jerseyhoya wrote:But it's more than the pros vs. the quants. RCP has Romney up 0.7 in their national average. Pollster.com at Huffington Post has Romney up 0.2 in their national average. TalkingPointsMemo has Obama up 0.9 in their average.

RCP is run by Republicans and the other two are run by Dems so the difference in polls they include explains most of the difference in the poll averages. But all three are short of where Silver has the race at - Obama +1.4%. Nate is relying more on state polls to build out that lead and also has underlying economic stuff thrown in (though at a decreasing amount of the model). His model is anywhere from 0.5-2.3% more positive for Obama nationally than the three biggest national polling aggregator sites.

phdave wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

dajafi wrote:James Fallowes is calling this argument "the pros versus the quants." It does kind of resemble a scouts-vs.-statheads dynamic: some pundits and many Republicans arguing that Romney has the Big Mo and fire in the belly and the Good Face, while Silver, and not a few other guys running simulations, are still pretty sure Obama will win owing to structural factors.

Both arguments strike me as having some merit. But I'm starting to think that if the election had been held this week, that momentum might have been decisive; as it is, I think the extra time will facilitate the fundamentals, which probably help the president, reasserting themselves.

It is all about who votes. The larger the electorate, the better Obama's chances. The thru-line of all the polls and interviews is a dispute over who will turn out.

But it's more than the pros vs. the quants. RCP has Romney up 0.7 in their national average. Pollster.com at Huffington Post has Romney up 0.2 in their national average. TalkingPointsMemo has Obama up 0.9 in their average.

RCP is run by Republicans and the other two are run by Dems so the difference in polls they include explains most of the difference in the poll averages. But all three are short of where Silver has the race at - Obama +1.4%. Nate is relying more on state polls to build out that lead and also has underlying economic stuff thrown in (though at a decreasing amount of the model). His model is anywhere from 0.5-2.3% more positive for Obama nationally than the three biggest national polling aggregator sites.

They aren't comparable that way. RCP, pollster, and TPM are calculating current averages. None of their Romney+Obama %s even add up to 100%. There's no third party candidate getting 5-6%, so they are not forecasting the outcome. Nate is modeling the outcome based on data and weighting assumptions. His assumptions could be wrong but he is doing something different than they are.

/I really don't know what I'm talking about

Bucky wrote:is he weighting the undecideds where the others are not??

/meneither

What gender gap?

Less than two weeks out from Election Day, Republican Mitt Romney has erased President Barack Obama's 16-point advantage among women, a new Associated Press-GfK poll shows. And the president, in turn, has largely eliminated Romney's edge among men.

Those churning gender dynamics leave the presidential race still a virtual dead heat, with Romney favored by 47 percent of likely voters and Obama by 45 percent, a result within the poll's margin of sampling error, the survey shows.


...

At the same time, expectations that Obama will be re-elected have slipped: Half of voters now expect the president to win a second term, down from 55 percent a month earlier.

...

Romney's pitch to women has been focused squarely on the economy, making the case that what women want most is to ensure their families and their country are on a solid financial footing. The poll shows that message appears to be taking root.

A month ago, women favored Obama over Romney on the economy 56 percent to 40 percent. Now, the split has shifted to 49 percent for Romney and 45 percent for Obama.

Similarly, Obama's lead among women as the candidate who better understands the people's problems has narrowed considerably, from a 58-36 Obama advantage last month to a 50-43 Obama edge now.

...

Ginny Lewis, a Democrat and 72-year-old retired district attorney from Princeton, Ky., says she'll vote for Romney because "I'm tired of the Republicans blaming all the debt on Democrats, so let them take over and see what they do."

Not that she's optimistic about how that will turn out, though. "I think things will get worse before they get better," she said.

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:

dajafi wrote:James Fallowes is calling this argument "the pros versus the quants." It does kind of resemble a scouts-vs.-statheads dynamic: some pundits and many Republicans arguing that Romney has the Big Mo and fire in the belly and the Good Face, while Silver, and not a few other guys running simulations, are still pretty sure Obama will win owing to structural factors.

Both arguments strike me as having some merit. But I'm starting to think that if the election had been held this week, that momentum might have been decisive; as it is, I think the extra time will facilitate the fundamentals, which probably help the president, reasserting themselves.

It is all about who votes. The larger the electorate, the better Obama's chances. The thru-line of all the polls and interviews is a dispute over who will turn out.

Did you read Nate Silver's piece today before writing this post? If not, very apt timing.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/oct-24-in-polls-romneys-momentum-seems-to-have-stopped/

jerseyhoya wrote:

Bucky wrote:is he weighting the undecideds where the others are not??

/meneither

Undecideds tend to break toward the outparty. The old 2-1 against the incumbent or if the incumbent is under 50% heading into election day rules of thumb aren't quite right, but I don't know what the argument would be for allocating undecideds to help Obama.

Nate Silver wrote:...what about an incumbent who holds a lead but, nevertheless, stands below the so-called magic number of 50 percent? How often do such candidates lose?

I identified a total of 83 incumbents in our database of House, Senate and gubernatorial polls who — with 30 days to go until the election — led their opponents (by any margin) in an average of nonpartisan polls, but who had under 50 percent of the vote....

If you combine the three types of incumbents — House, Senate, governor — they had a record of 66-17, which equates to a winning percentage of 80 percent. Depending on how you define the term, they may not have been “safe” for re-election — but certainly, most were favorites....

There is...not any particular evidence that...the majority of the undecided vote broke against the incumbents. On average, the incumbent candidates led by 8.1 points in the polls with 30 days to go; they won their elections by an average of 7.2 points. That’s not a huge difference, needless to say....

it is not so much that being below 50 percent necessarily puts a candidate in a “danger zone” but that being above 50 percent puts him in a “safety zone.”...

Undecided voters, in other words, are the equivalent of the clock in a football game. If an N.F.L. team holds a 10-point lead at halftime, it is the favorite to go on and win the game. But there is plenty of football left to play, and it will lose some of the time (whereas other times, meanwhile, it will wind up winning by considerably more than 10 points). This is the equivalent of holding a 43-to-33 lead in a political poll, with lots of undecided voters.

On the other hand, an N.F.L. team that holds a 10-point lead with two minutes to play in the fourth quarter will almost never lose. ...

jerseyhoya wrote:

Bucky wrote:is he weighting the undecideds where the others are not??

/meneither

Undecideds tend to break toward the outparty. The old 2-1 against the incumbent or if the incumbent is under 50% heading into election day rules of thumb aren't quite right, but I don't know what the argument would be for allocating undecideds to help Obama.

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

Bucky wrote:is he weighting the undecideds where the others are not??

/meneither

Undecideds tend to break toward the outparty. The old 2-1 against the incumbent or if the incumbent is under 50% heading into election day rules of thumb aren't quite right, but I don't know what the argument would be for allocating undecideds to help Obama.

Maybe Nate can clear this up for you

Nate Silver wrote:...what about an incumbent who holds a lead but, nevertheless, stands below the so-called magic number of 50 percent? How often do such candidates lose?

I identified a total of 83 incumbents in our database of House, Senate and gubernatorial polls who — with 30 days to go until the election — led their opponents (by any margin) in an average of nonpartisan polls, but who had under 50 percent of the vote....

If you combine the three types of incumbents — House, Senate, governor — they had a record of 66-17, which equates to a winning percentage of 80 percent. Depending on how you define the term, they may not have been “safe” for re-election — but certainly, most were favorites....

There is...not any particular evidence that...the majority of the undecided vote broke against the incumbents. On average, the incumbent candidates led by 8.1 points in the polls with 30 days to go; they won their elections by an average of 7.2 points. That’s not a huge difference, needless to say....

it is not so much that being below 50 percent necessarily puts a candidate in a “danger zone” but that being above 50 percent puts him in a “safety zone.”...

Undecided voters, in other words, are the equivalent of the clock in a football game. If an N.F.L. team holds a 10-point lead at halftime, it is the favorite to go on and win the game. But there is plenty of football left to play, and it will lose some of the time (whereas other times, meanwhile, it will wind up winning by considerably more than 10 points). This is the equivalent of holding a 43-to-33 lead in a political poll, with lots of undecided voters.

On the other hand, an N.F.L. team that holds a 10-point lead with two minutes to play in the fourth quarter will almost never lose. ...

So now maybe the question you have to ask is, is politics more like football, or more like baseball?

jerseyhoya wrote:I must be missing where Nate explains why you'd expect undecideds to break toward the incumbent there.

There is...not any particular evidence that...the majority of the undecided vote broke against the incumbents. On average, the incumbent candidates led by 8.1 points in the polls with 30 days to go; they won their elections by an average of 7.2 points. That’s not a huge difference, needless to say....

it is not so much that being below 50 percent necessarily puts a candidate in a “danger zone” but that being above 50 percent puts him in a “safety zone.”...

dajafi wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

Bucky wrote:is he weighting the undecideds where the others are not??

/meneither

Undecideds tend to break toward the outparty. The old 2-1 against the incumbent or if the incumbent is under 50% heading into election day rules of thumb aren't quite right, but I don't know what the argument would be for allocating undecideds to help Obama.

I thought this was more or less disproven. But to me the allocation of undecided voters--who clearly aren't strong partisans and might not vote at all--is akin to trying to define "likely voters." The one might have to do with, I dunno, the lunar cycle or reality TV plots, the other with how good the ground game is.

This has been a detailed post, so perhaps an executive summary is in order:

1. The challenging candidate has typically been underrated by head-to-head polls when he is still engaged in a heated primary battle, when his name recognition is low, or both. These effects seem to evaporate by April of the election year or so, when the result of the nomination process is likely to have become clear and when the presumptive nominee is likely to have become widely known to voters.

2. The evidence is not very convincing that polls break toward the challenger otherwise. (This seems to be true both for presidential elections and for other types of elections.)

3. In presidential years, the mean-reversion tendency in polls has been much clearer than any effects from incumbent status.

4. The effects of the conventions can skew poll analysis and can lead candidates to be underrated (particularly the incumbent-party candidate after the challenger’s convention) if it is not accounted for.

5. The analysis is complicated by the fact that there are different ways to define incumbent candidates, by the small sample size, and by the fact that the way voters respond to polls may be changing. So — although I do not think the evidence for the incumbent rule is very convincing — keep an open mind to the effects of incumbency status as we gather more data from this and from future election years.

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:I must be missing where Nate explains why you'd expect undecideds to break toward the incumbent there.

Uhhmm, he doesn't, but

There is...not any particular evidence that...the majority of the undecided vote broke against the incumbents. On average, the incumbent candidates led by 8.1 points in the polls with 30 days to go; they won their elections by an average of 7.2 points. That’s not a huge difference, needless to say....

it is not so much that being below 50 percent necessarily puts a candidate in a “danger zone” but that being above 50 percent puts him in a “safety zone.”...

you haven't done it at all often, but in times past when you've gone all willfully dense, it's indicated you're running out of gas

jerseyhoya wrote:4) What the hell are you arguing?

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:4) What the hell are you arguing?

you should probably lie down

you've been going on & on about undecideds. Various of us have more or less gently suggested, with references, that the evidence for your theory about how undecideds behave is ... inconclusive. You've continued to barrel on, apparently undeterred.

Your own behavior has demonstrated momentum of a sort, which probably says something about something

jerseyhoya wrote:

drsmooth wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:4) What the hell are you arguing?

you should probably lie down

you've been going on & on about undecideds. Various of us have more or less gently suggested, with references, that the evidence for your theory about how undecideds behave is ... inconclusive. You've continued to barrel on, apparently undeterred.

Your own behavior has demonstrated momentum of a sort, which probably says something about something

phdave and Bucky both suggested a major difference between Silver's model and the current polls is undecideds are accounted in Silver's model (i.e. it's a projection of what the actual election outcome will be), while they are obviously not allocated to either candidate in the polling averages. This difference is a possible explanation for why Silver's model is giving a different result. I think the real differences between Silver's model and the polling averages are 1) he seems to build out from state polls in addition to using the national polls, 2) his model includes an economic fundamentals component (which is dwindling as a percentage of the model as the election approaches), 3) the weights and partisan adjustments he applies to certain pollsters. I do not think the idea that Silver is projecting the actual election result compared to the polling averages (now cast and November 6th) holds much merit for explaining the differences because the evidence that does exist (as Nate has written) is challengers tend to do better compared to what they're polling than incumbents do. This evidence is not an iron clad rule, and due to the extremely small sample sizes, it's not conclusive. BUT it's certainly something that would argue against the allocation of more undecideds toward the incumbent rather than the challenger.

Are you following?

dajafi wrote:My other point would be that there might not be all that many undecideds. The sorts of polls we're seeing now at the state level tend to be numbers like 50-47, 49-48, 48-46. I guess when you have a 48-46, there are enough undecideds that if they break conclusively enough (no, I will not attempt the math), it could be decisive. But when the lead candidate is at 49 or 50, as is often/usually the case here, a wave won't matter unless there's some weakness in that number to start with.