Happy Birthday to Rene Auberjonois, 72. I just saw him in an episode of the Ellery Queen TV series. Not as bad as Benson, but not a performance I expect he's proud of (I mean, he wasn't very good on EQ -- not that the series is bad. It's excellent, for people who like that sort of thing, which certainly includes me). Generally a fine actor, and probably the one that mattered most on DS9; we could have survived if the Chief wasn't well acted, or Quark, and we did survive with other roles not very well acted, but Odo really had to work.
OK, good stuff:
1. Yet more on civil rights and 1964 and the parties, this time from Matt Glassman. Comprehensive. I didn't see anything there I disagreed with.
2. Before the jobs report was out...a convincing argument that today's jobs numbers aren't all that important, by Joshua Brown.
3. OK, I still think you should ignore the state polls so far...but if you have to mention them, then Steve Kornacki does a good job of putting them in context.
4. And Hans Noel on GOP WH 2012.
Friday, June 1, 2012
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Kornacki acknowledges that it's just one poll but then he goes ahead and makes a whole post about how it shows Obama might not be helped by strong economies in states like Iowa. If you're going to pay any attention to state polling at this point, you should only pay attention to polling averages not to individual polls.
ReplyDeleteNot germane to anything above, but...I just read that Mitt the Liar is losing to Obama by 25%(!) in Massachusetts. When was the last time a candidate won the WH while losing his home state?
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DeleteSorry, it had to be done.
More seriously, the whole "home state" thing is completely overrated in the modern world with cross-country moves and national media. For an example, play with the voting shifts maps on the NYT site: http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/map.html
DeleteCompare 2008 to 2000 and 2004. Take Texas for example: home state (and SITTING!) governor, then Prez: worth about 10 points more margin (so, 5 points more R and 5 points less D) than Rs got in Texas in 2008 (9 in 2000, 11 in 2004, when Bush was "less from there").
BUT! The national results are about as different. Bush "wins" in 2000 by -.5%; he wins in 2004 by 2%, and the Rs lose 2008 by 7 points. That's a 7-9 point swing. So, I'd say it's worth MAYBE 2 points in your home state.
And, what was election 2008 in MA? Ds by 26 points (up from Ds by 25 in 2004) So, losing by 25? Mittens could be said to be up about 1 point due to it being his "home state."
And then there's the question of what state to consider Romney's home....Michigan? RCP has Obama +7.5 (he won by 16 in 2008 while winning by 7 nationally, so he ran 9 points ahead of his national, whereas he's only running 5 points ahead now). Utah? Obama lost by 28 (so, 35 points more R than the nation). Latest polls in Utah are, get this, almost a year old. Using them anyway, Romney is up about 41 points there, or 43 points more R than the nation...a difference of 15.
It would appear that Utah considers itself Mitt's home......
The larger point, of course, is JB's constant refrain....ignore those polls!
The new mansion with the car elevator is in California, so maybe that's his home state. Anyway, not that it has any predictive value, but it would be a genuine curiousity for a candidate to win WH while losing the homestate, no? (And you're right. Gore lost Tennessee.)
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