posted
Well if ARG has the race down to a 13 point differential, it must be pretty much neck and neck.
Hard to acount for the difference in their numbers with everyone else's. From what I can tell, it's a 5 point game basically, with at least that much up for grabs in undecideds and nearly that much in the margin of error (though when you see Obama down by 5 in 10 polls, the margin looks less important). I think it's anyone's game right now, but I still think that Obama will lose tomorrow, probably by five to eight points. And I bet that Clinton narrows the delegate gap by maybe 20 delegates, and then the media will start looking at the next states to vote, North Carolina and Indiana, and will see the Obama holds an edge there in polling with two weeks to go.
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posted
The 5-8% estimate is reasonable. But even an 8% win wouldn't translate into 20 extra delegates.
If the delegates were apportioned smoothly 8% would translate into 14 delegates, according to CNN's delegate counter. But of course they aren't apportioned continuously--8% I think would work out to less than 14 delegates.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
It all depends on how the undecideds break. And based on the past few contests, my bet is they'll swing towards Hillary- particularly after Obama's had such a bad week in the press. I'm guessing Hillary takes PA by 10-15 points tomorrow. The new SUSA results make it so that I wouldn't be hugely surprised by a narrower margin, but it just doesn't seem to me like Obama's winning the PR war here, the way he did in Iowa. It feels more like Super Tuesday to me, when the final set of polls showed Obama closing in on (or breaking even with) Hillary in MA and CA, and the actual results came out closer to what polls were saying two weeks before, when Hillary was leading comfortably.
Another set of predictions, this time on the aftermath: if Obama can keep it within 5 points, he has a good shot at spinning it as a victory. Anywhere between 5-15 points, and Hillary will be perceived as the winner, but won't erode Obama's delegate advantage enough to maintain any new momentum in North Carolina or Indiana. If she manages to win by more than 15%, then God help us all... we're going all the way to the convention. Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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posted
Actually I think anything less than 10 and Obama could call it a minor victory or a tie.
But this is meaningless. ANYTHING she wins tomorrow will be wiped out in two weeks by IN and NC. We'll start June with the same margin we began March. Maybe even wider.
And I still don't think this goes to August. I'm reading more and more about there being a Superdelegate convention in mid June. I think the Supers will decide after Puerto Rico votes, there won't be any need to waste two months literally doing nothing because there are no more primaries to campaign in. If Dean has any sense left in that beady eyed little head of his, he'll fix this mess before August.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:t all depends on how the undecideds break. And based on the past few contests, my bet is they'll swing towards Hillary- particularly after Obama's had such a bad week in the press.
That might be a reasonable analysis if their hadn't been 4 months of primaries and over a month of campaigning nearly exclusively in PA. I think anyone who is still undecided is unlikely to make up their mind by tomorrow. They are either unwilling to reveal their preference to the pollsters or don't care enough to show up to vote tomorrow.
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posted
It's a reasonable analysis because every single poll has 5-10% as undecided. The fact is, plenty of people don't make up their minds until the morning of the election, regardless of how much campaigning has taken place. We saw this happen in New Hampshire, California, Massachusetts, and most recently, Ohio and Texas. All of those states got plenty of attention from both campaigns, and that didn't stop the undecided vote from pushing the results solidly to Clinton's side.
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posted
Tarrsk, New Hampshire, California and Massachusetts were all much earlier in the primary season so its more reasonable to believe people hadn't decided until the last minute. Even Texas and Ohio were over a month ago.
Even in those votes, there is no hard evidence that the differences between the polls and the actual votes was due to those who said they were undecided in the polls. The difference could simply be error in the polling.
Its also worth noting that while Clinton did win by a 10 point spread in Ohio, she only won the Texas primary by a 4 point spread and lost the Texas caucus by a 12 point spread. Not only did she not win Texas "solidly", she actually lost in terms of delegates.
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posted
Rabbit, I'm aware of all of those things. Big Obama supporter here, remember?
I would argue that Texas and Ohio are both excellent examples of the late-breaking voter phenomenon I'm talking about. Yes, Texas ended up handing more delegates to Obama, but that was purely due to its hybrid caucus/primary format, and is obviously not applicable to Pennsylvania. Ohio in particular was a situation very similar to Pennsylvania: a solidly Clinton state that had, for the few weeks prior to the primary, shown signs of an Obama gain. Most polls were predicting a very minor Clinton victory, at most. Many were calling it a tossup, and a few were actually predicting an Obama win. Sound familiar? But in the end, Hillary won by 10%, a big surprise to anyone who had been following the polls up to that point.
Also, "a month ago" (technically, six weeks) was really not that long ago. Primary voting had been going on for two solid months before that- to say nothing of a year's worth of campaigning before Iowa even occurred. In fact, most of the media narratives that could work in Obama's favor tomorrow (popular vote advantage, pledged delegate advantage) were just as salient on March 4 as they are today. The only new factors in play, in fact, are all losing propositions for Obama- the various manufactured controversies over Wright, the flag pin, "Bitter-gate," etc. As much as you or I might think that these issues are silly and irrelevant, the fact of the matter is that they've been the focus of media attention for the past few weeks, and all that adds up to a lot of negative publicity for Obama.
That being said, I could envision a few scenarios in which Obama does better than I predicted. Maybe the recent spate of media negativity against Obama backfires on Hillary the way perceived media slant against Hillary helped her in New Hampshire. Maybe turnout in Philly is surprisingly high. Maybe Pennsylvanian undecideds just decide they like the "skinny guy with a funny name" better. But my money's on a repeat of Ohio et al.
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quote: "I'm not predicting a win," he [Obama] said in a morning radio interview with KDKA-AM radio in Pittsburgh. "I'm predicting that it's going to be close and that we are going to do a lot better than people expect."
That's pretty confident, and goes counter to most expectation gaming we usually see.
I predict a Clinton win by 3-6%. Any more predictions?
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posted
I predict that Hillary will say she has a "mandate" from the Pennsylvania primary to continue her campaign regardless of the point spread.
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posted
Its interesting how much change their was in the Zogby poll over a 24 hour period even though there was no change in the undecided vote. I suspect the difference between the last two Zogby polls is sampling error.
Nonetheless, I will be surprised if Hillary doesn't win today's primary by at least a 5 point margin. However, she has to win all of the remaining campaigns by a 20 point margin to win the popular vote and the delegate count.
I think its interesting how both campaigns are trying to spin this as a win. Obama's campaign is saying they don't expect to win but emphasize that they have made significant gains. Clinton's campaign is claiming this is a must win situation for Obama to demonstrate he can win big states in the general election.
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quote:Originally posted by pooka: I predict that Hillary will say she has a "mandate" from the Pennsylvania primary to continue her campaign regardless of the point spread.
Well, not entirely "regardless of the point spread". In the unlikely evident that Obama wins the primary, she won't be making that claim.
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posted
I will be very, very happy if Clinton only wins by a 5 point margin. I'm betting that it'll be by as high as 12, though.
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quote:"I want to know the future," Pollster reader Fourth wrote yesterday. "Is that too much to ask?"
No, it's not. Unfortunately the challenge of selecting likely primary voters is what makes these pre-election polls blunt instruments as predictors. They can give us a general sense of where things stand, which way they are moving (when he movement is large) and guidance about what each candidate needs to do to maximize their support. But the problem involves too many unknown variables to try predict the outcome with precision.
The future will be here in about 12 hours. We will know soon enough.
posted
Clinton won in the strongly Republican TexasSenate districts, and in Ohio's strongly Republican USCongressional districts. There is virtually zero chance she won amongst the actual Democrat-leaning voters in those districts, or amongst actual swing voters. Clinton got hammered in the most Democratic districts. You will see the same voting pattern in Pennsylvania: McCain-supporters tossing Republican CongressionalDisticts to Clinton. And Obama posting strong wins in the Democratic CongressionalDistricts.
Which is why the Texas delegate count shifts evermore toward Obama at each stage: the McCain supporters ain't showing up at the follow-up caucuses in large enough numbers to boost Clinton's delegate count. And the Democrats are winnowing out the effect of McCain-supporting delegates in selecting the delegates to the next stage of the caucuses. By the end of Texas' StateConvention in June, such winnowing will increase Obama's lead in Texas delegates to outweigh any gain Clinton could get in Pennsylvania.
Which is also why Democratic superdelegates are breaking toward Obama. They are professionals at estimating how many voters should be voting in the Democratic primaries, and in reading the whos who are voting in which districts. The more districts McCain-supporters toss to Clinton, the more those superdelegates will act to counterbalance that Republican influence.
160thousand Republicans switched their party affiliation to Democrat for the PennsylvaniaPrimary: most of them after McCain effectively clinched the Republican nomination on February7. Since 5/8ths of those crossovers intend to vote for McCain in the GeneralElection after voting ("for" Clinton) against Obama in the PennsylvaniaPrimary, any "loss" by less than 100thousand votes is a win for Obama.
posted
Well I just back from voting. Looks like record turnout in my area of Philadelphia with the overwhelming majority for Obama. Not to surprising since my neighborhood is prominently African American. Hopefully as many people turn out for the election in Nov.
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posted
Obama volunteers signed up over 20,000 new voters in Philadelphia just before the voter registration deadline.
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posted
Has anyone heard anything new about the "street money" situation in PA? Did Obama's campaign stick with only volunteers to get out the vote or did it cave to local tradition and start paying?
At first when I read about that it sounded like a seedy "political machine" type of thing, but I'm not so sure it's ethically any different than paying for advertising and other campaign costs. Especially if volunteers are driving people to the polls, at least giving them some gas money makes sense if your campaign can afford to.
posted
It's a little after 1:30 pm in Pennsylvania. The website Eye on Gambling doesn't play by the same rules as the networks. They've interviewed 1000 people across the state who have voted and have early results.
Of course, we don't know anything about their sampling methods, or if this takes takes into account the patterns of voting for different groups regarding early vs. late votes.
Edit to add: The EOG results indicate Clinton has a ten-point lead. But I have no idea if this relates at all to the final outcome and they probably don't either.
posted
Well, nothing would motivate accuracy for me like knowing a bunch of guys with names like Vito will be mad at me if I steer them wrong.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Meanwhile, "Wild Bill Clinton" is really outdoing himself - and that's saying something. Interviewed on WHYY radio, he accused Obama of playing the race card when asked about his "Jesse Jackson" comments in South Carolina.
Today, when asked about this by another reporter, he denied every saying that. Here's the ABC account:
quote:Revisionism In Record Time April 22, 2008 12:25 PM
It's pretty straightforward.
On WHYY radio, former President Bill Clinton was asked about a Philadelphia official who took offense at his comparing Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, to Rev. Jesse Jackson, thinking it an attempt to marginalize Obama as "the black candidate."
Clinton was asked: "Do you think that was a mistake, and would you do that again?"
"No," he responded. "I think that they played the race card on me. And we now know, from memos from the campaign and everything, that they planned to do it along."
Today in Pittsburgh, Clinton was asked what he meant by saying the Obama campaign was playing the race card on him.
“When did I say that, and to whom did I say that?” Clinton asked, per ABC News' Sarah Amos.
“On WHYY radio yesterday," he was told by an NBC/National Journal reporter.
“No, no, no," Clinton said. "That’s not what I said. You always follow me around and play these little games, and I’m not going to play your games today. This is a day about election day. Go back and see what the question was, and what my answer was. You have mischaracterized it to get another cheap story to divert the American people from the real urgent issues before us, and I choose not to play your game today. Have a nice day.”
Huh?
That's exactly what he said.
"I said what I said," Clinton said. "You can go back and look at the interview and if you will be real honest you will also report what the question was and what the answer was. But I'm not helping you."
posted
The number of gaffes that fly from Bill Clinton's mouths is truly staggering. Was he this bad a campaigner in the 90's?
I'm still sticking with an optimistic 5-8 point win for Clinton, but, 10-15 I guess isn't out of the question if you take into account the Republican voters trying to screw with the process. I don't see it being more than 15 though, I'd rule that out. And then there's the fleeting, pie in the sky hope that Obama could win by a couple hundred votes.
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posted
I like CNN's new results page. They list the results, but now they have a county by county map where you can wave your arrow over the county and get individual results. Very cool.
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posted
Some of those comments were bizarre, like the one about Obama supposedly doing gansta gestures after the debate? It looked to me like he was just brushing off his shoulder. I suppose he did gesture signifying that Hillary was twisting a knife into him. But it didn't seem like any kind of peculiar gangsta flipping to me.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
So canvassing the past few days I've come across a lot of people who are still undecided. Here are the commonly asked questions or issues i get from them:
1)I'm not sure how to feel about Obama being a Muslim 2)I just like Bill Clinton so much 3)I like Obama but it'd be really great to have a woman president 4)I got a call saying that Obama supported partial birth abortions
posted
Yeah, none of the gestures seemed the least bit "gangsta" to me. The twisting the knife thing is pretty universal as is the brushing off gesture.
And there was certainly nothing threatening about the twisting the knife gesture since it was very clear that he meant Hillary was enjoying twisting the knife.
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posted
The brushing shoulder is a reference to JayZ (?), a rapster according to the press. Also, did you hear that he gave Hillary the finger? Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
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posted
From a New York Times article about young people going for Obama and old people going for Clinton:
quote:“Barack Obama has no experience and no plans. He just works on emotions, and this is why young people like him,” said Kimberly Romm, 44, who is self-employed and heard Mrs. Clinton speak at Haverford College. “People who are more mature analyze things. They’re wiser.”
Oh yeah, old people are wise and mature with their analysis. Which is why that voter had no clue about Obama's multitude of plans. He has a 64 page .pdf posted on his website listing details about all his plans! It's his Blueprint for Change.
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posted
Brushing your shoulders off in the way that Obama describes it far predates Jay-Z's "Dirt Off Your Shoulder."
He's saying get up, brush yourself off, and get back to business. Gangsta rap doesn't have a copyright on the phrase or the gesture, and it wouldn't have come up if he wasn't black.
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: The brushing shoulder is a reference to JayZ (?), a rapster according to the press. Also, did you hear that he gave Hillary the finger?
I've never seen not heard this rapster and yet I understood the gesture. Its been around a lot longer than JayZ. So while Obama may have been reference this guy, I kind of doubt it. He followed it with a gesture of scrubbing his foot on the ground like you would if you'd just stepped in something foul.
Ask yourself this, If JayZ had never been born, would you have recognized what those gestures meant?
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Brushing your shoulders off in the way that Obama describes it far predates Jay-Z's "Dirt Off Your Shoulder."
He's saying get up, brush yourself off, and get back to business. Gangsta rap doesn't have a copyright on the phrase or the gesture, and it wouldn't have come up if he wasn't black.
Exactly. This was hardly "the moon walk", they were just widely recognized gestures.
I also looked at the clip where its claimed he "made a one fingered gesture". It looks an awful lot more like he's scratching his face to me than that he is making any sort of gesture.
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posted
But referencing Jay-Z is so much more fun then just admitting it is a normal gesture used by both black and white folk. And it also allowed for a fun daily show segment about the secret black code of gestures. (I'm flipping you off right now")
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posted
It's a sign of how utterly ridiculous the TV pundits are. They've nothing of value to add, so they're grasping at straws.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by scholarette: But referencing Jay-Z is so much more fun then just admitting it is a normal gesture used by both black and white folk. And it also allowed for a fun daily show segment about the secret black code of gestures. (I'm flipping you off right now")
Sounds hilarious. I wonder if I can find it on line.
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posted
Probably. www.thedailyshow.com has all of the episodes of the show available within a day or so of their being broadcast.
It's kind of annoying, though--their clips invariably cut off the last second or two of what was actually broadcast, which means that a lot of punchlines get lost.
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posted
The 18-44 crowd made up only 27% of the total vote. 60+ was 38%. Those are bad, BAD numbers for Obama. Add to that the 42/58 male/female split, and I think the exit polling alone shows he has an uphill battle before the votes are even counted.
Exit polls also show that undecideds in the last week broke for Clinton, but that Obama has an overwhelming majority of the newly registered voters.
He REALLY has to run up the votes in Philly and the surrounding burbs if he has a hope of making this a tight race.
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posted
Hillary is ahead in every larger category of exit polled voters (female, older, white) but we'll see. Obama's support will be concentrated in cities and university areas, which are likelier to report late.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
JLM's reaction to select paragraphs in "blueprint for change"
quote: Universal Coverage Obama will sign a universal health care plan into law by the end of his first term in office. His plan will provide affordable, quality health care coverage for every American.
Reduce Health Care Costs Obama’s plan will bring down the cost of health care and reduce a typical family’s premiums by as much as $2,500 per year.
Reduce healthcare costs by creating a bloated goverment run healthcare system that will raise taxes?
quote:Trade Obama believes that trade with foreign nations should strengthen the American economy and create more American jobs. He will stand firm against agreements that undermine our economic security.
Labor Obama will strengthen the ability of workers to organize unions. He will fight for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. Obama will ensure that his labor appointees support workers’ rights and will work to ban the permanent replacement of striking workers. Obama will also increase the minimum wage and index it to inflation to ensure it rises every year.
Hasn't he figured out that the high cost of UNION labor is what is driving out these jobs. Non-union labor jobs are flouishing, and most of the people that work these jobs are quite content.
quote:Reform No Child Left Behind Obama believes that the goal of No Child Left Behind was the right one, but that it was written and implemented poorly and it has demoralized our educators and broken its promise to our children. Obama will fund No Child Left Behind and improve its assessments and accountability systems.
Improve K-12 Obama will improve our schools by recruiting well-qualified teachers to every classroom in America. Obama will improve teacher compensation by rewarding expert, accomplished teachers for taking on challenging assignments and helping teachers succeed. Obama also will reduce the high school dropout rate and close the achievement gap by investing in proven intervention strategies in the middle grades and in summer learning and afterschool opportunities.
Unless he can pull a rabbit out of his hat and pay for these teachers, I'm not counting on this one. Besides I thought to draw of teaching was not having to work for 3 months of the year.
quote:Invest in a Clean Energy Future Invest $150 Billion over 10 Years in Clean Energy: Obama will invest $150 billion over 10 years to advance the next generation of biofuels and fuel infrastructure, accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids, promote development of commercial-scale renewable energy, invest in low-emissions coal plants, and begin the transition to a new digital electricity grid. A principal focus of this fund will be to ensure that technologies that are developed in the U.S. are rapidly commercialized in the U.S. and deployed around the globe. Double Energy Research and Development Funding: Obama will double science and research funding for clean energy projects including those that make use of our biomass, solar and wind resources.
Sure, lets waste billions of dollars on inefficient, high cost technologies when we already have a non polluting, highly efficient, PROVEN energy production technology. It's called NUCLEAR POWER.
quote: Reverse Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy: Obama will protect tax cuts for poor and middle class families, but he will reverse most of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers.
Even though we are living paycheck to paycheck, many liberals consider me to be "wealthy". No, I'm a Californian.
quote:Create Secure Borders Obama wants to preserve the integrity of our borders. He supports additional personnel, infrastructure and technology on the border and at our ports of entry. Improve Our Immigration System Obama believes we must fix the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy and increase the number of legal immigrants to keep families together and meet the demand for jobs that employers cannot fill. Remove Incentives to Enter Illegally Obama will remove incentives to enter the country illegally by cracking down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants. Bring People Out of the Shadows Obama supports a system that allows undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens. Work with Mexico Obama believes we need to do more to promote economic development in Mexico to decrease illegal immigration.
Hey, wasn't this Bush's plan? Thief!!
quote:Increase Affordable Housing Obama will increase the supply of affordable housing across the U.S.
Isn't part of the current housing crisis problem due to oversupply?
quote:21st Century Military Obama will give the finest military in the world the support it needs to face the threats of the 21st century. He will expand our ground forces, develop new capabilities, and restore the trust between the commander in chief and those who serve.
Missils! WE need more missils! (Guess what I work with.)
Actually, I'd say about 50% of his platform aligns pretty closely with G.W.'s. The rest of it is making promises on things that will be completly out of his control. Oh, well. I can apprecieate his ideals, but his plans to impliment them make me laugh.
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Unless he can pull a rabbit out of his hat and pay for these teachers, I'm not counting on this one. Besides I thought to draw of teaching was not having to work for 3 months of the year.
