tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post4595491746499499255..comments2023-10-16T07:13:12.123-05:00Comments on A plain blog about politics: Romney Campaign Still Math-ChallengedJonathan Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-58658438499927187052012-11-30T07:11:16.842-06:002012-11-30T07:11:16.842-06:00>but Obama won moderates, which may be a better...>but Obama won moderates, which may be a better measure of 'swing' voters.<br /><br />Not really. Democrats always win self-described "moderate" voters by a greater margin than that of the general populace. They won this bloc by 56% in <a href="http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/results/president/exit-polls" rel="nofollow">2012</a>, 60% in <a href="http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/national-exit-polls.html" rel="nofollow">2008</a>, 54% in 2004, 52% in 2000, and 57% in 1996.<br /><br />This is function, I suspect, of the negative associations of the word "liberal." Many voters with standard Democratic views prefer the word "moderate" to "liberal." Republicans, in contrast, are in general perfectly comfortable with the word "conservative." So "moderate" doesn't really give us any better a sense of who are the swing voters than "independent" does.Kylopodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06932528611103718373noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-9131724525012203812012-11-30T01:44:10.409-06:002012-11-30T01:44:10.409-06:00My guess is that Stevens is looking at data from P...My guess is that Stevens is looking at data from Politico and/or CNN that isn't being updated. They show a margin of about a million votes closer than the current count.<br /><br />In fact CNN's site now shows:<br /><br />Florida 73,000<br />Ohio 103,000<br />Virginia 116,000<br />Colorado 113,000<br /><br />That's 405,000 in all.. but yeah, they'd have actually had to flip about 3.2 million Obama voters to gain 5% in the popular vote, and win those states by overcoming Obama's electoral college advantage.<br /><br />And yes, the myth of 'independent' voters. "Skewed" polls were a direct result of Republicans not wanting to identify with the crazies/tea party, and reclassifying as independents. So Romney won a GOP-leaning group of independents, but Obama won moderates, which may be a better measure of 'swing' voters.JSnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-63225930334810533582012-11-29T23:13:30.519-06:002012-11-29T23:13:30.519-06:00Agree with ASP, Peter, and Kylopod
The thing is: ...Agree with ASP, Peter, and Kylopod<br /><br />The thing is: the 2004 comp *was* relatively plausible. No, it's not as if it was extremely likely that Kerry could have done something to move Ohio 2%, but it's one state, not multiple states, and 2%, not over 5%. It's at least vaguely plausible that a different allocation of resources might have made a difference. <br /><br />Four states, with at least one over 5%? It's not a landslide, but it's hardly a close race. Jonathan Bernsteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-17582163489423801192012-11-29T22:21:22.155-06:002012-11-29T22:21:22.155-06:00Stevens is playing an old rhetorical trick where y...Stevens is playing an old rhetorical trick where you simply mention a number and then try to imply something about its relative smallness or largeness without providing enough context to justify that conclusion. One example of this gambit is the anti-Obama talking point from 2008 that Obama voted "present" over 100 times as a state senator. Of course, this failed to mention that his total votes numbered over 4,000, and so he voted "present" a relatively minuscule percentage of the time. But you wouldn't believe how many right-wingers I've encountered who think voting "present" was all Obama ever did--and it's quite possible all these people got that mistaken impression from a claim that wasn't technically a lie.<br /><br />Similarly, when Stevens describes Romney as "little more than 320,000 votes short of winning," he is implying that 320,000 votes isn't a big threshold to overcome, but he provides no support for this assumption other than in the way he phrases the sentence.Kylopodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06932528611103718373noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-76981869636087580652012-11-29T16:42:26.759-06:002012-11-29T16:42:26.759-06:00It's worth pointing out that the Romney people...It's worth pointing out that the Romney people thought whites would be around the same portion of the electorate they were in 2004. It was 87% in 1992, 83% in 1996, 81% in 2000, 77% in 2004, 74% in 2008, and 72% this year - a fairly even trend around -3% per year. Yet the Romney people bought into the false media narrative that 2008 was an outlier because Obama juiced minority turnout somehow and we would see a return to some imaginary trend.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-253492849323218862012-11-29T15:47:15.417-06:002012-11-29T15:47:15.417-06:00Is it possible that what he meant was that *a swit...Is it possible that what he meant was that *a switch of* 320,000 votes from Obama to Romney would have elected Romney? <br /><br />Either way, of course, the problem remains: the absolute number of votes you have to change may not seem that large but it requires winning at least one state which Romney lost by over 5 percent of the vote. (Of course a Romney-optimist's way of putting it would be "if we could just have persuaded 2.6 percent of voters in Colorado to change their minds, and a smaller percent in Virginia, Ohio, and Florida.")<br /><br />Anyway, using the number of voters whose minds you have to change as a basis is problematic for another reason: there just were not thaat many changeable voters. The campaign was more about getting your own voters to the polls than about persuading potential voters for the opposiiton to change their minds.DavidTnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-8183744405974386352012-11-29T13:42:02.606-06:002012-11-29T13:42:02.606-06:00"And we would have gotten away with it too, i..."And we would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you still-enfranchised lower-middle class and poor voters!"purushanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-12078569193768655132012-11-29T11:46:56.854-06:002012-11-29T11:46:56.854-06:00The whole discussion is silly -- the quintessentia...The whole discussion is silly -- the quintessential math that Republicans do to make themselves feel better. <br /><br />Obama won the popular vote by 4.5 million. So what Stevens is saying is that if things had broken EXACTLY right for us, we could MIGHT have won the race with the most enormous split between the popular and electoral college results that has ever been seen in any election in American history.<br /><br />Rove's election night argument about Ohio was much more plausible.Peter Principlenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-39012943830704492682012-11-29T10:56:39.098-06:002012-11-29T10:56:39.098-06:00I guess what I'm saying is that I'm a litt...I guess what I'm saying is that I'm a little uncomfortable with the following equation:<br /><br />Final vote = predicted vote based on fundamentals + candidate effect + campaign effect. <br /><br />I think there's error in there, so I'm not comfortable with the formulation of:<br />Candidate effect = Final vote - predicted - campaign effect. Matt Jarvisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-30692501278051653792012-11-29T10:53:39.769-06:002012-11-29T10:53:39.769-06:00Point taken.
But, once we unwrap that goose (no, ...Point taken.<br /><br />But, once we unwrap that goose (no, I have no idea what that saying is supposed to mean, and I just made it up, but I kinda like it), we have problems of candidate and of campaign. I would accept that campaign effects should be visible as baseline shifts in the polls during the campaign, or as a GOTV thing on election day differences. But where does that leave candidate effects? What would constitute evidence that an effect was due to the candidate's identity and not a campaign effect? I'm having trouble figuring that one out.<br /><br />Matt Jarvisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-22023425212631483662012-11-29T10:38:29.985-06:002012-11-29T10:38:29.985-06:00Sure. Odds are that even if it's totally true ...Sure. Odds are that even if it's totally true that Romney's campaign got the polling wrong that it didn't make much of a difference, if any.<br /><br />I've been meaning to write about this, however: the lead is up to 3.5% nationally, and >5% in the tipping point state(s). It's awful close to the point where we do have something real to explain beyond the fundamentals. <br /><br />Although today's GDP report may temper that a bit.Jonathan Bernsteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-17098484108680036832012-11-29T10:31:03.724-06:002012-11-29T10:31:03.724-06:00Ah, but let us also not commit the sin of "lo...Ah, but let us also not commit the sin of "losing campaigns were poorly run and winning campaigns did everything right."<br /><br />Granted, I haven't seen much yet that would inspire confidence in Stevens, and tripling down on the 47% theme after the blowback to Romney's conference call is indicative of somebody who's pretty tone-deaf, which is a TERRIBLE quality in a politcal hack. But, I'm not willig to go out on that limb of blaming Stevens for the fundamentals.Matt Jarvisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-8566544219314932212012-11-29T09:56:38.344-06:002012-11-29T09:56:38.344-06:00Hey, I noticed that, then plum (plumb?) forgot it ...Hey, I noticed that, then plum (plumb?) forgot it -- thanks for the reminder. My thought was to bring in Silver - to the effect that Romney would have had to win the national popular vote by perhaps 2% to overcome Obama's swing state advantage. That is, to move the 100-200k in key swing states would have required moving mountains.Andrew Sprunghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17601269968798865106noreply@blogger.com