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Obama's going to win. The only reason you hear pundits talking about it is because they get paid to talk about it. The media controls the messaging these days
by leif 14y ago
Obama's going to win. The only reason you hear pundits talking about it is because they get paid to talk about it. The media controls the messaging these days, not the candidates or the people, and it's in the media's interest to maintain as close a race as possible until the bitter end.
That's why even the most partisan pundits, even when everything's in their candidate's favor, keep claiming that "this is such a close race".
TBH the only way Romney is going to be contentious is through voter suppression, and that's been so heavily exposed in critical areas that it's not going to have any effect as long as the justice system holds its ground.
removes tinfoil hat
(BUT EVERYONE PLEASE VOTE IF YOU ARE ABLE, IT'S CRUCIALLY IMPORTANT NO MATTER WHERE YOU LIVE)
- drivebyacct2 14y agoNO BUT [insert crude reduction of Nate's science down to the level of tv pundits]. I'd love to know more about Nate's model, but I trust it a hell of a lot more than the raw data of Gallup (seeing as Gallup's nearly the only one left giving him a chance. Dick back-peddaled today, Rasmussen did more or less too.) Nate actually has a book about why this occurs and what it does to the conversation of politics in elections in the US.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoStay classy silent downvoters. Downvotes make you right.
- arrrg 14y agoWell, I don’t know. Calling it a tossup is very wrong, but Romney’s odds don’t seem that bad to me. Nate Silver, for example, gives Romney a twenty percent chance. That’s not bad. I would gladly pay $1,000 for a twenty percent chance to win a million.
- btmorex 14y agoNate Silver gives Romney a ~20% chance of winning because there's a chance that the polls are systematically wrong. Each polling firm comes up with their own likely voter model and participation model. If they're are correct in the aggregate, there's essentially a 0% chance of Romney winning, but they might not be correct (and there were times in the past where they were systematically wrong). Basically, don't confuse uncertainty about whether the polls are accurate with uncertainty about the election if they are accurate because if they're accurate then Obama will win.
- arrrg 14y agoWell, obviously. But twenty percent are twenty percent. It doesn’t really matter where they come from. The net result is that Romney (according to Nate Silver) has a pretty good chance of winning.
- Evbn 14y agoYou know what is a huge factor in turnout? Likelihood of victory being close to 50%.
- tomasien 14y agoI prefer Barack Obama as President of the United States, primarily because I believe things like healthcare reform make job churn and entrepreneurship more feasible - however, there are SOME indications that maybe Obama's lead isn't what it looks like. Polls are conducted on landlines, which nobody uses anymore. What does that mean? We don't know. Obama has only a slight early voting lead after leading in it 2-1 in 2008? What does that mean? Probably that both campaigns made a push for it this time around and it's reflecting the populous at large, BUT some polling data suggests maybe this isn't the case?