the expense of pv.
So the pv is really the least accurate measure. Obama probably could have run up the pv by, say, campaigning more heavily in states he would not carry (eg,Texas). But he was wise not to waste time doing so, even though not doing so could have made the popular vote closer.

MotherHoose said...

Friday updates....Can't wait till Monday!

Minnesota

Georgia 99% of precincts (33 uncounted?)

Alaska remaining to be counted -- 99% of precincts (4 uncounted?)

Missouri (difference is < 2 votes/precinct)

Are they counting during the weekend?

Bob X said...

sfergus483 said... "If you take all the black voters out of the prop 8 totals, it still would have passed"
Not according to raizen's figures. This is why I would like to see Nate do the numbers: because I do not entirely trust the early reports.

"even if the exit polls with their huge MOE in a small subset are to be believed - the final poll which showed 8 losing by 5 points have blacks favoring it by 5"
But there is a supersized "Bradley effect" whenever gay rights are on the ballot. In Michigan in 2004, we learned that 15% of the population will tell pollsters one thing and vote against us.

Prop. 8 really drained all the joy right out of election night for me: made me feel that I am no more welcome in Obama's America than I was in Bush's. I should have been more persistent about moving to Canada: why should I stay in a country where I will never be a citizen?

Edmund said...

The Republican cupboard is for the moment nearly bare but 2012 isn't in the bag yet -- remember, in 2004 hardly anyone outside of Illinois had heard of Barack Obama.

WV: "ingalin" -- where Sarah Palin thinks Elizabeth II is queen of

dingojoe said...

Oklahoma Census Map

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/maps/oklahoma_map.html

Arkansas Census Map

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/maps/arkansas_map.html

Click on any county for census numbers

A couple of Delta counties in Arkansas for A-A majorities, but once you get away from the Delta the A-A percentage drops into the 20s.

Several Eastern OK counties have sizable Native American minorities but by no means are they predominate.

bigdayqueen said...

I discovered this website in late August when I was looking for polling info to monitor the election trends. I got more than I asked for with great analysis of the stats and trends, incredible stories from around the country that made me laugh, cry and shout for joy and fabulous pictures of our beautiful country and ordinary citizens making a difference every day. I can't thank Nate, Sean and Brett enough for sharing their individual gifts with us.

tomthress said...

"I agree with your doubts about some of the Ohio results.

The turnout in Cuyahoga County, (Cleveland), was very odd as well. Despite having a large AA population, the number of Democrat votes fell from 448,503 to 441,636.

Also, the drop in turnout in Ohio involved BOTH the Dems and GOP losing votes, which is strange. I wonder whether there are any more votes to come from the state."

According to the Ohio Secretary of State's website, total election turnout was just over 5.6 million voters (http://vote.sos.state.oh.us/pls/enrpublic/f?p=130:11:0). On the other hand, they're showing something closer to 5.3 million votes for President (http://vote.sos.state.oh.us/pls/enrpublic/f?p=130:14:0).

So, I would guess that there are still 300,000 or so votes yet to be counted in Ohio.

(sorry for not knowing how to do HTML tags correctly)

STepper said...

I think Nate and Sean should move all of this, for history, to a new site - maybe www.threesixtyfive.com, and allow blogging of this election there, and reserve this site for the 2012 election.

Based on what we all know now, this will be the premiere site for that election, so Nate and Sean should start lining up the advertisers now. (Of course, assuming bHO does a good job, there wil be little suspense.)

Birchbeer said...

Of the states McCain did win, only 2 were close - Montana and (I guess) Missouri.

I think this suggests Obama's introductory thesis "We are not a blue America or a red America" is suspect.

Why? Why is Kansas so resistant to their grandson? Racial issues? Social conservatism? Someone explain Wyoming, Oklahoma, Alabama to me. I want to understand.

Beckee said...

@Matt,

Virginia-5 was called for Tom Perriello (yay!) but there will probably be a recount, since he won by just over 700 votes. Tom is a native Virginian, so Virgil Goode's claim that he is a New Yorker was absurd. Here's the story on Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2204124/

Sedi said...

"remember, in 2004 hardly anyone outside of Illinois had heard of Barack Obama"

Actually, by this time of year in 2004 anybody who watched the Democratic convention knew who Obama was. As soon as I heard that speech, I felt certain that he would be president someday. I wouldn't have guessed that it would be in 2008, but neither did his run surprise me.

Your larger point, though, is well taken. We don't know what the political landscape of 2012 will look like and who might emerge from the GOP ranks. If it is one of the current cast (Romney, Huckabee, Palin, Gingrich, Jindal, Pawlenty, etc.), I think they are in trouble.

judas_priest said...

regarding the analysis of the Measure 8 vote:

Let's assume that which is probably not true: That the exit poll had it right. African-American votera, constituting 10% of the electorate and swinging 70%-30% to Yes, generated a net of +4% for the measure, which is the margin by which it passed.

Given the huge uncertainty in the data this of course is but idle speculation, but the numbers are correct.

(.10*.40=.04=4%)

wv=rockl
term in Ameriddish (American style Yiddish) indicating the the speaker thinks that a particular diamond is rather small
OR a misprnunication of the Yiddish equivalent of Rachel. (It should be Rukhl)

Frank said...

Implicit in a number of the posts above is the question of just
how stable these gaps are. There seems to be a structural
advantage for the Democrats as long as they keep the latino and
urban/suburban votes. I am interested in views on how this
evolves.

My best guess:

Long-Term Blue:
It is hard to see any of the northeast or west coast going Republican.

Emerging Blue:
The mountain west is likely to continue its demographic trends that
are favorable to Dems and could become the next solid blue region
(environment, education, and immigration being hot button issues).

Blue to Pink:
The midwest is most likely to be economically driven although social
issues can swing portions of the region.

Neither:
States at the borders will continue to swing. But which states
are these? My guess is VA, OH, FL for now but VA might be replaced
with NC as the coastal population centers continue to grow southwise.

Red with a Twist:
The northern plains, Alaska, and Arizona are more libertarian
conservatives that are more socially moderate.

Long-term Red:
The south and Utah will vote social issues.

Andy JS said...

The results in North and South Dakota were relatively close in terms of actual votes, although obviously they only have small populations. McCain's margin of victory:

ND - 27,410 (8.68%)
SD - 32,133 (8.40%)

HAKKIN£N!!!!!!!!!!!!! said...

If Sarah Palin had posed for NUDE BEAVER SHOTS in Hustler, they might have won the election.

Smitty said...

I've been "addicted" to this site since late March. Standing in Grant Park Tuesday night among the campaign's "First Row" group, the two biggest surprises for me were Ohio and Indiana.

Just John said...

In 2012, CO and VA won't even technically be swing states (!!), so the only way the Republicans stand a chance in 4 years is by:

1. Hoping for Obama to be Carteresque in his dmoestic policy
2. Hoping for some Watergate-level scandal to hit Obama
3. Hoping Obama is not on the ticket
3. Running someone who severely cuts into Obama's lead with AA and Latino blocs.

Which is likelier?

Michael Zilber said...

Thank you, Nate and Sean, for feeding the numbers addiction and generally giving us comfort during the dark polling days following the Palin pick.

The vote margin cushion is astonishing. Obviously we should move to a national popular vote, but clearly the EV Dem lean was a nice safety margin (not that it was needed this year)

chmrjg said...

If you listen to Petraeus very carefully, he has hinted that he might be a Democrat. Don't assume just because he's a General that he would even run on the Republican ticket. He might surprise you.

WV: phoot: a doctorate in object oriented tablespoons

Victoria said...

Frank, one other state I could see becoming a swing state within the next ten years or so is Georgia, as its population is dominated by a growing urban area with a liberal core, and it's got a large (mostly non-Cuban) Hispanic population to boot.

As with other potential swing states with urban/rural splits (VA, NC, OH, and to a lesser extent PA and maybe IN?), one thing that will affect how "swingy" Georgia ultimately ends up is whether the suburbs as a whole are willing to consider any Democratic candidate. My understanding is that part of the reason Obama won Virginia is that the northern VA burbs went bluer; I think that would have to happen for any Democrat to win Georgia.

(Well, Zell Miller could do it, but......)

Assmole elect said...

Nate, this post demonstrates in a neat nutshell why your analysis should be an essential part of anyone's campaign for the White House in the future. When it comes to the Electoral College you know your tihs. Let's hope the system isn't changed for your sake.
In the meantime if only you would delete posts like the retarded Hakkin£n's which reflect poorly on your blog-moderating skills.

smitty, if you were visiting this site regularly there's no way Ohio could have been a surprise. Indiana was a tossup going into election night but Ohio was projected as 'likely Dem/Obama'.

justjohn, if you didn't predict Obama becoming president how can you say what will happen in four years? Will 'the AA and latino blocs' -as you describe them- be so 'bloc-like' in their voting if the economy hasn't improved in the next four years? Unlikely.

jonathan: 'Jindal won't do it'
What's he doing in Iowa then?!

To sum up: this election was a referendum on George Bush and the economy, the next one will be on Obama and the economy. Stupid.

Just John said...

a-e: you make my point, thank you. The next election WILL be a referendum on how Obama has managed the last four years, which means the R's have to hope he screws up somehow.

I never would have predicted an Obama win 4 years ago. I'm not Johntradamus. But I could have foreseen, two years ago, pretty confidently, that "Generic Democrat" was going to win this year. All Obama had to do was get in the vicinity of that, and he had it in the bag. Congratulations him.

Joe The Fake Virginian said...

As stated above, Colorado and Virginia are probably blue states in 2012 and going forward. This is because demographically, these states are becoming less caucasian and less socially conservative. As more and more states become minority-majority, it will be harder for the republican party to remain in its current form.

Davy said...

@dingojoe

"Southern Arkansas is not predominantly A-A. Eastern Oklahoma is not predominantly Native American."

I was going to give you the census smackdown but omgb beat me to it. Might want to check your facts a little better dude.

Smitty said...

Assmole elect said...

"smitty, if you were visiting this site regularly there's no way Ohio could have been a surprise. Indiana was a tossup going into election night but Ohio was projected as 'likely Dem/Obama'."

It's Ohio! Yes, I read all the comments here by Ohioans. Yes, I knew Nate's projection. I was raised in deep red...I did not trust the polls or, sadly, Nate's projection for the state.

coolstar said...

Glad to see Nate acknowledging that McCain's strategy of more or less abandoning NV,CO, and NM in favor of PA was a losing one. That should have been obvious from the start: it's just as hard to change 100,000 minds in PA where that is a small percentage of voters, as it is in NV, where it's 10! To my knowledge, this fact has never been mentioned with regard to the "polling error" in the NH democratic primary: when Hillary started selling her tears on E-bay she only needed 10,000 buyers to win the state handily. It's not all about the percentages, the absolute numbers matter also. Sometimes "small number statistics" really do matter!

sfergus483 said...

On PA:

I recommend to all reading Michael Sokolove's excellent article in the NY Times today. He kept in touch with 60 Clinton primary voters in Levittown, PA until after the election - they just about all went for Obama, even though few thought they would initially.

Bottom line - they got it. Some admitted they didn't think they could vote for a black candidate. Others thought initially he was a Muslim. But they sound like they really paid attention, and more than anything else. Obama's intelligence won them over.

justsomeguy said...

60 Minutes with Plouffe, Axelrod, Gibbs. Stunning.

This campaign really was Barack Hussein Obama's. The race speech was his. We have chosen well.

gibbonse10 said...

You'd think that the McCain campaign would've had someone doing the math for them. I had read about his people telling him a win wasn't likely before the third debate, but that they made a final decision to push for a win. I think that his best Hail Mary would've been to turn his campaign around completely and not be such an asshole. It wouldn't have worked, but he might've been able to finish the campaign with some dignity. I didn't think his concession speech undid the months of awful campaigning and namecalling.

Mo said...

This analysis is premature. Obama's net advantage will be higher when the super-blue west coast finishes counting approximately 4 million outstanding ballots.

Please revisit it in 2 weeks with updated numbers.

censutaghna said...

Interesting analysis Nate, and a bit surprising. Let me offer an opposing argument. I think that the GOP has an inherent advantage in the Electoral College because states with a low population density have a relatively high EV and most low population density states tend to be red states. Here's some data using (wikipedia's) state populations, their EV and how they voted:

the US as a whole:
EVs: 538 EV/Mperson: 1.78


Bush states:
EVs: 286 EV/Mperson: 1.80

Kerry states:
EVs: 253 EV/Mperson: 1.76


McCain states:
EVs: 174 EV/Mperson: 1.87

Obama states:
EVs: 364 EV/Mperson: 1.74


the reddest 269
(CO-.. in your list):
EVs: 269 EV/Mperson: 1.79

the bluest 269
(DC-IA in your list):
EVs: 269 EV/Mperson: 1.77



so, red states tend to have a higher EV/person, which to me is an advantage to the GOP.

I'm using total population instead of potential voters since I don't have any data in the latter, and I'm assuming that the voter:population ratio is the same for red states and blue states.

justsomeguy said...

I think his concession speech was nomore than he had to do. Future actins will determine his legacy from this debacle.

dingojoe said...

@Davy

Anyone you thinks Southern Arkansas is predominantly African American or that Eastern Oklahoma is predominantly Native American either doesn't know how to look at Census numbers or doesn't understand what the word predominant means.

Or you could look at Congressional Districts.

The Eastern Oklahoma Congressional District is CD2. It has a Native American population of 17.1% and a White Population of 71.1%

The Southern Arkansas Congressional District is CD4. It has an African-American population of 24.4% and a White Population of 71.1%

Therefore, both Eastern Oklahoma and Southern Arkansas are predominantly Southern White districts.

Matthew H said...

Minnesota

Georgia 99% of precincts (33 uncounted?)

Alaska remaining to be counted -- 99% of precincts (4 uncounted?)

Missouri (difference is < 2 votes/precinct)

Are they counting during the weekend?

November 9, 2008 4:18 PM


Still seems like the Georgia count is low, and Obama only lost there by 200,000 votes. I'm still holding out hope!

WV Solych: finding relief in that you're still alive to fight again. "Rick Davis was disappointed in the outcome, but he has solych in 2012"

ogmb said...

A couple of Delta counties in Arkansas for A-A majorities, but once you get away from the Delta the A-A percentage drops into the 20s.

Several Eastern OK counties have sizable Native American minorities but by no means are they predominate.


A-A is the most frequently self-reported ancestry in South AK, ditto for N-A in East OK. Whether their self-reported race is a minority or majority is secondary, what matters is that the ancestry map traces the redshift map quite closely. "American" & "Native" = redshift. Rest of the country = blueshift.

LaustinSpace said...

Nate, what about the Nebraska district that went for Obama? Doesn't that eliminate the possibility of a 269 tie in all other scenarios? If so, your point here is entirely academic.

micah said...

The Nebraska district is on that table; it's just at the bottom, because Obama didn't win it by very much.

In any case, the point of doing this kind of analysis is not to find ties, but to figure out how much overall popular sentiment would have to have shifted for Obama to lose. That's still perfectly possible no matter how the Nebraska district works.

rr said...

i don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but i punched the numbers and determined even though obama won the popular vote by nearly 8,000,000 votes, mccain only needed 800,000 votes to switch in the six states nate mentioned to tip the election his way. obama could have lost the election in the electoral college with a nearly five point lead in the popular vote.

micah said...

That's not actually saying all that much. In reality, anything McCain could have done to flip those 800,000 votes would have flipped a whole bunch of votes in some other states too.

I crunched the same numbers for the 1992 election (which is the other one I have a spreadsheet on hand for). You can flip it to Bush by changing about 290,000 votes in the right places. They're spread out over a lot more states, but that's just because Clinton's marginal states tended to be small, whereas Obama's were mostly medium-sized to large. And Clinton won (slightly) more electoral votes than Obama...

censutaghna said...

rr, Nate's argument is that if 4.3% of the voters switched their vote from Obama to McCain across all states, Obama would still have won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote; so probably there was an inherent bias towards Obama in the Electoral College, which is surprising; I always thought the opposite was true. It's a compelling argument, but what I don't like about it is that it uses only the margin of CO and IA as long as they're more than VA. If both IA & CO's margin was 5.6% then the flip % in Nate's argument will be 2.8% (instead of 4.3%) and that's not enough to lose the popular vote.

The 800,000 voters you mention are probably just in the 6 states needed to flip the EC. You can check what's the % of voters in the 6 states needed to flip and see whether the same % across all states would give the EC to McCain and the popular vote to Obama.

sarasotajoe said...

Eric said...
About 6 electoral votes will be moved over to the Red column due to the 2010 Census.

Hmmm. By red states, are you including NM, NV, CO, VA, and FL? I would bet that at least two or three of these have rising populations, but they are BLUE states now! NV went for Obama by 12.4 points. At the very least these are tossups now.

If New Englanders and New Yorkers keep moving to NV, CO, and FL, then they will only get more blue.

Nick said...

The reason that Obama has an inherent advantage in the electoral college could be that the Republican support is regional. They have very strong support in regions, but it's not enough to be meaningful elsewhere. They add to the popular vote, but they're "wasted" in the electoral college. But mostly, I think that it's reflective of solid strategy by the Obama camp.

The Democrats should definitely stick with the 50 State Strategy. Four years ago, Virginia, Indiana and North Carolina didn't look remotely close to turning blue. So stick with going after Georgia, the Dakotas, Montana and others. And remember that the Republicans will be trying their own 50 State Strategy to get them back.

I don't quite see Petraeus as a Democrat. He's called himself a Republican of the Bush Senior mold and didn't vote in the last election. Something about military influence, I think he was saying. I don't see him turning into a Republican candidate in 2012 either, but I guess we could get a Lincoln-McClellan dynamic between them.

Mr. X said...

The long, long odds for McCain to have won are, of course, acknowledged. However, it does not follow that the Pennsylvania strategy was nonsensical. To the contrary, it is precisely because a 10-percent swing nationwide *as things stood* would have been needed for McCain to win that his PA gambit was his only semi-realistic option. If he chose to make his stand in NV/NM/CO, he would still have had to run the table in the eastern swing states. This was not going to happen with the national numbers as bad as they were. His only hope was to completely change the landscape in a single state or two. PA at least offered the dim possibility of a surprise win by finding populist traction in the Pennsyltucky portion of the state. This would then allow him to lose as many as four other states (IA, NM, CO, VA) and still come up a national winner. It was a hail-mary, but then nothing less would have worked with prevailing conditions as bad as they were for him.

klutz said...

Brilliant Guys. You are giving us an intelligent instrument that will make the electoral and governing process more transparent- like good companies really...
I am fascinated with your use of math to show the various voting patterns. You should get into the schools and help kids to make a connection to using math practically- maybe a presentation or Lern video

Thanks
James

Wavedeform said...

sfergus483 - The trouble with Petraeus as a possible 2012 candidate, is that with stop-loss, he will probably still be serving in the armed forces.

distantcousin said...

Nice analysis, but all those declaring 2012 already over should remember that Bush I won in 1988 with over 400 EVs and still got thrashed 4 years later. Recession and taxes did for him. In this regard Obama has an advantage by coming in during a period of recession so economic expectations are very low, rather than high as they were in 1988. But he still has to make good on a number of important campaign pledges to be in a strong position going into 2012:
- reduce the middle class tax burden. Given the state of the public finances this could be a tough one, but he made a big deal of it in the campaign
- get the US out of recession. It will probably get worse before it gets better, but it's likely the economic and political cycles will combine for him better than they did for either Bush
- extricate the US from Iraq. This could well take longer than the 16 months he's promised, but it has to be in place before 2012 or he will lose a lot of votes especially among the young

There's also healthcare reform, but he didn't push this as hard as HRC and it's perceived to be difficult so I think he could get away without doing this in the first term if he achieves good results on the other main campaign pledges.

For an incumbent, I think the politics are a lot more important than the maths. If he achieves good results on most of the major campaign pledges he will be reelected, probably in a landslide. But if he comes back to the electorate with the economy still very weak, higher taxes, and the US military still in Iraq, he will be in big trouble.

memeboy said...

It would seem that the best places to put effort would be where the margin was the smallest, which would mean PA was better than NV or NM. [Of course, it is hard to tell what they all would have been with different effort.]

p smith said...

Franken is now just 201 behind. It keeps closing.

Incidentally for those talking about 2012, don't forget Arizona. But for the fact that it is McCain's home state, Obama would have won there too. 2012 is besides the point anyway. Unless Obama makes a complete mess of it, he will win at a canter in 2012 and no strong GOP candidate will step forward to take a beating. Remember, the GOP will not have racial scare tactics at their disposal next time because people will know Obama by his record rather than those lies.

I do however expect the GOP to recover somewhat in Congress if not by 2010 then certainly by 2012.

Gary Kilbride said...

Interesting thread, in theory. But in practice it's not a 1/1 relationship. You can't move the national percentage 8.6% without understanding the tidal shift in perception, allocation and emphasis.

If McCain were leading by 2% or similar in the national margin then he's perceived as the frontrunner and Obama is not wasting time in long-gone states like Indiana and North Carolina or Missouri. And McCain doesn't have to spend time and dollars attempting to salvage those states.

Instead, you have McCain surging into unfriendly turf like Iowa and Michigan and Minnesota and New Hampshire, etc., instead of abandoning them early, presumably improving his numbers there, as Obama undeniably did with late emphasis on states like Indiana and North Carolina and even Georgia and Montana. The entire perception and dynamic of the race changes, most notably in the media. It's not credible to freeze the November 3 variables in a vacuum and merely fiddle with the digits for purposes of simple conclusion. The entire early voting reality is dramatically altered, with Obama not piling up huge margins when his advantage was at apex. Most likely the GOP participation in early voting and on election day itself would have been given a boost.

This reminds me of advancement in horse racing analysis. Twenty or 30 years ago speed figures (Beyers) were taken as an absolute. You even had Andy Beyer making the nonsensical argument in his breakout book "Picking Winners" that there was no such thing as a killer pace, that the horse would finish with the same time and same positioning regardless of early strategy. Later that gave way to "trip handicapping," an analysis of Beyers in relation to what the horse encountered during the race. No way you can look at a racing outcome and merely shift the final margin 3 or 8 lengths, or whatever, and say Horse A had exactly this much margin for error. He got to the position where he finished based on critical variables within the race.

Besides, if the national margin moved 8.6%, or whatever, minus all the evolving differences I listed above, and nothing changed during the campaign other than the final margin, then the premise of this site and Pollster.com and others is long gone, i.e. that the vote is predictable based on polling.

Lorne Guyland said...

Nate,
You're the numbers genius, but this whole line of argument has always seemed hugely faulty to me.

The underlying assumption is that each state keeps the same marginal relation to the national polls at all times. I'd need to see a lot of evidence before I find that remotely plausible. It's completely counterintuitive. Sure, if you if subtracted 9.3 (really 9.2) points from Obama's margin in every state, you get a tie. But in this fantasy where Obama magically loses exactly 9.2 points nationally (say a video appears of him juggling cats in college), does cat-juggler Obama also lose exactly 9.2 points in DC, and Utah, and Iowa? Or, more likely, are the margins in the deep-red and deep-blue states much less elastic than the purple ones?

Maybe I need correcting on this, but this whole scenario only seems to work if opinion is equally elastic in each state, which frankly makes no sense at all. To my eye you've moved to a level of abastraction that borders on meaningless here -- in baseball terms, you've moved from actual analysis all the way past Strat-o-matic & you're closing in on flipping for baseball cards.

信次 said...

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平平 said...

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平平 said...

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艾葳酒店經紀公司提供專業的酒店經紀, 飯局小姐,領檯人員,領台,傳播妹,或者想要到台北酒店林森北路酒店,私人招待所,或者八大行業酒店PT,酒店公關,酒店兼職,想去酒店上班, 日式酒店,制服酒店,ktv酒店,禮服店,整天穿得水水漂漂的禮服酒店,鋼琴酒吧酒店領檯,酒店小姐,公關小姐??,還是想去制服店上班小姐,水水們如果想要擁有打工工作、晚上兼差工作兼差打工假日兼職兼職工作學生兼差兼差打工兼差日領工作晚上兼差工作酒店工作酒店上班酒店打工兼職兼差兼差工作酒店上班等,想了解酒店相關工作特種行業內容,想找打工假日兼職兼差打工、或晚班兼職想擁有快速賺錢又有保障的工作嗎???又可以現領請找專業又有保障的艾葳酒店經紀公司!

艾葳酒店經紀是合法的公司工作環境高雅時尚,無業績壓力,無脫秀無喝酒壓力,高層次會員制客源,工作輕鬆,可日領現領
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