By Ralph Schwartz
Last time I blogged, I took a passing backward glance at the first presidential debate and promised I would follow up with a look at how the debate affected the polls, which to that point had generally favored President Obama. Would Romney’s resounding victory be reflected in the polls?
Well, since then I admit to having acquired a good case of poll fatigue. Part of me says, let’s do this election thing already and be done with it.
But let’s briefly talk polls, because ballots aren’t even mailed for another 10 days.
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised to find out that the poll situation post-debate is muddled. Some favor Romney, but two actually show a wider lead for Obama. The president is also holding his own in the crucial swing states — the only polls that really matter, anyway.
I base the above on my reading of Nate Silver’s blog, FiveThirtyEight on the New York Times website. Until someone convinces me otherwise, Silver is the go-to guy for poll analysis.
I’m feeling a little “meta” today, so instead of talking more about predictions, let’s talk about the study of predictions. Silver has a new book out, “The Signal and the Noise: Why so Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don’t.” In it, he describes a study of the predictions of TV political pundits.
Turns out, they don’t do so well. If anything, their incentive is toward the outrageous rather than the accurate.
Silver discussed this study and a few other things last week on the radio program On the Media. (The link includes the 7-minute audio and the transcript.)
In this segment, Silver reminded me of what “media bias” is really all about. (That is, if you’re not Fox News, MSNBC, the Drudge Report or the Huffington Post.)
Silver says, “The classic media bias is rooting for the story. Certainly, after the conventions, I think that the press became very interested in the Romney is imploding story, but in the long run people sell more papers and they get more listeners and viewers if you have a close down-to-the-wire election.”
So if Romney’s still behind, then as a newspaper guy I’m going to say, “Go Romney!”
I believe the most enduring media bias is a bias towards drama.
A presidential election has to be a photo finish, otherwise there is no compelling reason to pay attention.
It is difficult to make predictions even when employing the most sophisticated math and science to the prediction. The notion that the gut check predictions of a TV pundit are unreliable carry as much surprise as the wetness of water.
For the first time in the election cycle, Romney has an RCP average advantage (of all polls) over Obama of +.7. He busted up the Gallop Poll record with a +57 advantage over the President in the “who won the debate” question. He now is leading or has cut Obama’s lead to within most polls margin of error in all 11 swing states that will decide this election. You know things are not looking good for the President when he spends the majority of his time after the debate running around the country yelling “liar liar pants on fire” you want to kill Big Bird! I’m predicting a Romney landslide in November.
Nate Silver(he is not a pollster really) is a liberal statistician and avowed Obama supporter:
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Mark Twain
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
This from a liberal!!!
“The Pew poll is devastating, just devastating. Before the debate, Obama had a 51 – 43 lead; now, Romney has a 49 – 45 lead. That’s a simply unprecedented reversal for a candidate in October. Before Obama had leads on every policy issue and personal characteristic; now Romney leads in almost all of them. Obama’s performance gave Romney a 12 point swing! I repeat: a 12 point swing.
Romney’s favorables are above Obama’s now. Yes, you read that right. Romney’s favorables are higher than Obama’s right now. That gender gap that was Obama’s firewall? Over in one night:
Currently, women are evenly divided (47% Obama, 47% Romney). Last month, Obama led Romney by 18 points (56% to 38%) among women likely voters.
Seriously: has that kind of swing ever happened this late in a campaign? Has any candidate lost 18 points among women voters in one night ever? And we are told that when Obama left the stage that night, he was feeling good. That’s terrifying. On every single issue, Obama has instantly plummeted into near-oblivion.” Andrew Sullivan
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Seriously? Plummeted? http://www.langerresearch.com/uploads/1127-45a1FavorabilityNo45a1.pdf
“People who know David Axelrod say he’s in a state of panic, and it’s only partly over President Obama’s dismal debate performance against Mitt Romney last week. The bigger worry for the president’s top political guru is the economy, and Obama’s utter inability to spin a positive tale about it…..
…Obama talks about needing another term to finish the job, but look at how he started it: with his $800-billion stimulus, which was supposed to bring unemployment down to around 5 percent by now. Forget about the hundreds of billions that went to keep state and local government payrolls lush, even as the private sector was shrinking; look at his No. 1 big idea — green jobs.
Or try looking for them. It’s not just the bankrupt failures like Solyndra — it’s the lack of any success stories….
Yet “finishing the job” seems to mean that a second Obama term would unleash more of the same stuff we got in four years for another four — which should have not just the business community, but the whole nation, feeling very grim indeed.”
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/economic_woes_odmz1PEhVu2vNoEjZcy2EI
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
“It was in Denver one week ago that the long-running romance between Barack Obama and the national press — aka the “Slobbering Love Affair,” as Bernard Goldberg put it — hit the wall. The motel bill, unpaid these many long months and ages, at long last came due.
It had been the real thing, not a commonplace fling with your generic Democrat, but the love of a lifetime, the genuine article, the sum of all dreams: He was not just a Democrat, he was also a liberal. He was not just a liberal, he also biracial, also multinational; also hip, cool, and clever. He was themselves as they wanted to be….
http://washingtonexaminer.com/the-liberal-media-loved-obama-to-death/article/2510130#.UHVPAK7rSSo
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Obama had seen that his friends would protect him, and so he believed he could mail it in Wednesday, but this was the venue that could not be spun. No filter. No edits. No choosing what to put in or leave out. No shaping of the story. Just the story itself, rolled out in real time, sans narration, before 70 million American voters, undoing six years of hype and hysterics. It revealed one small, not all that keen academic, having been inflated by the narrators beyond all recognition, dissolving before everyone’s eyes.”
1. I know plenty of Obama voters who would be open to voting for Romney, based on what he said at the debate (no tax cuts for the rich, we need lots of regulations etc. etc.) If those were really the positions he has… although they don’t match what he and his party have been saying for 2 years.
2. It’s not just the media who want a tight race. The powers that be can avoid civil unrest among the losing party, if those voters feel like they “almost made it” and “maybe next time”. It keeps everyone in control. It makes the sheeple more accepting of not getting what they want, if they knew it was only slightly out of their grasp.
“I love how the politicians capitalize on this kind of thing,” teased Leno. “Like the minute the replacement refs were fired, President Obama said, ‘See, sometimes losing jobs can be a good thing. It’s a good thing.’”
When the laughter subsided, Leno continued, “A new survey out today shows how much time we waste every day in our lives. For example, we waste seven minutes in line every time we go to get coffee, 28 minutes getting through airport security, four years waiting for Obama to do something about the economy. Every year, we waste a lot. We wasted a lot of time.”
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/09/28/leno-we-wasted-four-years-waiting-obama-do-something-about-economy#ixzz2916w9sxp
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Also, Richard, too big a gap between exit polls and “results” trigger a different kind of unrest.
Like in Venezuela’s last election?
AFY!!theheelotsheepdog!!!
Being that the chance of Obama not winning Washington state are slim to none,
and that the President is still elected on a Statewide level as our Constitution defines.
I see no reason why any self respecting Washington State voter feels they need to sacrifice their voting morals and not consider the other four Presidential candidates who will be on our ballot.
Obama has shown time and again that he is not interested in being President or leading and would rather be playing golf or basketball than helping get this country out of recession. Even scarier are the surrogates he delegates decision making to.
Romney is spouting the same tired narrative of more tax cuts, more defense spending, and more war.
Why not consider the other four candidates when voting for President this year? It at least guarantees you the opportunity to say “Don’t blame me I voted for X” the next four years.
AFY is Joe Wilson, Sales Manager,
Pederson Construction
3974 Bakerview Spur
Bellingham, WA 98226
Phone: 360-734-9180
Fax: 360-734-9649