Optimistic To The End

I’m not making an electoral college prediction, other than to reiterate yet again that whoever wins Pennsylvania, wins the election. If pressed, my popular vote prediction would be Obama 52, McCain 48, but of course I remain hopeful things will go differently.
This, which I’ve seen linked in a few places, makes the argument for why Obama is toast, based in part on looking at where the candidates have been traveling. It may be right; I can’t know (they gotta go somewhere). All I can say is, the people on the Right writing these things are going to look like either fools or geniuses in a few hours. (Although I think the comparison of the Kerry and Obama media strategies is spot-on either way, and I’m not endorsing his assault on Nate Silver – Nate has his obvious biases, but he’s a data guy, and like Gerry Daly in 2004, he’s working with the data, right or wrong. I’ve already had to eat crow once this year when I challenged the PECOTA system’s projection that the Rays would win 88 games).

4 thoughts on “Optimistic To The End”

  1. I have no problem saying it is still up in the air. Then again, I have no problem saying that I have a preferred candidate but I think both would do a fine job.
    Yeah, I’ve been seeing more attacks on 538 as well, for little other reason than the numbers don’t go the way they want. There is a science to polling, and statistics, which is entirely different from politics.
    And he whiffs on internal polls in particular, where a campaign can run 5 different polls and only release the one they like. And that’s without taking into account the chance for statistical deviation from state voter percentages either through necessity or choice, and not publishing that information either.
    I mean, selection bias, publication bias and exclusion bias are pretty basic red flags in determining how to run a meta-analysis. If the campaigns were to publish each and every poll they did, it could be treated differently.

  4. Bye bye to our hard earned money under the leadership of the socialist illuminati. Too bad we aren’t going to have money for the extras.

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