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Death to the Incumbent! Part Two: Now with more Death.

Re: Death to the Incumbent! Part Two: Now with more Death.

New York City's new ballots kind of suck. The write in area doesn't even really provide you enough room to fit a reasonable length name. The text overall is too small, and they put the ballot measures on the back which some people are going to miss.
 
Re: Death to the Incumbent! Part Two: Now with more Death.

DNC Memo On the Elections
As you may expect, it's hilarious.
Blame Bush in the first paragraph? Check.
Set themselves up as underdogs by the 4th paragraph? Check.
"Secret money" accusations while ignoring labor contributions to Democrats? Check.
Finish with prediction of holding onto the house? Check.
 
Re: Death to the Incumbent! Part Two: Now with more Death.

Kepler said:
The usual cool stuff from His Nerdness, in particular, the magic number idea.
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And Princeton Election Consortium, with their semi-annual criticism of Nate: :)
As I wrote in 2008, despite the fuss about fancy modeling, for topline estimates, models such as FiveThirtyEight essentially add noise – needless uncertainty. [...] Historically, a simple meta-analysis of existing polls gives the most accurate predictions. In 2008, this worked beautifully, when my pre-election estimates were off by only 1 EV for President, 0 seats for House (an exact match!), and 1 seat in the Senate.
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More cold water at election.princeton.edu

ETA

Looks like the liberal arts take a sharper line with silver (more threatened?). From Middlebury:
Let me get this straight: it’s possible the polls are underestimating the Republican support. Or, they might be underestimating Democrats’ support. I think this means if his forecast model proves incorrect, it’s because the polls “were wrong all along”. Really? Might it instead have something to do with his model? Come on Silver – man up! As it is, you already take the easy way out by issuing a forecast a day before the election, in contrast to the political scientists who put their reputations on the line by Labor Day. Do you believe in your model or not?

The bottom line: if you want to know tomorrow’s weather, a weathercaster is good enough. If you want to know what causes the weather, you might want to look elsewhere.
Click to expand...
 
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Re: Death to the Incumbent! Part Two: Now with more Death.

I like Silver's presentation and all that, but wasn't there a stat from '08 where if you had just taken a calculator and averaged the polls yourself you would have gotten just as close as he got?
 
Re: Death to the Incumbent! Part Two: Now with more Death.

WeWantMore said:
DNC Memo On the Elections
As you may expect, it's hilarious.
Blame Bush in the first paragraph? Check.
Set themselves up as underdogs by the 4th paragraph? Check.
"Secret money" accusations while ignoring labor contributions to Democrats? Check.
Finish with prediction of holding onto the house? Check.
Click to expand...

Blame Bush in the first paragraph? After an 8 year Presidency it is amazing how little fault he has for anything that's happening now.
Set themselves up as underdogs by the 4th paragraph? Aren't they? Seems to me the Right played that card the last election.
"Secret money" accusations while ignoring labor contributions to Democrats? I'm not seeing the equivalence here. Although I do think the Democrats need to provide a smoking gun and stop whining about it all the time.
Finish with prediction of holding onto the house? What do you want them to do, concede defeat before the ballots are cast?
 
Re: Death to the Incumbent! Part Two: Now with more Death.

ScoobyDoo said:
Blame Bush in the first paragraph? After an 8 year Presidency it is amazing how little fault he has for anything that's happening now.
Click to expand...
Look at what they actually say.
2) too many people are looking for work or struggling to get by as a result of 8 years of irresponsible economic policies (and despite creating more private sector jobs in the last 8 months than President Bush did in 8 years
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That would be a great sentence in '08, but it takes no responsibility for these past two years. Also, you have to absolutely torture the numbers to get that stat about Bush.
Set themselves up as underdogs by the 4th paragraph? Aren't they? Seems to me the Right played that card the last election.
Click to expand...
And it was silly for the right to play it then, as it is for the Democrats to play it now. Especially when it comes from the same people predicting 50 year majorities 2 years ago.
"Secret money" accusations while ignoring labor contributions to Democrats? I'm not seeing the equivalence here. Although I do think the Democrats need to provide a smoking gun and stop whining about it all the time.
Click to expand...
The equivalence is, they've spent the past month moaning about outside money going to Republicans, all the while gleefully accepting money from unions. How isn't that the same thing?
Finish with prediction of holding onto the house? What do you want them to do, concede defeat before the ballots are cast?
Click to expand...
I get why they're doing it. Doesn't mean it's not hilarious though.
 
Re: Death to the Incumbent! Part Two: Now with more Death.

WeWantMore said:
I like Silver's presentation and all that, but wasn't there a stat from '08 where if you had just taken a calculator and averaged the polls yourself you would have gotten just as close as he got?
Click to expand...

That was one of Sam Wang's critiques (at the princeton blog).

Basically, the 24hr media demand constant "news" from pollsters and forecasters. Silver knows how to feed the beast, and he's very, very good at data visualization. So he's become a star. But ultimately, 99% of it is just more noise.
 
Re: Death to the Incumbent! Part Two: Now with more Death.

WeWantMore said:
The equivalence is, they've spent the past month moaning about outside money going to Republicans, all the while gleefully accepting money from unions. How isn't that the same thing?

.
Click to expand...

I still don't get it. The union money is known. I have no problem with money as long as it's known. See, I can make a decision on the Democrats based on the fact they are receiving money from unions. It's difficult to decide on the Republicans if I don't know where the money is coming from.

Disclose it.

Thus, I don't get the moral equivalence.
 
Re: Death to the Incumbent! Part Two: Now with more Death.

ScoobyDoo said:
Blame Bush in the first paragraph? After an 8 year Presidency it is amazing how little fault he has for anything that's happening now.
Click to expand...

I typically like your posts Scooby, but this one needs to be called out. I understand Bush screwed a lot of things up, but isn't it the job of those in office to get things done, solve problems, and to lead? Blaming the last guy doesn't get anything done, especially non-stop for two years. The "blame Bush" borken record wouldn't be so bad if the dems would actually get something positive done.
 
Re: Death to the Incumbent! Part Two: Now with more Death.

amherstblackbear said:
I would argue that it's actually scenario 3 (spend someone else's money on myself).

Even in this electoral climate, I see TV ads criticizing Virginia Congress members for letting Norfolk lose out to Mississippi re: military spending. Conservative ideology is well and good, and so is controlling deficits, but even in this election, it's still about looking out for #1.
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True, they take a cut for themselves and their pet projects but mostly they spend other people's money* on more numerous people in hopes of gathering enough votes to continue that practice.

*(in the most inefficient manner possible)
 
Re: Death to the Incumbent! Part Two: Now with more Death.

ScoobyDoo said:
I still don't get it. The union money is known. I have no problem with money as long as it's known. See, I can make a decision on the Democrats based on the fact they are receiving money from unions. It's difficult to decide on the Republicans if I don't know where the money is coming from.

Disclose it.

Thus, I don't get the moral equivalence.
Click to expand...

It's not like it's hard to know where the money is coming from though. How is "this ad paid for by American Crossroads" different from "this ad paid for by AFSCME"?

Not to mention that liberal groups have actually outspent conservative ones.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/44216.html
 
Re: Death to the Incumbent! Part Two: Now with more Death.

moe24 said:
I typically like your posts Scooby, but this one needs to be called out. I understand Bush screwed a lot of things up, but isn't it the job of those in office to get things done, solve problems, and to lead? Blaming the last guy doesn't get anything done, especially non-stop for two years. The "blame Bush" borken record wouldn't be so bad if the dems would actually get something positive done.
Click to expand...

I agree. If it's one thing we learned from 8 years under Bush II, it was that it was all Clinton's fault.
 
Re: Death to the Incumbent! Part Two: Now with more Death.

moe24 said:
I typically like your posts Scooby, but this one needs to be called out. I understand Bush screwed a lot of things up, but isn't it the job of those in office to get things done, solve problems, and to lead? Blaming the last guy doesn't get anything done, especially non-stop for two years. The "blame Bush" borken record wouldn't be so bad if the dems would actually get something positive done.
Click to expand...
I agree.

And nothing has angered me more than the Democrats dropping the ball on the jobs thing. The stimulus bill was supposed to be transparent and was supposed to do something.

What I was trying to highlight is how quick the turnaround has been. The Republicans get 6 years to **** everything up and the Democrats essentially only get two to try and fix it. With the two inbetween (2006-08) being adversarial.
 
Re: Death to the Incumbent! Part Two: Now with more Death.

moe24 said:
I typically like your posts Scooby, but this one needs to be called out. I understand Bush screwed a lot of things up, but isn't it the job of those in office to get things done, solve problems, and to lead? Blaming the last guy doesn't get anything done, especially non-stop for two years. The "blame Bush" borken record wouldn't be so bad if the dems would actually get something positive done.
Click to expand...

Screw things up? This country was in a total financial meltdown. Very few people would have projected that the Dow would actually reach 6600. To say nothing of the rush to war in Iraq.

Two years has seen a tremendous stabilization...seeing the Dow back above 11000. By those numbers alone the Dow is up well over 50%. Unemployment is still stubbornly high ...but there's almost no way we wouldn't be two years after the country was in danger of watching major banks collapse and watching 500 point drops in the Dow on a daily basis as there was real terror out there.

So IMO one could dissect the Dems stand on the election...but one cannot underestimate the type of crisis this country was in when Bush and company left office and the distance we've come since then.
 
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