As a result, they believed the public/media polls were skewed - they thought those polls oversampled Democrats and didn't reflect Republican enthusiasm. They based their own internal polls on turnout levels more favorable to Romney. That was a grave miscalculation, as they would see on election night.

Those assumptions drove their campaign strategy: their internal polling showed them leading in key states, so they decided to make a play for a broad victory: go to places like Pennsylvania while also playing it safe in the last two weeks.

Those assessments were wrong.

Nate tells you guys Obama is 70% to win the election and his odds are strengthening not weakening, but man, look at those two performances tonight and who acted like the guy who needed to shake things up compared to the guy who was completely comfortable not making any waves. I guess the Dem response to that is Romney's team didn't feel comfortable having him engage the president fully on foreign policy issues, but I think this evening said a good bit about both camps' polls and where they think the race is headed. Obama's crew thought he needed to try and disqualify Romney among undecideds/swing voters and/or rile up the base. Romney's group figured him clearing a bar of acceptability on the Commander in Chief question among swing voters was all that was required from tonight to win the election. The inclination toward prevent defense might be ill advised even if you're actually winning, but that they'd choose to go there says something (and you guys would say the 'something' is they knew Romney couldn't hang trading blows; I disagree, but I guess that's an explanation).

I picked out PPP's poll from tonight to lead the post because it seems to really get at Romney's edge among indy voters and his (sudden) improvement in favorability ratings. The president seems to be in an increasing amount of trouble electorally, regardless of how 538 is cooking up these numbers.

We'll know for sure in a couple of weeks (or sooner if the polls radically change), and I'll take enough beating if Romney loses and do enough crowing if Romney wins that me sticking my neck out here isn't particularly interesting. But in all seriousness I think the race is a complete tossup at the moment, and if you put a gun to my head I'd say Romney is going to win.

phdave wrote:Adviser: Romney "shellshocked" by loss

As a result, they believed the public/media polls were skewed - they thought those polls oversampled Democrats and didn't reflect Republican enthusiasm. They based their own internal polls on turnout levels more favorable to Romney. That was a grave miscalculation, as they would see on election night.

Those assumptions drove their campaign strategy: their internal polling showed them leading in key states, so they decided to make a play for a broad victory: go to places like Pennsylvania while also playing it safe in the last two weeks.

Those assessments were wrong.

If this story is correct, I'm even more glad he didn't become president. If he can't trust empirical evidence to make decisions about how to campaign, then I don't have much confidence in his decision making ability as a president. It's sad to think that his approach was based on the same assumptions the unskewedpolls guy was making. I always assumed that the campaigns were the ones with the best information. Turns out Romney would have been better paying attention to the information that we all had and not paying attention to the Republican bullshit machine.

But this reminds me of JH's post after the third debate. I thought he was projecting what he wanted to see at the time but maybe Romney was actually very confident and felt all he needed to do was to play prevent defense because he was reading the unskewed polls.

Nate tells you guys Obama is 70% to win the election and his odds are strengthening not weakening, but man, look at those two performances tonight and who acted like the guy who needed to shake things up compared to the guy who was completely comfortable not making any waves. I guess the Dem response to that is Romney's team didn't feel comfortable having him engage the president fully on foreign policy issues, but I think this evening said a good bit about both camps' polls and where they think the race is headed. Obama's crew thought he needed to try and disqualify Romney among undecideds/swing voters and/or rile up the base. Romney's group figured him clearing a bar of acceptability on the Commander in Chief question among swing voters was all that was required from tonight to win the election. The inclination toward prevent defense might be ill advised even if you're actually winning, but that they'd choose to go there says something (and you guys would say the 'something' is they knew Romney couldn't hang trading blows; I disagree, but I guess that's an explanation).

I picked out PPP's poll from tonight to lead the post because it seems to really get at Romney's edge among indy voters and his (sudden) improvement in favorability ratings. The president seems to be in an increasing amount of trouble electorally, regardless of how 538 is cooking up these numbers.

We'll know for sure in a couple of weeks (or sooner if the polls radically change), and I'll take enough beating if Romney loses and do enough crowing if Romney wins that me sticking my neck out here isn't particularly interesting. But in all seriousness I think the race is a complete tossup at the moment, and if you put a gun to my head I'd say Romney is going to win.

dajafi wrote:Nobody's arguing otherwise. I think the point is that the level of analysis they evidently showed, and the seeming propensity toward magical thinking, isn't what you want in the presidency.

Admittedly there's a lot we don't know here. Maybe they really had a range of scenarios and internal debate and the sort of process you'd hope for--and frankly that I would expect, given Romney's reputation as a manager and analytical thinker. But nothing we've heard so far would indicate that.

Houshphandzadeh wrote:little known fact: I once went to a bachelorette party with his daughter

jerseyhoya wrote:MY WIFE’S LOVER - Holy shit

dajafi wrote:Thought this was a really good take on the Republicans' problems and how they might solve them:

http://m.washingtonpost.com/opinions/th ... story.html

jerseyhoya wrote:When you're living in a world where only 9% of people called are willing to be polled, and the response rate differs across demographic groups, you're going to have to make assumptions about turnout in building your poll. The Romney campaign made plausible assumptions. They turned out to be incorrect, and most of the public polls were closer to being correct. Youth turnout was much higher than they were expecting, and white voters made up a slightly smaller share of the electorate, and that was enough (along with things sliding away in the last week due to Sandy or whatever else).

jerseyhoya wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:i mean how do people fall for that?

The number of posters here who would be hinting or openly claiming the election was stolen if Romney won is a number greater than zero. Electronic voting or some other boogeyman would be the culprit.

.

dajafi wrote:Nobody's arguing otherwise. I think the point is that the level of analysis they evidently showed, and the seeming propensity toward magical thinking, isn't what you want in the presidency.

Admittedly there's a lot we don't know here. Maybe they really had a range of scenarios and internal debate and the sort of process you'd hope for--and frankly that I would expect, given Romney's reputation as a manager and analytical thinker. But nothing we've heard so far would indicate that.

phdave wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:When you're living in a world where only 9% of people called are willing to be polled, and the response rate differs across demographic groups, you're going to have to make assumptions about turnout in building your poll. The Romney campaign made plausible assumptions. They turned out to be incorrect, and most of the public polls were closer to being correct. Youth turnout was much higher than they were expecting, and white voters made up a slightly smaller share of the electorate, and that was enough (along with things sliding away in the last week due to Sandy or whatever else).

Assumptions are not plausible if they are contradicted by a mountain of evidence. This wasn't a thought experiment. There was a lot of data out there and taken as a whole it clearly pointed to an Obama win. I'm thankful that Romney's reliance on echo chamber assumptions only fucked his campaign and not the country like the last Republican administration.