I'm just curious as to where they thought the minority and youth vote was going to go? Did they expect them to disappear or be studying abroad? It was just an awful assumption based on old data.

Werthless wrote:

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.

Silver himself suggested there was ample uncertainty about the projection. Why do you think he had Obama at around 70% to win with about a week to go when he had Obama leading in around 10 of 11 swing states? Most of the polling companies had used the same set of projections on voter turnout, and most importantly, they came to these projections knowing the assumptions that the other pollsters were using. Otherwise, yeah, if 15 of 18 pollsters (or whatever proportion it was) had independently made these estimates, then it would hold much more weight. But the mountain of evidence you're alluding to overstates the certainty from the polling.

And really, this was a thought experiment. It doesnt really matter if we know ahead of time who wins.

I think Silver's acknowledgment of uncertainty is what distinguishes him from a lot of his contemporaries. Here's a guy that has included tens of thousands of polls into his models, and even he's not certain of the outcome. And on the other side people disregarding a majority of the polls in the face of a lot of empirical data for whatever reason, and they are reportedly blindsided when they end up being full of shit? Come on.

"regardless of how 538 is cooking these numbers"

I'd like to get my hands on that recipe

reading eagle readers weigh in!

Editor:

This election has shown me how wimpy our nation has become. We want everything for nothing.

The people who built this nation worked hard to do it. They did not have everything given to them. We adults, mothers, fathers and grandparents are truly to blame. We wanted to give to our children what we worked hard for. We spoiled them.

People 50 and younger want what we worked years to achieve. They go into life expecting the things their parents worked years to have. Young people have become soft. We have become the give me nation. You no longer have to work for what you want. It will be given to you. But, how does the government pay for all of this? People will.

This president had his agenda. He spent four years campaigning for this next four years. The first four were the foundation for the next four.

America no longer will be a sovereign nation but a nation under the United Nation rules.

I pray for God's love and forgiveness for a nation that was truly great and has become a nation willing to give up its sovereignty to a man following the dreams of his father to making us a socialist country.

Kay Lessig
Cumru Township

Editor:

After seeing the results of the election, I feel we must assume that God's blessings no longer are being extended to America.

Democracy has its own destruction built into it. The election result is a case in point.

Bob Barry
Centre Township

I do think the Republicans have a math problem. Their belief that the polls were wrong comes from the same mindset that you can cut taxes and increase defense spending and lower the deficit. The only specific cut I heard about was PBS, and given the Republican track record on spending I had no reason to believe they actually were at all serious about reducing the deficit.

There's also a Trump problem. There are certainly left equivalents of birthers. But those lefties aren't raising millions of dollars for the Democratic party. The Republican party has a problem dismissing those people. This leads to two problems--first, it makes it easier to paint your party as captured by extremists.

But even worse, it become difficult for a low information voter (or even a medium information voter) from distinguishing between loony "Kenyan-Muslin" criticisms of the President and criticisms that actually have validity. Had, for instance, the Benghazi issue been raised by more sober minded people, it might have had some traction with voters.

Finally, I do think this was a part of the Dems problem in 2004--it was difficult for many voters to see the distinction between the legitimate criticisms of say Bush's Iraq policy (manipulated intelligence) and the nuttier ones (Bush wanted to get Iraq's oil for his buddies).

Werthless wrote:

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.

It's not fair to say they engaged in magical thinking just because the analysis/projections/assumptions did not hold true.

They didn't engage in magical thinking "just because the analysis/projections/assumptions did not hold true". Republican leadership and candidates have engaged in magical thinking for quite some time, and various events of the election provide concrete evidence of it.

MoBettle wrote:

Werthless wrote:

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.

Silver himself suggested there was ample uncertainty about the projection. Why do you think he had Obama at around 70% to win with about a week to go when he had Obama leading in around 10 of 11 swing states? Most of the polling companies had used the same set of projections on voter turnout, and most importantly, they came to these projections knowing the assumptions that the other pollsters were using. Otherwise, yeah, if 15 of 18 pollsters (or whatever proportion it was) had independently made these estimates, then it would hold much more weight. But the mountain of evidence you're alluding to overstates the certainty from the polling.

And really, this was a thought experiment. It doesnt really matter if we know ahead of time who wins.

I think Silver's acknowledgment of uncertainty is what distinguishes him from a lot of his contemporaries. Here's a guy that has included tens of thousands of polls into his models, and even he's not certain of the outcome. And on the other side people disregarding a majority of the polls in the face of a lot of empirical data for whatever reason, and they are reportedly blindsided when they end up being full of shit? Come on.

Also, with a week to go Obama's chances were higher than 70 percent. Pretty sure it was in the low 80s at that point.

I'm sure there will those who disagree, but I hope the woman who was arrested because her 11 month old child died from ingesting heroin goes to jail for a very, very long time.

Really. You've got to do a better job hiding your stash.

Another important thought--so young people didn't support Romney. And Republicans say that's because they're stupid. But leaving aside social stuff, consider the Ryan plan--whatever its merits, the beneficiaries are clearly those over 55 who would be grandfathered in, and those under 55 would have to settle for a lot less.

If you're young, you should be concerned about deficits. A lot. If I'm trying to appeal to young voters. I'm talking non-stop about deficits. And yes, entitlements need reform, but if I'm under thirty and I understand what's going on, I'm going to be pretty pissed off about the idea that those old hippies are going to get to ride off into the sunset in a giant RV while I foot the bill. So any entitlement reform has to cover everyone. HCAA provides some framework for that, if I understand it correctly.

Furthermore, the tax issue has a generational aspect as well--presuming most of the 250k plus people are over 45, again, as a young voter it's definitely in my interest to hit them up start paying down the deficit.

This might be worth reading.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2 ... -past.html

Don't know if it really offers a way out though.

Big part of paying down the deficit is getting more people in the work force to bring in more taxes. Did either party connect the two and hammer home that point? I don't really recall.

CalvinBall wrote:Big part of paying down the deficit is getting more people in the work force to bring in more taxes. Did either party connect the two and hammer home that point? I don't really recall.

Sort of, but not in a realistic way--part of Romney's "math" involved tax cuts leading to job growth which would be so enormous that the tax cuts would pay for themselves and more. The problem with this "math" is that it's based on economic theory that simply has never really worked in practice, and even if it did, it would depend a great deal on the specific tax rates involved. (eg, going from 70% to 40% is going to have a different impact than going from 30% to 0.

Any recommendations on a book that explains taxes and economic growth? Maybr just and article or two. The simpler the better. I know that their hasn't historically been a correlation between the two, but I don't understand thus can't talk about it with great confidence.

For example, was talking about it with friends and they said "Well we have the highest corporate taxes in te world and people don't want to start companies here because of that." So I don't really know how to explain while seemingly true may not be.

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.

But over the course of the campaign, a lot of national polls pointed toward the same thing the Romney people were seeing in their polling. A GOP enthusiasm gap, strong support from Independents, much closer partisan makeup of the electorate. The assumptions were very plausible. They just ended up being incorrect.

A recent example where the exact opposite was true was the Wisconsin recall. Democrats kept talking about how their internal polls were tied even as Republican and most public polls had Walker with a consistent lead at the edge of the margin of error. Republican polls ended up nailing the electorate, while Democratic polls were off the mark. Then there are times where the internals of one party are right, while the public polls are wrong. A good example being 2010 Nevada Senate race, where most public polls expected Reid to lose, but Democratic polling correctly foresaw the strength Reid had among Latino and union voters, and that was what lead him to reelection.

CalvinBall wrote:Any recommendations on a book that explains taxes and economic growth? Maybr just and article or two. The simpler the better. I know that their hasn't historically been a correlation between the two, but I don't understand thus can't talk about it with great confidence.

For example, was talking about it with friends and they said "Well we have the highest corporate taxes in te world and people don't want to start companies here because of that." So I don't really know how to explain while seemingly true may not be.

You could do a lot worse than read Robert Reich's stuff. Werthless may have a good example for presenting the other side. Ultimately, we need to come to grips with the idea that economics is best understood empirically, rather than theoretically. The problem is since economics does not really lend itself to the experimental method (like history, astronomy, meteorology, and the like) it is difficult to ascertain causality without a heavy dose of theory.

that's a good book, but it's short

TenuredVulture wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:Any recommendations on a book that explains taxes and economic growth? Maybr just and article or two. The simpler the better. I know that their hasn't historically been a correlation between the two, but I don't understand thus can't talk about it with great confidence.

For example, was talking about it with friends and they said "Well we have the highest corporate taxes in te world and people don't want to start companies here because of that." So I don't really know how to explain while seemingly true may not be.

You could do a lot worse than read Robert Reich's stuff. Werthless may have a good example for presenting the other side. Ultimately, we need to come to grips with the idea that economics is best understood empirically, rather than theoretically. The problem is since economics does not really lend itself to the experimental method (like history, astronomy, meteorology, and the like) it is difficult to ascertain causality without a heavy dose of theory.

The charts in the Congressional Research Service's controversial report indicate basically that there's no causal relationship between tax rates and things like labor force participation or hours worked (pp 5 & 6). To me the labor curves suggest bigger, more intractable structural forces at work; the return to labor is dwindling, there's simply not enough that needs doing for enough people, etc.

jerseyhoya wrote:

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.

But over the course of the campaign, a lot of national polls pointed toward the same thing the Romney people were seeing in their polling. A GOP enthusiasm gap, strong support from Independents, much closer partisan makeup of the electorate. The assumptions were very plausible. They just ended up being incorrect.

A recent example where the exact opposite was true was the Wisconsin recall. Democrats kept talking about how their internal polls were tied even as Republican and most public polls had Walker with a consistent lead at the edge of the margin of error. Republican polls ended up nailing the electorate, while Democratic polls were off the mark. Then there are times where the internals of one party are right, while the public polls are wrong. A good example being 2010 Nevada Senate race, where most public polls expected Reid to lose, but Democratic polling correctly foresaw the strength Reid had among Latino and union voters, and that was what lead him to reelection.

"Plausible" is a nice fudge word. It's plausible to believe that with a 9% response rate, the polls had a systematic bias. However, we know that people with higher levels of education and older people are more likely to respond to polls than less educated and younger people. So, really, if anything, that would suggest that the polls were undersampling likely Obama voters. They also believed that partisan identification is largely a static characteristic--that people don't switch parties. But there's lots of evidence that PID doesn't work today like it worked 40 years ago--it's fluid, so you can't simply look at the electorate and assume that everyone who was a Republican identifier in 2004 is a Republican identifier in 2012. The unskewed poll guy based his model on this faulty assumption. You simply can't weight polls on party id. Finally, the turnout issue was an interesting one. And experience intelligent hack knows that real enthusiasm has to be for someone, not just against someone. 2004 was the obvious example of this. There really has never been much enthusiasm for Romney, even if there was enthusiasm for getting rid of Obama. So, big increases in turnout over 2008 was unlikely. Finally, why did Republicans count on lower turnout among young voters and ethnic voters? I suppose you could believe that 2012 was going to be different from 2008. But the reality is that youth participation has been increasing steadily since the 90s. On election night, I said that anecdotally it appeared that young people today are much more enthusiastic about voting than young people were 25 years ago. Social media allows for constant reinforcement. Standing on line to vote isn't so bad if you've got a smart phone and bunch of people are tweeting you, encouraging you to stay in line.

I suspect the long lines in Florida, if an intentional ploy to drive down minority and youth participation may have had the opposite effect, driving down old white participation.