dajafi wrote:Josh Marshall had a post earlier suggesting that the big advantage Romney has among independents is explained in large part by the fact that a lot of indies are former Republicans who left the party registration-wise, but if anything are further to the right.

Who knows, though it would address the question not just of how Obama can win while losing independents, but also of why the polls keep showing more Dems in samples.

“Over the last couple of months, you have appeared throughout the country, Governor, on behalf of Mitt Romney,” “[W]e hear that perhaps Mr. Romney may do some storm-related events. Is there any possibility that Gov. Romney may go to New Jersey to tour some of the damage with you?”

To which Gov. Christie replied:

“I have no idea, nor am I the least bit concerned or interested,” Christie replied, immediately shutting down the idea. “I’ve got a job to do here in New Jersey that’s much bigger than presidential politics and I could [sic] care less about any of that stuff.”

bleh wrote:78.4% chance of Obama winning as per 538. Don't see the need to even have the election at this point.

dajafi wrote:A. Cuomo is no Romney or Edwards looks-wise. But he's a better looking guy than Nixon or LBJ, and they both won. Sheesh.

jerseyhoya wrote:Been a heck of a thing to watch liberals find out how much Christie loves and cares about New Jersey over the past 48 hours.

The Dude wrote:Did he bang Werth

Silver stormed onto the scene in 2008 when, according to his acolytes, he correctly predicted how 49 of 50 states would vote in the presidential election (he missed Indiana). Do not remind his disciples that of the four close states — those with margins of 2.5% or less — Silver only forecast three of them correctly. And definitely do not remind them that the polls in swing states correctly forecast all but two states (Indiana and North Carolina).

Silver’s key insight was that if you used a simple simulation method known as Monte Carlo, you could take a poll’s topline numbers and its margin of error and come up with a probability forecast based on the poll. The effect of this method was to show that a 50-49 lead in a poll with 1,000 respondents wasn’t really a dead heat at all — in fact, the candidate with 50% would be expected to win two-thirds of the time if the poll’s sample accurately reflected the true voting population.

...


But was it? To find out, I spent a few hours re-building Nate Silver’s basic Monte Carlo poll simulation model from the ground up. It is a simplified version, lacking fancy pollster weights and economic assumptions and state-by-state covariance factors, but it contains the same foundation of state poll data that supports Nate Silver’s famous FiveThirtyEight model. That is, they are both built upon the same assumption that state polls, on average, are correct.

After running the simulation every day for several weeks, I noticed something odd: the winning probabilities it produced for Obama and Romney were nearly identical to those reported by FiveThirtyEight. Day after day, night after night. For example, based on the polls included in RealClearPolitics’ various state averages as of Tuesday night, the Sean Davis model suggested that Obama had a 73.0% chance of winning the Electoral College. In contrast, Silver’s FiveThirtyEight model as of Tuesday night forecast that Obama had a 77.4% chance of winning the Electoral College.

So what gives? If it’s possible to recreate Silver’s model using just Microsoft Excel, a cheap Monte Carlo plug-in, and poll results that are widely available, then what real predictive value does Silver’s model have?


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/01/is-na ... z2AynCvZIT