Who is going to win?

[Asher]

That pretty obviously falls under economic freedom.

It's telling that your barometer for government fairness is whether it affects the pocketbook. You don't give a **** about people, HC.

[MrFun]

The sex of one's chosen partner in marriage is relevant, the colour of ones skin is not.

If we're talking about marriage being a right, why should the sex of one's partner be relevant?

And besides that, under anti-miscegenation laws, blacks were free to marry other blacks.

[Tupac Shakur]

I've just skipped over the last couple pages of bull**** and will now address the original question. The race is a dead heat (just as the economic models predicted) and I think Mark McKinnon is right to suggest there's a very real chance that Romney could lose in the electoral college while winning the popular vote. Romney's lead nationally hasn't translated into an advantage over Obama in swing-state polls, which could be the result of party ID assumptions that turn out to be incorrect on election day but could also be the result of the Obama campaign's superior ground game. I suspect Romney's advantage with independents and the marked reduction in the Democrat/Republican turnout gap from 2008 evident in national polling will push him over the top in enough key swing states to win the electoral college (despite such movement not showing up in the state polls so far), but I definitely could be wrong about that.

[Boris Godunov]

Obama wins with ~51% of the vote and 303 EVs.

[Hauldren Collider]

I think any victory over 300 EVs is highly unlikely.

[Hauldren Collider]

I've just skipped over the last couple pages of bull**** and will now address the original question. The race is a dead heat (just as the economic models predicted) and I think Mark McKinnon is right to suggest there's a very real chance that Romney could lose in the electoral college while winning the popular vote. Romney's lead nationally hasn't translated into an advantage over Obama in swing-state polls, which could be the result of party ID assumptions that turn out to be incorrect on election day but could also be the result of the Obama campaign's superior ground game. I suspect Romney's advantage with independents and the marked reduction in the Democrat/Republican turnout gap from 2008 evident in national polling will push him over the top in enough key swing states to win the electoral college (despite such movement not showing up in the state polls so far), but I definitely could be wrong about that.

Drake, I saw an article from a former GOP operative that claimed that early voting was way down, like way way down in Ohio from 2008--despite a much harder push this year. I think that there is a very substantial chance the polls are overstating Obama in the swing states:

I have always been a believer in data telling me the full story. Truth is, nobody knows what will happen on Election Day. But here is what we do know: 220,000 fewer Democrats have voted early in Ohio compared with 2008. And 30,000 more Republicans have cast their ballots compared with four years ago. That is a 250,000-vote net increase for a state Obama won by 260,000 votes in 2008.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82948.html#ixzz2AYyxTaea

[Tupac Shakur]

The polls are really weird this year. I'm very hesitant to dismiss them as I trust data (and think Nate Silver is awesome), but it really seems like either the national polling or the swing-state polling has to be off. I'm inclined to trust the national polling over the swing-state polling for methodological reasons as well as personal bias, but who really knows?

[Hauldren Collider]

It just seems to me that an increase of 1% popularity nationally should pretty much correlate to an increase of 1% popularity everywhere--neither candidate is particularly regional. We aren't dealing with any Southern solidarity or some other crazy regionalism in this election. But you're right, who knows.

[snoopy369]

The reason it's not, is that you have to think, 'why is candidate X suddenly 1% more popular'. Whatever the reason - the economy, some dumb **** said by the other guy, a sesame street commercial, even an ad - it's not likely to be felt identically everywhere. Economic effects might be felt more in the rust belt, while the ads would be felt primarily in the states those candidates and their SPACs are targeting. There's enough regional variation in the US that you won't see mirror images of the moves in the polls locally.

[snoopy369]

The polls are really weird this year. I'm very hesitant to dismiss them as I trust data (and think Nate Silver is awesome), but it really seems like either the national polling or the swing-state polling has to be off. I'm inclined to trust the national polling over the swing-state polling for methodological reasons as well as personal bias, but who really knows?

Frankly - and I say this in my personal capacity, not in any relation to the company I work for, which is a leading market research firm which does perform some of these polls - the polls are just not that accurate nowadays. Fewer people will answer polls, and of those who do, there is more bias and more selective reporting (for example, people are much more likely to lie about their LV status due to the various pushes to encourage voting; they feel bad about not voting, so they'll pretend and/or take a 10% chance and convert it to 'likely'). There is more difficulty in finding a balanced sample (cell phones, and timing issues for land lines; you can call at various times of day, but if you aren't really, really thorough with your callbacks and your scheduling quotas, you probably don't get a perfectly balanced sample economically, because of people who work various shifts, and/or the retired/unemployed. Since most of these polls are 'vanity' polls, and are not performed for direct compensation, this is more of a problem - it costs a lot of money to perform telephone sampling, and one way to make it cheaper is to not call people back multiple times, but instead just try new numbers (a known nonresponder on first attempt is less likely to be a complete on second attempt than a new first attempt). Some of this of course is why Nate Silver does things like evaluate polling firms and determine how high quality their polling is; but that's very hard to determine in any useful way - even a good firm will get some wrong, after all.

I personally think we'll just have to wait and see... I don't think the polls are sufficiently clear or accurate to pick a winner right now. Both are within my personal margin of error by quite a bit (the amount I think the polls might be off by). I think there will be numerous states that swing several points from the polls, possibly in both directions.

[Dinner]

Actually, based on gun purchase records from December 2008, Obama is one of the most effective gun salesmen of all time. Slowwhand's attitude is far from unique.

It's mostly just ravings from the NRA trying to get suckers to buy more NRA memberships along with gun makers trying to boost sales. Honestly, only a fool would fall for it.

[Dinner]

BTW I'm going with Obama wins 50.2% of the popular vote and 295 electoral votes.

[SlowwHand]

Except that I'm not a member of the NRA and don't care what gun makers are trying to do. They probably want to sell me a $1500 whatever, but guess what?
I'm buying a .243 for $300 bucks.
They probably want to sell me a .50 caliber handgun, so my dick will grow. Guess what? I'm going 9 mm.

[Uncle Sparky]

They probably want to sell me a .50 caliber handgun, so my dick will grow. Guess what? I'm going 9 mm.

9 mm is probably a clitoris, not a dick. Don't tell sloww...

[Dinner]

You're seriously arguing that the poor currently get too much help?

That has been pretty much the Republican argument for at least the last 30 years. They claim we help them so much it creates a dependency and that poor people stop trying to do things for themselves. It's all a complete lie but virtually everything in Republicanism is right down to their central thesis that tax rates are the ONLY thing which ever matters to companies and that tax cuts automatically pay for themselves (something which all of them dogmatically claim but which has almost never happened).