Daffy GOP May Have Finally Gone Too Looney Tunes for America

Last week things in our reality-based centrist country seemed to reach a tipping point as John Boehner and the House of Representatives nearly let the government of the United States go over a cliff because the conservative Tea Party refused to negotiate over the repeal of Obamacare. Never mind that it was impossible to repeal Obamacare, which has nothing to do with the budget anyway. Reality means nothing to orange technicolor cartoon characters like Boehner. If the Koch Brothers or the Tea Party say "Beep Beep" he will jump right over a cliff, no problem.





This time Boehner didn't even have the Acme Tunnel Art Set to paint a get-away for himself on the rocks. In fact, he acted the part of Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius, so convincingly he nearly killed his own Party in a puff of dust at the bottom of the canyon. The "box canyon" that is - the dead end where he and the Tea Party found themselves when Obama refused to negotiate with cartoonish terrorists who don't live in the real world.



People have been predicting the end of the Tea Party since it began. It all started back in 2008 when Sarah Palin appeared on the scene as a Vice Presidential candidate, giving speeches peppered with bizarre metaphors about Musk Oxen and talking about about "Real Americans" (herself and dog-sledding hunter-husband Todd) versus the rest of the country. Her followers, who also considered themselves "Reel 'Mericans" were a mixture of tax-hating Libertarians waving serpentine "Don't Tread on Me" flags, white racists carrying Curious George dolls named "Little Hussein," the Birthers, the Joe the Plumbers, the "Muslin" haters, the Evangelical Holy Rollers. Everyone poked fun at it, from Saturday Night Live to Jon Stewart, but unfortunately the Tea Party was able to win important House seats during the 2010 election giving Republicans the edge. Through red gerrymandered districts, the country is stuck with some of these rodeo clowns. Luckily, the GOP realizes they are stuck with them as well.







This past week, it was no accident that Palin, who now holds no elected office and may never again, suddenly re-appeared on stage with GOP gadfly and "Green Eggs and Ham" lover Senator Ted Cruz on the Washington Mall. They were protesting the very Shutdown that the Teapublicans dreamed of and finally caused by holding the government budget hostage.

Palin is Tea Party royalty, much like the insane Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland who screams "off with their heads" - meaning the government - on every occasion. Ted Cruz, whether he was born in Canada or not, is now the Tea Party King just for "standing up to the establishment," meaning any GOP member who isn't a stark-raving maniac. Together, Cruz and Palin were the Tea Party Dream Team, storming the barricades of Federal Monuments in an act of defiance that they see as a Patriot's gesture, and the rest of the country sees as an illogical embarrassment.



Waving Confederate Flags in front of the White House - never a good idea! Too Bad Foghorn Leghorn wasn't there to explain it to you, son! Many southern GOP Congress people were missing in action that day - there is a line you can cross, even in the Tea Party.



But at least Palin and Cruz admitted they were mostly trying to raise money for the 2016 Presidential race, proving once again that the GOP believes it deserves government money and benefits, not to mention power. They just don't want anyone else to share it.



None of the Cruz/Palin grandstanding even mattered. In the end, the clueless Tea Party couldn't repeal Obamacare, which is the Law of the Land. The Tea Party Representatives began to sound like that Looney Tune of Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny screaming "Duck Season!" and "Rabbit Season!" until Daffy is so confused he begs Bugs to shoot him in the head. And that's kinda what happened - with Boehner in neutral, the grown-ups in the Senate had to step in and save his bacon. Then Nancy Pelosi got nearly 200 Democratic Reps to vote with Republicans to stop the shutdown.



The GOP has become a Party without a head. All they have is Droopy Dog RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, who was appointed, not elected. Paul Ryan could have stepped up sooner, but he is trying to save his own career. Tea Party voters only had one thing to say on forums, blogs and on the news - they "like" it that Cruz was being obstructionist. "That's what we sent him there for," they said, ignoring the fact that the shutdown was hurting innocent Americans all across the country. It was all about "showing Obama" who was boss. Putting the uppity Negro back in his place, at the expense of closing down our own government.

Is it any wonder Harry Reid chose to call them a "bunch of anarchists?" People like Palin and Cruz want to run the government by destroying the government. Forget Daffy Duck - they sound more like Marvin the Martian. If they had a Space Modulator, they'd probably be pointing at Washington before demanding the reinstitution of slavery in Virginia, like some antebellum Dr. Evil.



Republicans focused on blowing up the Earth, that is, their own heads - that is, their leadership - fought against John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and old-timers like John McCain, once Palin's running mate, now considered too-far-left to be a "real conservative."

But what did Cruz and Company gain, except for some impromptu fundraising? Nothing, as Rachel Maddow pointed out in the graphic below. The only thing the House Tea Party received from the Obama Administration was income verification for people signing up for ACA Obamacare - because, guess what? That was written into the law already! So in effect, they got nothing. Zippo. Yet they kept thinking of new demands, which made them sound even more deranged.



But how bad is the damage, really? Haven't we heard the prediction that the GOP is over, done with, finished too many times to count? Don't the Right Wingers always take a moment to say a few Apocalyptic prayers and come roaring back with a new scheme?

Michele Bachmann, who is the Minnesota version of Sarah Palin, has crashed and burned due to campaign finance problems, and isn't running again. But her conservative district will probably try to find some other gal with a grating midwestern accent and a religious fervor for conspiracy theories. But even Bachmann has to realize that no matter how hard she prayed, Obamacare was never repealed. Isn't that also an answer from God? Could it be that God wants the poor to be cared for, as it says in the Bible by, you know, Jesus Christ?



It could just be that this time the Tea Party Jihadists took their holy war just one Tasmanian Devil hissy fit too far.


Ultra-Conservative Pundit Michelle Malkin on Fox News
via Daily Kos

At least now we don't have to wonder what the Tea Party will do when cornered - when the going got weird, the weird turned pro! They snarled and starting spinning and lying and whatever they had to do. And now the general public has had a glimpse of the real Tea Party that cannot be forgotten so easily.

Not only was their idealogical last stand about denying health coverage to sick and possibly dying people, they openly stated that Obamacare was just the first thing they wanted to repeal or destroy. They wanted President Obama to cut "entitlements" (dreadful word) such as Social Security and Medicare for the elderly. Meanwhile, they also wanted to protect Koch Brothers interests like Big Oil and the Tar Sands Pipeline. All this comes after a session in which the GOP cut Food Stamp money for the poorest Americans from the farm bill, and cut WIC benefits for mothers and babies. Yet they wasted $24 Billion on this useless Shutdown based on ideological nonsense.


To quote ditzy GOP pundit Peggy Noonan in her last post before Romney lost the election last year, you can feel the change in the air. Or see it in the polls. Well, Peggy Noonan never believed the polls about Mitt Romney, and she probably won't believe the polls now. But the truth wins, as we saw in 2012, and it's winning again. The GOP lost and it's time to say "That's All Folks!"

Poll: Congress Lower Than Vermin

Public Policy Polling has a new poll out that describes American sentiment towards Congress.

Complete Results Here

It's not surprising, but people prefer almost any vile thing to Congress, including used car salesmen, replacement refs, and even Colonoscopies. Ouch. Did I mention cockroaches? Yep, better than Congress.

What things are considered lower than Congress? The Kardashians, John Edwards, and the Ebola Virus.

How much lower can they go? Just wait till the Debt Ceiling fight! Maybe by then PPP will add the NRA to their list - they are sinking fast also.

Head Lice 67 Congress 19

Brussel Sprouts 69 Congress 23

Replacement Refs 56 Congressmen 29

Colonoscopies 58 Congress 31

Root Canals 56 Congress 32

Used Car Salesmen 57 Congress 32

Traffic Jams 56 Congress 34

France 46 Congress 37

Genghis Khan 41 Congress 37

DC political pundits 37 Congress 34

Donald Trump 44 Congress 42

Cockroaches 45 Congress 43

What does Congress beat?
Lindsey Lohan (45/41), playground bullies (43/38), and telemarketers (45/35). And it posts wider margins over the Kardashians (49/36), John Edwards (45/29), lobbyists (48/30), Fidel Castro (54/32), Gonorrhea (53/28), Ebola (53/25), Communism (57/23), North Korea (61/26), and meth labs (60/21)

Video ~ Nate Silver Orders Breakfast

No offense to the "real" Nate Silver, but this parody from ThePitNYC is hilarious. And it's just another homage to a statistician who often seems super-human to the rest of us who are math-challenged. Also, I posted as counterpoint a little poke at Karl Rove who set himself up as the Fox News Math Fail guy on election night - "caught in a landslide, no escape from reality." I never get tired of that!

Warning: Some adult language content.

Nate Silver, Polls and Arithmatic

Well, Nate Silver was right. Exactly right. He couldn't have been more right. His Monte Carlo models for 2012 accurately predicted the number of electoral votes each candidate would receive, as well as which states would go blue for Obama. Well-done, Sir. You have now become part of election history, and I'm glad you also stuck to your guns when others were taunting you and with Politico calling you a "one-term celebrity." I guess they should have said "Won Term Celebrity."

What's important is that you get the last laugh. :) I think you'll be around in the next election. I'm not sure about the hacks at Breitbart or those guys from Politico. What were their names again?

Excerpt of Silver's Book "The Signal and the Noise" via Daily Beast

Political news, and especially the important news that really affects the campaign, proceeds at an irregular pace. But news coverage is produced every day. Most of it is filler, packaged in the form of stories that are designed to obscure its unimportance. Not only does political coverage often lose the signal—it frequently accentuates the noise.

Snark Amendment: Pundits Wagering War on Nate Silver
Previous Posts on Nate Silver and the Polls



The Romney camp was "shellshocked" over the fact that the Republican-leaning polls were the ones that were skewed, since the party-line had been the opposite for months.

Rush, Dick and Rove Skewed into Frenzy by Polls

In the last days of the campaign, people were coming out of the woodwork to predict a landslide, which had nothing to do with the reality of the polls, most of which showed Obama ahead at that time. I gathered up their quotes and tweets here:

Snark Amendment: Republicans Predict Romney Landslide

Yeah, the GOP got a landslide, all right. They are going to be digging their way out of it for years to come!



I think one reason ordinary voters drank that Kool-Aid in addition to the Romney Camp, was that some spineless pundits in the mainstream were hedging bets on the outside chance that all the Democratic pollsters were A. Delusional and B. Liars. For instance, CNN kept talking about the "razor thin margin" which somehow gave the advantage to Mitt instead of Obama, when their own internal polling showed otherwise. Chris Cillizza at Washington Post moved Ohio into the "toss-up" column just because Romney needed it so much to win.

The Dems who took a "poll of polls" approach and checked in with statisticians and oddsmakers were not nearly as confused. Yes, we were also nervous and scared about the unknown outcome, yes, but we were not AS confused about the data. And in the end, this election was all about the math.

Bookmark these websites for future elections - math works!

538.com - Nate Silver
ElectoralVote.com
Princeton - Sam Wang
PredictWise


Below is a list compiled by professor Costas Panagopoulos, Ph.D. of Fordham University. It shows which pollsters did a good job of accurately predicting the election outcome. It's a good idea to save this list for the next election so you can avoid the polls from CNN down to AP because those were the most biased and least accurate.

Fordham University List of Pollsters Ranked from Most Accurate to Least Accurate

Most (22) polls overestimated Romney support, while six (6)
overestimated Obama strength (indicated with a * below), but none of the 28 national preelection polls I examined had a significant partisan bias.
The following list ranks the 28 organizations by the predictive accuracy of their final, national pre-election estimates (as reported on pollster.com).

1. Ipsos/Reuters
2. YouGov
3. PPP (D)
3. Daily Kos/SEIU/PPP
4. Angus-Reid*
5. ABC/WP*
6. Pew Research*
6. Hartford Courant/UConn*
7. Purple Strategies
8. NBC/WSJ
8. CBS/NYT
8. YouGov/Economist
9. UPI/CVOTER
10. IBD/TIPP
11. Democracy Corps (D)*
12. CNN/ORC
12. Monmouth/SurveyUSA
12. Politico/GWU/Battleground
12. FOX News
12. Washington Times/JZ Analytics
12. Newsmax/JZ Analytics
12. American Research Group
12. Gravis Marketing
13. National Journal*
14. Rasmussen
14. Gallup
15. NPR
16. AP/GfK

Obama's Last Campaign Speech, Iowa November 5, 2012

Obama gave an inspiring and impassioned speech tonight, and definitely got everyone in the crowd and at home "fired up." What a great man! Good luck tomorrow, Mr. President.

An emotional President Obama at Iowa rally. twitter.com/niccolina/stat…
— Nikki Kahn (@niccolina) November 6, 2012

Sign handed out at final #Obama rally in #Iowa twitter.com/LukeRussert/st…
— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) November 6, 2012

The pictures below are screencaps I made from the video.

Nate Silver: Obama has 86% Chance of Winning

Obama becoming a heavier favorite, in 538's view. Now 86% to win Electoral College. fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) November 5, 2012

Obama unlikely to win by anything like his post-DNC margins. But Romney has no momentum, Obama's state polling is robust, and time is up.

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) November 5, 2012

Headline from 10/29/84: "Mondale upset win predicted": news.google.com/newspapers?id=…

— Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) November 5, 2012

Good point when considering the Republicans want us to believe that Mitt is going to win in a landslide!

Also the last PEW Poll statistics have come out:

Final Pew Poll: Obama 49 Mitt 42 registered voters. Obama 48 Mitt 45 Likely voters. #p2

— Steve Weinstein (@steveweinstein) November 4, 2012

Pew Poll: Who do you expect to win? Obama 52 Mitt 30. This question is always a strong predictor.

— Steve Weinstein (@steveweinstein) November 4, 2012

Final Pew poll of campaign shows Obama regained much of the ground he lost following the 1st presidential debate pewrsr.ch/Tsny9I

— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) November 4, 2012

It's Not Just Nate Silver Predicting Obama to Win Ohio and the Election

source: NYT 538 Blog

Nate Silver is getting pushback and lots of trash talk for sticking to his prediction that Obama will win the electoral college on Tuesday. Right now the prediction is that Obama has 85% chance of winning the electoral college if the election was held today. Actually, the election IS being held today, thanks to early voting, with thousands of new voters participating in every state. The vote may be slightly disrupted in the Northeast thanks to Hurricane Sandy, but plans are in place for mobile truck polling places in places like New Jersey and New York, which are blue states for Obama anyway. Ohio and Pennsylvania were not as affected by the storm, so any disruptions there are more likely to be overcrowded precincts and shenanigans from their Republican overlords in charge of the election.



And Obama is still set to win Ohio and Pennsylvania based on poll after poll. The only people who seem to doubt that are the pundits who are trying to make this into an "undecided" race when the numbers show something else entirely.

All the quotes from Nate, his detractors and other pundit hackery here:

Snark Amendment: Wagering War on Nate Silver
(Yes, the title is a pun not a misspelling)

There's a good reason for Silver's prediction. Look at the Polls:



All Obama needs is to win Ohio and then Romney can't possibly patch together enough votes to win. Yet media hacks like CNN's Wolf Blitzer, MSNBC's Chuck Todd, and several writers at Politico keep calling the race too close to call. They sound just like the wingnuts at Breitbart and Fox, so where is the journalistic integrity? If they won't report the facts then they are useless, and no better than Dick Morris or Karl Rove.

Particularly despicable is Chris Cillizza of Washington Post who moved Ohio to "Toss-Up" status the other day just because Mitt Romney needs the state to win. No real arithmatic involved, just pandering to the right, or perhaps nervousness about some Republican getting mad on the internet, LOL. Oooo, scary!

Washington Post

The Fix is moving Ohio from “lean Obama” to “tossup” in our presidential ratings amid a slew of polling that suggests that the race has tightened over the past month, even as the incumbent retains the slightest of edges.
. . . After reviewing all of the available public polling data as well as talking to operatives in both parties about the private polls they are privy to, we are convinced that Ohio is a 1-3 point race in President Obama’s favor at the moment.
That — coupled with the state’s electoral history and the absolute necessity for Romney to win the state if he wants to be president — leads us to move it back to the “tossup” category.

In response, numbers guy Sam Wang of Princeton wrote a piece called Perverse media incentive watch: Chris Cillizza

...Cillizza is hardly alone. A few days ago, Wolf Blitzer at CNN cited a single Ohio poll, done by his own organization, showing Obama up by 4%. He then proceeded to call this a "tie," revealing an amazing inability to interpret a simple number. Compounding this is the fact that dozens of polls have been conducted in Ohio. The odds of an Obama lead are extremely high. So why does he persist?
The news media have an incentive to fuzz up the picture: ratings and profit. A message that the cake is fully baked does not automatically bring back the viewers. Without the artificial suspense, Cillizza and Blitzer are put in a position of having to say something substantive or interesting that gets beyond a horserace number. Think how much work that would be.
The same problem extends to the aggregation of polling data, which many sites do (FiveThirtyEight, Oct. 31). But think of all the headlines you have seen about "Romney ahead nationally," "Obama pulls ahead in Wisconsin," "it's a dead heat," and other permutations. Each of these headlines was based on a single poll. But aggregation would lead to fewer news stories - and less of the breathless horserace coverage we are used to.

Today Wang stuck to his guns, writing:

President Obama is peeling away. As you can see from the electoral vote (EV) estimator, he is the candidate with the momentum, not Romney. In terms of EV or the Meta-margin, he's made up just about half the ground he ceded to Romney after Debate #1. And the indicators are still headed straight up.
A few days ago, the word was that Team Romney was buying ads in Minnesota and Pennsylvania. If he wins either of those states I will eat a bug. Ohio...a really big bug. And yes, I will post a photo.
Today I'll address a common concern among the commentariat: will President Obama lose the popular vote? Steve Lombardo is on the case with some Excel curve fitting of a quality that cannot even identify the Debate #1 bounce. Hmmm, someone take his keys away.
Anyway, the short answer: I estimate Romney's chance of winning the popular vote at 6%, odds of 16-1 against.

Here is the Princeton breakdown of states and electoral votes. Looks like Sam Wang won't have to eat a bug.


Another projection by the University of Illinois, Urbana, Election Analytics gives a similar result as Wang and Nate Silver:


Still not convinced? How about four different oddsmakers on Predictwise.com:



So there it is.

David Rothschild writes on Yahoo's The Signal: All eyes on—where else?—Ohio

Since the final presidential debate, 15 polls have surveyed voter opinion in Ohio, the state that is more likely than any other to determine the election. President Barack Obama leads former Gov. Mitt Romney in 13 of them. The candidates tied in one, and Romney leads in one. Those last two polls were both conducted by Rasmussen, one of the more right-leaning polling institutions, as FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver has documented.

No one is saying Ohio is a walk for the president. The Huffington Post's Pollster and the RealClearPolitics average both have Obama leading with 51.2 percent among those who express a preference for either major candidate. There is still time for a shift toward Romney, and it's always possible that there is a systematic bias in the polls.

But I don't think it's likely. Historically, polls have been pretty accurate this close to the election. Based only on these surveys, the Signal gives Obama a 75 percent chance of victory in Ohio. When we factor in prediction markets, that figure ticks up a small amount, to 77 percent.

None of these analysts should be vilified for doing simple mathematical algorithms based on dating that other people provide to them. What is much more worrying is the press spinning numbers in a way they know to be DISHONEST just three days before a major election.

Desperate Romney Seeks to "Expand the Map" As Time Is Running Out

Romney's Campaign knows there are few paths to victory without Ohio, and now that he seems to be losing there, desperation is setting in. So now we have a new website for fundraising called "Expand the Map," telling Republicans to donate money so Mitt can make a last ditch stand in Minnesota, Michigan and Maine. But M&M's aren't going to save Mitt now.

It is cool that they refer to the "Obama Juggernaut" as some mythical force. It's funny considering that for months on end the media touted Romney's deep pockets as insurmountable for the Democrats to overcome. Now we get the last laugh.

Story Via Politico.com

Romney and some of his advisers have talked up the possibility of making a late run at a new state – Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, etc. – but there's been precious little investment of money or the candidate's time to show for it. Outside groups have spent heavily to try and give Romney a shot at Minnesota, Michigan and Maine's 2nd Congressional District, which is worth a single electoral vote in the state's unusual system. If Romney seriously wants to "expand the map," look for him to make a late visit to one of those places in the next week and a half.

Today, we launched an opportunity to take our message into new states. Help us #ExpandTheMap mi.tt/WR9jCl

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) October 27, 2012

Message From ExpandtheMap.com

We're defying the odds and holding strong against the billion-dollar Obama juggernaut, but we need your help to win.
Today, we launch ExpandTheMap.com -- an opportunity to take our message into new states and tell voters about our plan to create 12 million new jobs.
Can you help us raise a million dollars a day for this program and finish strong?
Contribute now to help Romney-Ryan and the Republican team keep up the fight.
Thank you!

Can We Bet on the Presidential Polls?

PBS News has a great behind-the-scenes look at the polls and other methods for checking the Presidential odds. One point made by an expert in the video (see transcript below) is that some Democrats might have skewed the polls after the first Presidential Debate because they were so fed up the morning after and hung up on pollsters. Yet anyone who was Republican in the same demographic (age, gender, income level, location) might have enjoyed talking about the debate, so their data got recorded instead. Hence, the polls tightened up all of a sudden and Obama lost his lead. That makes sense to me.

If the swings in the polls are making you dizzy and all this feels like a big crapshoot, well . . . that's basically what it is. So the conclusion for PBS Newshour is that betting and gambling websites might be just as accurate, and perhaps more soothing to ruffled voters, than the more academic pollsters who care more about who is voting and why.
Here are a few websites mentioned:
Intrade
Betfair
PredictWise.com
Iowa Markets




PBS Transcript Here

PAUL SOLMAN: Earlier this week, Quinnipiac surveyed voters in three of this election's swing states: Colorado, Wisconsin and Virginia.

MAN: Your telephone number was randomly generated by a computer, and I need to pick someone at random from your household to participate in this survey.

PAUL SOLMAN: To make sure they're polling a scientific sample of likely voters, these callers use random-digit dialing of landlines and cell phones. But that's just for starters, says Doug Schwartz.

DOUGLAS SCHWARTZ, Director, Quinnipiac University Polling Institute: When we call a household, we don't automatically speak to whoever picks up the phone, because they tend to be women. We speak to whoever has the next birthday in the household.

We also call over several days, because we don't want to just reach the easy-to-reach people. For example, seniors, people with young children are easier to reach. So we will call a phone number at least four times between 6:00 and 9:00 during the week, but then we will also try on weekends.

We also conduct interviewing in Spanish. So, it all gets back to this principle of making sure that everyone has an equal chance of being selected.

PAUL SOLMAN: But, of course, not everyone wants that chance.

Do people get angry at you?

DEETA MOUNING, Quinnipiac University Polling Institute: Oh, yes, they do. They blast us out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

But since every pollster claims to come up with a scientific random sample eventually, how can the results be Romney up by four and Obama down by three at the very same time?

A hefty margin of error, says newly minted Ph.D. economist David Rothschild, who works at Microsoft Research in Manhattan.

So, Rothschild incorporates models, polls, and markets into a constantly updated forecast on his blog PredictWise.com.

Last we looked, his data mash-up gave President Obama a 65 percent chance to win.

DAVID ROTHSCHILD, Microsoft Research: I never sweat too much about any individual poll because there's too much noise.

PAUL SOLMAN: Too much noise meaning?

DAVID ROTHSCHILD: Too much movement.

PAUL SOLMAN: Take the so-called bumps after a vice presidential pick, or a convention. Or take the first presidential debate. Say you're a Democrat the morning after.

DAVID ROTHSCHILD: A pollster calls you, you don't want anything to do with it. You're just -- you're upset. You hang up that phone.

They call another guy, exact same demographics as you, because they're trying to fill some sort of demographic hole or whatnot. He's a Republican. He's stoked. He wants to yell for how excited he is for Romney.

The same person on paper looks like he switched to Republican, but what happened really is, is that the Republicans want to talk that day vs. a Democrat who is like, I'm not even answering the phone. I'm in a bad mood. Obama screwed up last night. So...

PAUL SOLMAN: Between prediction markets and polls, which do you trust?

DAVID ROTHSCHILD: Prediction markets, because prediction markets have all of this polling information available to them, as well as additional information.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Through this one, the Iowa Market, 1,600 people place their bets, with a $500 limit per punter....

Director Joyce Berg:

JOYCE BERG: Right now, the markets are favoring Obama. If you look at the winner-take-all market, that market is showing our traders believe there's an 80 percent chance that Obama will get more than half the popular vote.

PAUL SOLMAN: That was before the first presidential debate, however. The odds are now much lower.

But they're still above 60 percent that President Obama will win the popular vote.

So, who's right, the professors, the pollsters, or the plungers?

. . . JOYCE BERG: So, we have gone back over time since the '88 election, looked at over 900 polls, and compared the IEM prediction to the poll prediction, and found, in 75 percent of the cases, the IEM was more accurate than the polls.

We also look at night-before forecasts, and there, in that case, we are usually within about 1.3 percent of the actual election outcome.

PAUL SOLMAN: For the latest odds from Iowa, Intrade and Betfair, just go to our Making Sense website, where we link to all of them in real time.

Polls are Tightening As Dems Have Hope for Biden-Ryan Debate

I usually enjoy writing headlines, but this one makes me cringe. With just a few weeks to go, Obama has lost his lead in the election, mainly due to what was seen as his lackluster performance in last week's debate. My own take is that some viewers who have been checked out for the past few months took Romney's "enthusiasm" as somehow more honest than Obama's rather understated way of talking. And it didn't help that moderator Jim Lehrer was asleep at the wheel and let Romney bully him, but oh well . . . here we are now.

A PEW Poll released on October 8th nearly drove some Dems over the edge:
Snark Amendment: Le Pew: Dems Panic Over One Stinky Poll

Unfortunately, other polls show an increasing problem for President Obama since he has lost his big lead and the race is nearly a dead heat. But there is still hope that things might turn around quickly after tomorrow night's debate between VP Joe Biden and VP wannabe Paul Ryan. Fingers crossed.

From The Daily Beast

. . . while hile these numbers are painful for Obama supporters, the election is close to a tie overall. The Pew survey is just one poll, capturing one moment in time. Consider Monday’s Washington Times/Zogby poll, which showed Romney and Obama in an effective tie, with Romney slightly ahead by 45.1 to 44.5 percent. If you factor in Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, Obama is actually ahead by half a point, 45.5 to 45 percent.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen’s tracking numbers also show a tie, with both candidates at 48 percent. The Gallup numbers put Romney only slightly ahead at 49 to 47 percent. And yesterday, Rasmussen reported that 55 percent of likely voters still think Obama is probably going to win in November.

The electoral map also continues to shape up in the President’s favor. Although Romney is ahead by one in Ohio, according to the latest ARG survey, he trails by three in both Pennsylvania (PDF) and Virginia (PDF).

From Nate Silver's 538 Blog

Following another day of strong polling on Tuesday, Mitt Romney advanced into the best position in the FiveThirtyEight forecast since the party conventions. His chances of winning the Electoral College are now 28.8 percent in the forecast, his highest since Aug. 29. For the first time since Aug. 28, President Obama is projected to win fewer than 300 electoral votes. And Mr. Obama’s projected margin of victory in the national popular vote — 2.0 percentage points — represents the closest the race has been since June 27.
The forecast model is not quite ready to jump on board with the notion that the race has become a literal toss-up; Mr. Romney will need to maintain his bounce for a few more days, or extend it into high-quality polls of swing states, before we can be surer about that.
But we are ready to conclude that one night in Denver undid most of the advantage Mr. Obama had appeared to gain in September.

All Over but the Shouting for Romney

It's all over but the shouting. Well, except the debates, but I don't think those are going to make much difference. Maybe it's just all over but the crying, recriminations, blame game, and circular firing squad. Well, actually all that has started even in the national media, so we have to look away when it becomes embarrassing. And try not to enjoy it too much, heh . . .

Whatever: the fact remains that many of the Electoral Maps are beginning to look the same as the race tightens up and early voting is beginning in many states. The idea that this is still a "horse-race" between Romney and Obama, or that many states are in the "toss-up" category is probably bogus. I don't rule out voter suppression or election day shenanigans, but Romney almost needs to win every swing state in order to get to 270 electoral votes, and I just don't see how that could happen at this point.

Business Insider quotes Romney saying last week: "I’m very pleased with some polls, less so with other polls, but frankly at this early stage, polls go up, polls go down."

Yep, polls do go up and down, yet many voters are locking in their choices by getting to a voting booth now or sending in their absentee ballots. The election is "happening now," as Wolf Blitzer likes to say.

Business Insider also points out the pitfalls of Romney's almost impossible path to victory because every state they mention is leaning Obama at the present time. If Romney loses one, he basically loses all of them.

Florida is a virtual must-win for Romney. If he loses, he would have to take swing states Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Nevada and Virginia to get past 270. That's an extremely illogical path to victory — especially because two of those states (Ohio and Wisconsin) have moved to the "lean Obama" column on the RCP average.

. . . Without Ohio, Romney has to win Florida, as well as New Hampshire, Iowa, Nevada, Virginia and Colorado.

. . . if Romney loses [Virginia] he'll have to hang onto Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa and Colorado as the most plausible path to victory. If Ohio keeps leaning as left as it has been lately, Romney will have to do something implausible — like steal away Michigan or Pennsylvania, two states where Obama has a huge advantage.

. . . If Romney cannot win North Carolina, it's a twofold kick in the gut. First, it would likely mean he's not performing well in other, less-reliable Republican states. Second, he'd have to hold onto Ohio, Florida, Virginia, New Hampshire, Iowa and Colorado to get to 270.

. . . Without Colorado, Romney would have to hold onto Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Nevada.

So there it is - even if Romney holds onto Colorado or North Carolina, what are the chances of all those other states going his way? His chances are slim to none. Obama wins. End of story. I'm not taking anything for granted - just look at the maps!

Nate Silver's 538 Blog on New York Times


CNN Election Map


Real Clear Politics Map

Earth to GOP: The Polls are Arithmatic

"Skew" is another interesting phrase the GOP loves to use. Here's the defintion via Online Etymology Dictionary:

skew (v.)    late 15c., from O.N.Fr. eskiuer "shy away from, avoid," O.Fr. eschiver (see eschew). Meaning "depict unfairly" first recorded 1872, on notion of being slanted. Statistical sense dates from 1929. Related: Skewed; skewing. The adjectival meaning "slanting, turned to one side" is recorded from c.1600; noun meaning "slant, deviation" first attested 1680s.

It is ridiculous to imply that "all" the polls are "skewed" except for certain bad polls by biased people like Rasmussen or Karl Rove that show their guy Romney leading. Isn't it more likely that they are the ones who are skewed instead of the 15 other pollsters, some of whom are non-partisan or who take a poll of polls average?

But none of that matters if you are Republican clinging to false hope. They just can't accept that the very likable and inspirational - although African American - President Obama is way ahead in the polls. Because . . . arithmatic.

As of tonight, Nate Silver of 538 Blog is giving Barack Obama an 84% chance - well, let's be scientific and say "83.9%" chance of winning the Presidency.

Mitt Romney has, therefore, only 16.1% chance, no rounding necessary.

That's the mathematical truth, unless you are a Republican in denial.

The polls are what they are - just a statistical snapshot of the country's rejection of goofy-strange Mitt Romney as President of the United States. Simple as that.

But denial is strong in them, like the Force. For instance, here's a stammering and sputtering Karl Rove spinning about how "unscientific" the polls are, but even Bill O'Reilly isn't drinking the kool-aid on Fox News:

O'REILLY: . . . Are these polls dishonest?

ROVE: No. Look, we endow them with a false scientific precision they simply don't have. If you've got nine points more Democrats than Republicans and you're nine points more --
(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: You you're going to have a poll that reflects that.

ROVE: -- yes, nine points more Obama. Think about this. Romney and Obama get each roughly the same percentage of Republicans and Democrats as -- as their opponent. That is to say they carry their -- their base overwhelmingly. Romney, among Independents is winning by three points.

So -- so if Romney is winning the Independents and winning the Republicans do you think in a battle ground state like Florida, he's nine points down and the answer is no....

ROVE: . . . So look, we've got to be careful about, you know, we have a proliferation of these polls. There have been 87 national polls in the last 30 days. That's more polls than were run in the last six months of the 1980 presidential race.


O'REILLY: All right.

ROVE: Last week -- last week alone, we had 51 state level polls; and the week before that, 41.
(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: I understand that but -- but here -- here -- look, from my point of view as a news analyst and I believe that the folks know I'm honest in that regard, when news agencies like the CBS News on the radio report the polling and it shows that Barack Obama has leapt out to a big lead in Florida and Ohio, that gets inside people's minds. They remember that. And that can only help the President. That helps the President.

ROVE: Sure.

O'REILLY: Because the perception is he is going to be the winner.

. . . O'REILLY: All right, real quick, real quick, your board, the Karl Rove board where is the race in Ohio and Florida in your opinion?

ROVE: Well, toss-up in both states.

O'REILLY: Toss-up? It could go either way at this point in history.

ROVE: Sure.

O'REILLY: All right, Mr. Rove. We appreciate that.

Then tonight, we have Wolf Blitzer of CNN taking a stand for a change, although he rolls it back quickly to the "toss-up" idea, via Media Matters:


Transcript from CNN

Ashleigh Banfield: CNN's Wolf Blitzer joining me live from Washington, D.C.

Wolf, the Romney camp and their allies are suggesting that a lot of those so-called mainstream polls are skewed in some way, that they're not accurate. I want to play a short clip from Mr. Romney's political director, Rich Beeson.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICH BEESON, POLITICAL DIRECTOR, ROMNEY CAMPAIGN: We trust our internal polls. I don't make any campaign decisions based off what I read in the "Washington Post." So I'm not going to get into the specifics of what our polls say or don't say. I trust our numbers and that's what we're basing our decisions off of.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: But he won't give us those numbers.

So, Wolf, here's how it goes. Every time bad numbers come out, I hear campaigns saying, we don't use those numbers, we use our own. But I never hear that when the numbers are good. Am I wrong?

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST, "THE SITUATION ROOM": You're not wrong, but the fundamental fact of what's going on right now is the numbers in these key battleground states, according to almost all of the reputable national polls out there, show that Obama is ahead in most of these key battleground states. That's obviously disconcerting to a lot of Republicans. Some of them, like Karl Rove, for example, have repeatedly gone out there and suggested that these polls are biased against the Republicans because they're oversampling Democrats, for example, as opposed to Republicans. And as a result, don't trust these polls, they're not reliable. So it's sort of convenient for a lot of these Republicans, like Karl Rove, to go after the NBC poll or the ABC poll or CNN polls.

But what they don't say is that the FOX News polls are showing almost exactly the same thing. FOX has some good polls. For example, their most recent battleground states, Ashleigh, in Ohio and Virginia, show Obama ahead of Romney by seven points. In Florida, the FOX News poll shows the President ahead of Romney by five points. Very similar to all these other so-called mainstream poll numbers. You don't hear them complaining about the FOX News polls. They're complaining about the others, so there is an imbalance there.

If you take a look at all these polls, and we at CNN did a poll of polls, you show -- it clearly shows that the President is ahead slightly in almost all of these key battleground states. And I think that's pretty significant.

BANFIELD: We were just showing Virginia, and now here is Florida, and they're saying exactly what you just said, Wolf. And here is the thing. Yes, we're 40 days out. But early voting -- we started the program talking about the significance of early voting and the volumes of people who do early voting. Which brings me to my next question, regardless of what the Romney camp is saying about their internal polls, is it entirely possible they are seeing these polls that are now, as I said, solidifying with early voters and saying it may be time to spend the money on down-ballot contenders and go for the House and go for the Senate because we've lost those states at this point?

[Blogger Note: Wolf immediately rolls back his comments so as not to offend the GOP. Typical. The truth is never enough.]

BLITZER: Yes, I think it's way too premature to say they've lost those states. It's early. I've seen polls turn around the final 40 days of an election. They certainly can turn around in this election. And let's not forget --
(CROSSTALK)

BANFIELD: But even with the early voting numbers, Wolf?

BLITZER: Even with the early voting numbers. This is not over by any means, Ashleigh. There's three presidential debates, one vice presidential debate. And I remember very vividly -- you probably were too young to remember -- the 1980 race.

Repubs See the Glass More than Half-Full for Romney

pic by Matt Dawson


The Far Right is desperate to believe that the polls are much closer than is being reported by the "lamestream media." They believe the polls are actually neck and neck in the swing states and that the country is trending much redder rather than blue.

What does Adam say on Mythbusters?

"I reject your reality and substitute my own."

Now they even have their own Pollster trying to "Unskew" the polls.

From BuzzFeed

Dean Chambers, a blogger on Examiner.com who writes from his home in Duffield, Virginia, took that complaint a step further — producing wide Romney leads far beyond what the Republican's campaign or Republican pollsters have suggested is the case.
He created the site unskewedpolls.com, retooling national polling data this July after reading an ABC News/Washington Post poll that "just didn't look right." Looking at the internal data, Chambers saw that the polling unit had sampled more Democrats than Republicans.
"There's no way they can justify that sample," Chambers, 44, told BuzzFeed.
Since July, Chambers has re-weighted national polling data from organizations like Gallup, ARG, and the three networks, to fit the Rasmussen Reports partisan trends. Chambers has published 30 "unskewed" polls on his website and on examiner.com, a national network that pays independent bloggers on a wide range of subject by traffic. In the last month, Chambers's tooled polls have Romney up by seven or more points.

You can see what is wrong with this picture if you compare the Unskewed Poll with the latest snapshot of the country via ElectoralMap.com. To your basic Tea Partier, the country is much more red, the blue of the Democrats is diminishing, swing states only swing to the right, and of course - they win. The problem is that doesn't have much to do with reality. Mitt Romney is an unlikable candidate who makes three gaffes a day, and therefore President Obama will be reelected in just a few short weeks.

But this snapshot of GOP denial is one for the ages.

"Unskewed" Electoral Map Via Examiner


Nonpartisan Map from RealClearPolitics

Obama for the Win as Early Voting Starts

Keep Working, Donating, Blogging, and Tweeting, but also take time to enjoy the winning side of a long campaign - just for a few minutes!!!

*Yay!*

Rachel Maddow on tonight's show:

You know, the election has already started. In almost half the states in the country, people can already get access to a ballot and start voting by mail, if they want to. You can already do in-person early voting in Idaho, South Dakota, and in Vermont. Early in-person voting also starts on Thursday of this week in Wyoming and in Iowa.
And what that means beyond just the convenience of voting in those states where you can vote early, what that means for this campaign,
is that every day is potentially decisive now.
...With Early Voting every day is election day now.

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From Nate Silver's 538 NYT Blog via The Last Word: