The Official 2012 Presidential Election Thread

[regexcellent]

I'm absolutely ready to eat my words if it turns out like that, but when exactly did it become 'perfectly reasonable' to assume that the polls are all skewed and that only a few clever souls have picked up on this? An awful lot of pollsters stand to look absolutely ridiculous if they badly mess this up, and is it really plausible that its the vast majority who are going to end up holding the burning end of the stick? I'll give you 'possible' sure, but a perfectly reasonable assumption?

It's quite simple really. Basically, the polls all have a likely voter model to figure out who's actually going to vote. There's a saying which roughly goes that the future will mostly be like the past. So when you predict who's going to turn out, you take the last election (which was four years ago) and apply those turnout figures, who identifies with which party, and so on.

However, four years ago, the democrats' popularity was at an all-time high. It seems reasonable to guess that their popularity will be less than that this time.

In most polls, movement toward the Republicans from 2008 is manifested in the fact that independents have swung strongly toward the Republicans this cycle. In polls by Gallup and Rasmussen, that is still true, but they also believe that there will be fewer people identifying as Democrats (representing the diminished popularity from 2008).

[Hauldren Collider]

Read Sean Trende's article, he's 538's main competitor and has actually been in the business longer. (And his predictions have historically been just as good): http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...certainty.html

[DinoDoc]

More for the FWIW file:

[MRT144]

Apparently Chrysler gave employees the day off to go vote.

[regexcellent]

[never mind]

[Imran Siddiqui]

Speaking of RCP, their "No Toss Up States" number is Obama 303 - Romney 235. FWIW.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Apparently Chrysler gave employees the day off to go vote.

Damn Italians interfering with our elections.

[Hauldren Collider]

Speaking of RCP, their "No Toss Up States" number is Obama 303 - Romney 235. FWIW.

That doesn't tell us anything Nate Silver isn't already telling us. That model uses state polling, which means if state polls are wrong, obviously it is also wrong.

[kentonio]

Videos appearing of voting machines not recording votes correctly..

http://jezebel.com/5958108/oh-lovely...ium=socialflow

The almost more worrying thing is the response of the election supervisor..

I asked the voters on either side of me if they had any problems and they reported they did not. I then called over a volunteer to have a look at it. She him hawed for a bit then calmly said "It's nothing to worry about, everything will be OK." and went back to what she was doing. I then recorded this video.

[Ben Kenobi]

Operation Kenobi was successful. That's two votes for Romney transported to the polls.

[Hauldren Collider]

Videos appearing of voting machines not recording votes correctly..

http://jezebel.com/5958108/oh-lovely...ium=socialflow

The almost more worrying thing is the response of the election supervisor..

When there are a hundred million voters, there are going to be some problems. The fact that there isn't mass chaos I think is a miracle, especially given Hurricane Sandy.

[kentonio]

When there are a hundred million voters, there are going to be some problems. The fact that there isn't mass chaos I think is a miracle, especially given Hurricane Sandy.

True, but that makes it more important that backup protections are in place to ensure that things like this can be corrected quickly and effectively. The machines that don't supply a paper backup are especially worrying.

[MRT144]

When there are a hundred million voters, there are going to be some problems. The fact that there isn't mass chaos I think is a miracle, especially given Hurricane Sandy.

I still don't understand why the reliable and trusty scantron isn't used throughout the land.

[regexcellent]

I have a friend who thinks New York will go Republican because of Hurricane Sandy preventing NYC people from voting. I am very doubtful.

[Hauldren Collider]

True, but that makes it more important that backup protections are in place to ensure that things like this can be corrected quickly and effectively. The machines that don't supply a paper backup are especially worrying.

I agree. But every state does its elections differently. So what happens is some do them well and some do them badly. On the whole I think this makes the system more resilient because there's no one national stupid policy, though there are a lot of state stupid policies.