quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Yes, we've established your perverted lust for oxidants before. I don't think we need to have that conversation again-some people are just finishing dinner, and those who aren't probably hope to eat sometime in the future without knowing about your appreciation for those...things.
What I want to know is why you dislike people who don't sign on for your sins of oxidancy.
I blame culture. I was born and raised in the Rust Belt.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Rasmussen, which polls likely voters (a much more reliable gauge than registered voters) is saying currently on their website that Romney leads Obama nationwide by three percentage points:
quote:The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows Mitt Romney attracting support from 48% of voters nationwide, while President Obama earns 45% of the vote. Two percent (2%) prefer some other candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided. See daily tracking history.
The recent numbers may have been impacted by a number of factors. Clearly, one is the fading of the president’s convention bounce. Last week, Scott Rasmussen anticipated this fade by noting that the conventions would have no lasting impact on the race.
The polls that put Obama up over Romney usually poll registered voters, not likely voters, and there is evidence many of them over-sample democrats, because their sampling is done based on the questionable and biased assumption that there are more Democrats than Republicans among voters.
Rasmussen also has Romney and Obama separated by only one or two points in key battleground states such as Ohio (47% to 46%).
Rasmussen reports that 50% have more confidence in Romney on the economy, while only 43% have more confidence in Obama.
Voters surveyed trust the president more on national security issues, but only by a 3% margin, 46% to 43%. It will be interesting to see how the polls on this change as the dramatic collapse of the president's foreign policy in the Middle East impacts voters.
posted
Really. Other polls showing Obama ahead right now aren't polling likely voters, eh? Even your beloved Fox News poll (of likely voters) shows Obama ahead. But I suppose this is par for your course: if you get results you don't like, pretend they don't exist and search elsewhere. Even if they're from sources you usually credit highly. Even if your stated preference for looking elsewhere isn't actually applicable.
We're getting closer and closer every day, Ron, to yet another of your predictions being proven badly, comically, predictably wrong. The one about landslides. I'm frankly looking forward to the election for that and other reasons, but that one will be some icing:)
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
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Notice how conservatives when trying to state what they think is a fact (facts are things that are real in an objective sort of way)?
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As for the profoundly stupid cartoon you linked to, Ron, I'd be interested to hear which of America's foreign policy successes wasn't achieved by a well mixed blend of diplomacy and force. They had, what was his name, Pinkering? HW Bush's Ambassador to the UN on NPR yesterday discussing that very point, not a likely Obama supporter.
Even prominent, respectable Republicans think your guy has behaved foolishly on this matter. But don't worry, Ron! You can as usual pretend that whatever you don't like simply doesn't exist.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Or Rasmussen hasn't quite figured out how to account for the fact that they don't poll cellphones. When all you call is landlines, something more and more young people are abandoning, it gets tricky to get an accurate sense of the electorate. So Rasmussen is relying on landline users (which reflect an aging part of the population, one more likely to vote Republican) and online polls in the hopes it will approximate reality.
Plain and simply, it's more expensive to poll cellphones due to various regulations. Pollsters better figure it out quickly, because the voters aren't where the pollsters are calling anymore.
Say, what happened to that big convention bounce, Ron? I've seen suggestions that Republicans were already fired up before the convention so a big bounce wouldn't be expected. But I'd appreciate hearing you comment on the fact that you predicted a big bounce for Romney which clearly has not happened. I'd appreciate hearing you comment, ever, on anything you predicted incorrectly or said that was lately disproven. You know, ever.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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The closest he came to that was by claiming he didn't predict a big convention bounce, he only posted what other sources had reported.
That's a lie, of course-he posted other predictions of a big bounce, and enthusiastically agreed with those predictions. And even that cringing, sideways scuttle towards the truth (something of a real pioneering trip for Ron!) had to be dragged out of him by at least half a dozen repetitions for an admission.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Rasmussen, which polls likely voters (a much more reliable gauge than registered voters) is saying currently on their website that Romney leads Obama nationwide by three percentage points:
quote: Rasmussen's polls were the least accurate of the major pollsters in 2010, having an average error of 5.8 points and a pro-Republican bias of 3.9
Sounds about right.
Hey Ron, do you want to answer my question about the republican convention bounce yet? You've run away from it each time.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Parks: "You knew Ron would be in the thread the instant someone directed to any poll ANYWHERE that showed Romney ahead"
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Samprimary, I've already answered your question about the Republican Convention bounce. I said that what I reported was what some commentators on FNC said, and it is apparent that they were actually talking about a percentage increase in Twitter activity following the speeches by Ann Romney, etc. As I noted, it is obvious that results of regular polls are not available only a few hours after a speech.
As for the relative "inaccuracy" of the Rasmussen polls, have you forgotten that in 2010 Republicans swamped Democrats nationwide, and took over control of the House, and came close to taking control of the Senate? This was in line with what Rasmussen was predicting. Expecially in special elections to replace candidates who for one reason or another had to be replaced before the regular elections, the Republican candidates won consistently, especially the ones supported by the Tea Party--which is when Democrats developed their present desperate fear of the Tea Party.
Please note that I not only claimed Rasmussen's polls are more accurate, I explained why. I also explained why other polls put Obama a few points ahead--because they oversample Democrats because of faulty and biased assumptions about what percentage of the general electorate is Democrat. Feel free to dispute this if you can.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Nate Silver, who has his finger closer to the pulse of the American electorate than any one else I've ever seen, leans towards the general understanding that most people identify as Republicans than Democrats. And yet Silver routinely assails Rasmussen as having a rather large and inaccurate Republican bias.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:As for the relative "inaccuracy" of the Rasmussen polls, have you forgotten that in 2010 Republicans swamped Democrats nationwide, and took over control of the House, and came close to taking control of the Senate? This was in line with what Rasmussen was predicting. Expecially in special elections to replace candidates who for one reason or another had to be replaced before the regular elections, the Republican candidates won consistently, especially the ones supported by the Tea Party--which is when Democrats developed their present desperate fear of the Tea Party.
The claim isn't that Rasmussen is wrong as that's not how polling works. As a polster you aren't "right" or "wrong", you're just further or closer to an accurate representation of the relevant population. Rasmussen has a bias toward Republicans that shift's their results to the right of reality.
So if Rasmussen says the Republicans are up by 10%, then the actual numbers (reflected in votes counted during the election) is probably more in the range of 4%-6%. Rasmussen picking a winner isn't nearly as relevant here as the margin by which they predicted the win would occur. I'm not going to take the time right now to review all of the 2010 polls, but I'd be very unsurprised to find that Nate Silver had predicted the same wins that Rasmussen did, but with less deviation from actual voting margins.
In a very close race these biases of a few points make all the diference so Rasmussen is not the best source to go to if you've got a dead heat or close to it.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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Please note that I not only claimed Rasmussen's polls are more accurate, I explained why. I also explained why other polls put Obama a few points ahead--because they oversample Democrats because of faulty and biased assumptions about what percentage of the general electorate is Democrat. Feel free to dispute this if you can.
This is not the way national polling works. They don't start with a specific number of democrats and republicans and ask them how they'll vote. They don't have assumptions about how many democrats there are. There are polls that do have these assumptions, but not polls purporting to represent likely election outcomes.
Besides, there are very reliable figures on how many democrats there are. We are registered.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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What MattP said. To grade a poll as thoroughly reliable because it picked a winner is...exactly the sort of prediction-grading I would expect out of Ron, actually, now that I think about it.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Samprimary, I've already answered your question about the Republican Convention bounce. I said that what I reported was what some commentators on FNC said, and it is apparent that they were actually talking about a percentage increase in Twitter activity following the speeches by Ann Romney, etc. As I noted, it is obvious that results of regular polls are not available only a few hours after a speech.
The question was "Do you even know what the bounce ended up being? What was the bounce percentage?"
you haven't answered it at all. I am amazed you think you have. it is a pretty simple question.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Ron, the news during the RNC was constantly talking about the post-convention "bounce" and not one of them were talking about twitter accounts. They thought there would be a percent bounce in the polls after the convention.
IRL, this may be the first convention that had no bounce at all. In fact, they LOST a percent according to Gallup, the people who actually DO the polling.
It looked like he was going to get about a 1% bounce, which is about the norm, but in fact he lost a percent post-convention.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Nuh-uh. Landslide, it's gonna be a landslide for Mittens. And if it ain't, Obama voters hate America.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Watching Ron be surprisingly incapable of even understanding what my question was — even when repeatedly restated in absolutely clear terms
... or show any indication that he even understands that he has not at all answered my question even when repeatedly asked...
... provides some insight into the mechanisms of Ron's outlier case of a mismatch between confidence in his own interpretations (complete) versus their actual real world performance in terms of either predictive power or demonstrable truth (extremely poor) — his brain has some kind of outlier tendency to be completely and reflexively unwilling and unable to confront where his predictions go awry.
Another person would be able to see where their anticipation of the convention bump for the RNC meets the reality, whereas Ron has only a mechanism to not see it — to afterwards reflexively decide through some dissociative potential that he must only have been thinking of or listening to people talk about twitter talk trends, or something. At that point you can't even ask him what the convention bounce ended up being.
The very question, no matter how simply put, just bounces off his brain before it can reach a point that causes him to confront a mismatch between his apprehension of his abilities and the reality of his predictions. He doesn't allow himself that. He is a walking engine of cognitive dissonance and dunning-kruger.
God this psychoanalysis armchair is comfortable let me tell you
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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A regular Republican versus Democrat election is so close. But Mitt isn't energizing his base. He's saying a lot of dumb things. And Obama will sweep the Dems, the gays, the blacks, and probably a fair chunk of the independents. His power comes in that non-voters will turn up in droves (including the youth vote). This effect isn't reflected in the polls.
Anyone that thinks Mitt has a chance is deluded. He stands a worse chance than Kerry did. It's like the Utes / BYU game. Sure, you want your team to win. But don't bet the farm on it like an idiot.
Posts: 1204 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Anyone that thinks Mitt has a chance is deluded.
I am not going to call the election certifiably concluded, but with this recent round of knells for Romney and his frankly bizarre campaign — as well as the telltale raising of dissension in the ranks — it has at least become boring. Essentially, this is Obama's race. Unless Obama is forced to endure an election disaster that works out specifically in Mitt's favor, Obama wins. That's it.
So it's not really interesting anymore. All you have left are the senate races to care about.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I think she just means that at the time she thought Bush was so horrifically bad and so hated that there was no way the American people could be stupid enough to re-elect him. But then they did, so that was a rude awakening, and she doesn't want to be complacent in that way again. No matter how insanely evil and machiavellian and unpopular the Republican candidate seems to be and no matter how many unicorns the Democratic candidate has in his stable.
I think. I'm not Kate, so I may have misread her. She'll correct me if I did. Posts: 3580 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Blayne Bradley
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Bush is only less terrible and easier to swallow in hindsight (domestically that is) if you think of it in terms of under Bush there was far less regression on progressive issues like Social Security then there is/was under Obama in the name of compromise.
And maybe in foreign policy as well if you consider the assassination of American citizens to be bad. I feel like as if the Imperial Presidency has been expanded far more decisively and systematically under Obama than the more furtive efforts under Bush and Cheney.
Maybe there was cause to be thankful for the relative incompetence in the executive branch as opposed to the far more capable administration in office, doesn't help that the GOP aren't doing their jobs.
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quote:No matter how insanely evil and machiavellian and unpopular the Republican candidate seems to be and no matter how many unicorns the Democratic candidate has in his stable.
Well, let's be fair, Dan: how many unicorns would Obama have to have before you'd vote for him?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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For me, I'd need proof that he had 11 unicorns. Then I'd vote for him. Ah, who am I kidding. I'm not voting for president this year.
Posts: 258 | Registered: Jul 2006
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It's a little amusing reading about Romney's "screw-ups" that are going to surely doom him at the same time I watch the 538 prediction model plunging Obama's chances.
I know its mostly just correcting from an inflated post-convention bounce, but still, I'm not sure that anything short of a full scale scandal is really going to hurt Romney's chances any. He's still going to be "Not-Obama", and that seems to be the entirety of his support.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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Blayne Bradley
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Which are comfortably still above 70%?
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That isn't very comfortable to me. If you have a roulette wheel with 3 red squares and 7 black, I'm not at all comfortable saying "Surely it will land on black" when I spin the wheel.
More to the point, if these blunders are truly damaging to Romney, why are the polls going in the wrong direction?
There could be valid answers for this (not enough time for them to show up, etc), but its still amusing to me.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Xavier: That isn't very comfortable to me. If you have a roulette wheel with 3 red squares and 7 black, I'm not at all comfortable saying "Surely it will land on black" when I spin the wheel.
Sure. But anybody with about $100 could work those odds and come out a wealthy man.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Not if you only get one spin. You're probably going to win, but there's also a fair chance you lose your whole stack.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Xavier: More to the point, if these blunders are truly damaging to Romney, why are the polls going in the wrong direction?
There could be valid answers for this (not enough time for them to show up, etc), but its still amusing to me.
"not enough time for them to show up" is actually pretty much exactly right. The polls are actually, for the most part, following a trend pretty typical of the ratcheting back of convention periods. But if you want some crude "what if the election was held today" results factoring in everything that has had time to filter into the data (which, should be noted, doesn't include romney's leaked video or his rushed press conference defense), you can click on 'nowcast' and take a look at Romney's hypothetical numbers.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Xavier: Not if you only get one spin. You're probably going to win, but there's also a fair chance you lose your whole stack.
Well yeah, if you only get one spin. I'd still take those odds on general principle.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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There Will Be A Democratic President by this time Next Year. according to Governor Romney.
We have 2 choices.
Choice A) President Obama gets re-elected. He is a Democrat.
Choice B) Governor Romney gets elected. One of the first things he has promised to do is remove the Capital Gains Tax, and all taxes on Investments. This will put his Income Tax burden to 0. Having an income tax of 0 puts him in the 47% of Americans who pay no income tax. According to Governor Romney, that 47% is defiantly and self-victimized as unalterably Democratic. Hence Romney will become a Democrat.
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Well, I don't think he explicitly called them democrats. He's just saying that if hypothetically he removes himself from paying income tax he's one of those people who will vote for Obama no matter what.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: Another person would be able to see where their anticipation of the convention bump for the RNC meets the reality, whereas Ron has only a mechanism to not see it — to afterwards reflexively decide through some dissociative potential that he must only have been thinking of or listening to people talk about twitter talk trends, or something. At that point you can't even ask him what the convention bounce ended up being.
The very question, no matter how simply put, just bounces off his brain before it can reach a point that causes him to confront a mismatch between his apprehension of his abilities and the reality of his predictions. He doesn't allow himself that. He is a walking engine of cognitive dissonance and dunning-kruger.
God this psychoanalysis armchair is comfortable let me tell you
OSC wrote about this phenomenon in Xenocide. Specifically, he described the Hive Queen as being incapable of promise keeping, because new decisions bred a different reality in her mind. Everything that she had thought before or promised or decided before became immaterial, and she could not be held accountable for promises made- even understanding that a prediction of events existed, or that a particular decision had been reached in the past. She believes completely in the present reality, and is unable to recall being wrong.
So I'm saying, maybe Ron is a Hive Queen?
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Rasmussen is even pretty known for republican overvaluation and relies on robocall data which is pretty dated and (i think) loses out on the landlineless likely voters.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:I would like to take this chance to remind everyone that earlier this year Mitt Romney was pretty unanimously considered the strongest candidate in the Republican field — by a large margin. He was, without much question, the most electable of the primary bunch and the toughest opponent for Barack Obama. He was disciplined, well-funded, and had a moderate background that appealed to independents. He was, in short, the very best the Republicans had to offer in the year 2012.
This was not a fantasy, either. It was an accurate assessment. Romney was the best they had. The very best.
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I actually took it as a good sign for Obama that it seemed to me that a lot of potential candidates were planning on waiting for 2016. There has been a lot of talk about how this election was a "gimme" or "slam dunk" for them, but I think behind closed doors they did not want to be the ones running against Obama.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I hold Mother Jones responsible for torpedoing the last leg off the already ailing Romney campaign.
Now there's a rag that's likely to be read by undecided and independent voters.
It doesn't matter whether they read Mother Jones or note. Everyone who follows politics knows about the videos they released, or has at least come across Romney's quotes. What major news organization *didn't* cover this story?
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: I hold Mother Jones responsible for torpedoing the last leg off the already ailing Romney campaign.
Now there's a rag that's likely to be read by undecided and independent voters.
It doesn't matter whether they read Mother Jones or note. Everyone who follows politics knows about the videos they released, or has at least come across Romney's quotes. What major news organization *didn't* cover this story?
Oh I see, because they got the Romney 47% comment? I forgot that they first broke the story.
Oops!
So yeah, because of that I totally misread Sam's comment as being about their articles and readership. But that was the "twisting the knife" part. I get it now.
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