November 3, 200817 yr I'd be willing to bet virtually anything that Mccain isnt winning all of Ohio, Pennsylvania,Missouri and Florida. Hell I'd probably take the same bet that he wont win 3 out of 4.
November 3, 200817 yr My guess (or hope) is that Obama is overpolling a bit (I think he did in the primaries) and that McCain will get most of the undecideds. If that happens McCain could win all thse states. Final Mason-Dixon battleground numbers: Florida: Obama 47, McCain 45, Undecided 7 Nevada: Obama 47, McCain 43, Undecided 8 Pennsylvania: Obama 47, McCain 43, Undecided 9 Ohio: McCain 47, Obama 45, Undecided 6 North Carolina: McCain 49, Obama 46, Undecided 5
November 3, 200817 yr My guess (or hope) is that Obama is overpolling a bit (I think he did in the primaries) and that McCain will get most of the undecideds. If that happens McCain could win all thse states. Final Mason-Dixon battleground numbers: Florida: Obama 47, McCain 45, Undecided 7 Nevada: Obama 47, McCain 43, Undecided 8 Pennsylvania: Obama 47, McCain 43, Undecided 9 Ohio: McCain 47, Obama 45, Undecided 6 North Carolina: McCain 49, Obama 46, Undecided 5 I am not voting for Obama so this is not wishfull thinking on my part the poll you cite of for PA most likely is an outlier . Every other poll shows Obama up between 7-10 points in PA . I dont think he will win by 7-10 but probably 2-5 point victory is probably what will happen in PA.
November 3, 200817 yr no denying that the Obama camp has been spectacular in their ground game, but I don't think you can say the McCain camp is doing an inadequate job in Florida. what good is to contact the same voter 10 times? It's well known among the political campaign experts that for every 12 contacts you get 1 voter to turnout and vote. In other words, the contact to success ratio is 12:1. As a result, contacting the same voter 10 times is actually not where you want to be - you need to contact that voter 2 more times. And contacting the voter 2 times is definitely way short of where you should be. I get what you're saying, but they've got a method to their strategy based on thorough research conducted over the course of many many presidential elections. This is more of a science than people realize. That's why the ground game is so important. Another thing the Obama campaign is applying is peer-to-peer contacts. Research has shown that peer-to-peer contacts are significantly more effective than the calls and door knocks from random strangers. As a result, they've put together a few million strong volunteers who's first task is to contact all their friends and persuade them to vote for Obama. Simultaneously, they apply the method I outlined above. To top it off, they have what is probably the most comprehensive voter database in the history of modern politics, and they're using advanced marketing strategies to identify undecided voters who may naturally lean Obama if they were provided with certain information on certain issues. So, they go out and specifically target those voters and provide them with the information that will hopefully persuade them to vote for Obama. For those of you on Obama's e-mail list, have you noticed that people get e-mails from the Obama campaign at different times? The same e-mails? Well, they do that for marketing purposes - they have a specific method on how to do that. I am not saying this just because I am a big Obama supporter. These guys are really really good. Top of the line. Think of Bush's GOTV drive in 2004 that targetted Evangelicals and make it broader and that's what it is. Just to put some anecdotal aspect to this, I went canvassing for him this past Saturday in VA along with a friend. I thought they were going to send me to some neighborhood outside of DC in Virginia. Instead they sent me an hour away to Warrenton, VA, in a county that went to Bush in 2004 64-36. I saw as many Obama signs as McCain signs. We knocked on about 42 doors. These were people who were either sporadic voters who leaned Obama or werepersuadable. Of the 42, most were not home. But we got 7 people who said they were voting for Obama. If he has boots on the ground in Warrenton, VA, I think his ground game is covering some serious turf.
November 3, 200817 yr My guess (or hope) is that Obama is overpolling a bit (I think he did in the primaries) and that McCain will get most of the undecideds. If that happens McCain could win all thse states. Final Mason-Dixon battleground numbers: Florida: Obama 47, McCain 45, Undecided 7 Nevada: Obama 47, McCain 43, Undecided 8 Pennsylvania: Obama 47, McCain 43, Undecided 9 Ohio: McCain 47, Obama 45, Undecided 6 North Carolina: McCain 49, Obama 46, Undecided 5 I am not voting for Obama so this is not wishfull thinking on my part the poll you cite of for PA most likely is an outlier . Every other poll shows Obama up between 7-10 points in PA . I dont think he will win by 7-10 but probably 2-5 point victory is probably what will happen in PA. I think Pennsylvania is the iffiest. If he loses it but wins Virginia and Colorado he would still win. Final Mason-Dixon battleground numbers: Colorado: Obama 49, McCain 44, Undecided 4 Virginia: Obama 47, McCain 44, Undecided 9
November 3, 200817 yr I strongly believe McCain is very much in play here in the Commonwealth. Just too many people here that can't bring themselves to vote for a guy with (D) next to his name.
November 3, 200817 yr My guess (or hope) is that Obama is overpolling a bit (I think he did in the primaries) and that McCain will get most of the undecideds. If that happens McCain could win all thse states. Final Mason-Dixon battleground numbers: Florida: Obama 47, McCain 45, Undecided 7 Nevada: Obama 47, McCain 43, Undecided 8 Pennsylvania: Obama 47, McCain 43, Undecided 9 Ohio: McCain 47, Obama 45, Undecided 6 North Carolina: McCain 49, Obama 46, Undecided 5 I am not voting for Obama so this is not wishfull thinking on my part the poll you cite of for PA most likely is an outlier . Every other poll shows Obama up between 7-10 points in PA . I dont think he will win by 7-10 but probably 2-5 point victory is probably what will happen in PA. I think Pennsylvania is the iffiest. If he loses it but wins Virginia and Colorado he would still win. Final Mason-Dixon battleground numbers: Colorado: Obama 49, McCain 44, Undecided 4 Virginia: Obama 47, McCain 44, Undecided 9 He's going to have a hell of a battle getting all of Colorado, Virginia, Florida, Nevada, Ohio, North Carolina, and Missouri if he doesn't get Pennsylvania.
November 3, 200817 yr My guess (or hope) is that Obama is overpolling a bit (I think he did in the primaries) and that McCain will get most of the undecideds. If that happens McCain could win all thse states. Final Mason-Dixon battleground numbers: Florida: Obama 47, McCain 45, Undecided 7 Nevada: Obama 47, McCain 43, Undecided 8 Pennsylvania: Obama 47, McCain 43, Undecided 9 Ohio: McCain 47, Obama 45, Undecided 6 North Carolina: McCain 49, Obama 46, Undecided 5 He didn't overpoll in the primaries. The polls were accurate for the most part, with a couple of exceptions. He outperformed the polls in Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin and throughout the South. He underperformed the polls in New Hampshire, California, and Texas. What do you mean by "most"? And you are picking the best possible polls for McCain right now - Mason Dixon appears to be an outlier in just about every single one of the states you list. Sadly, even if McCain wins all those states he probably still loses the election.
November 4, 200817 yr http://www.tarrance.com/files/Final-ballot...-prediction.pdf The final Battleground poll has is Obama winning 50.2% to 48.3%. Battleground was the best pollster in most of the past few elections and if the overall margin is only 1.9% I think McCain has a decent chance of winning the Electoral College.
November 5, 200817 yr http://www.tarrance.com/files/Final-ballot...-prediction.pdf The final Battleground poll has is Obama winning 50.2% to 48.3%. Battleground was the best pollster in most of the past few elections and if the overall margin is only 1.9% I think McCain has a decent chance of winning the Electoral College. It's over.
November 5, 200817 yr BTW, I think it is worth noting that Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus fame predicted the election incredibly well on his webside, FiveThirtyEight.com.
November 5, 200817 yr no props for me? i'm saddened. Sorry Das, you overshot it with Georgia. This is like the price is right and you went over.
November 5, 200817 yr Heading to the polls. May America make the right decision! Whoever wins, America loses. Agreed. Just like Alien v Predator II
November 5, 200817 yr no props for me? i'm saddened. Sorry Das, you overshot it with Georgia. This is like the price is right and you went over. ya but when montana goes blue, that makes up for it.
November 5, 200817 yr BTW, I think it is worth noting that Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus fame predicted the election incredibly well on his webside, FiveThirtyEight.com. Guy's a genius. The only state he may have gotten wrong there is Indiana - looks like Obama will win there by a hair.
November 7, 200817 yr Final prediction... Popular Vote: Obama 53 McCain 46 Electoral vote: Obama 396 McCain 142 Swing states won by Obama: Florida, Ohio, PA, MO Red states won by Obama: MT, GA, VA, NC, and ND Closer than usual states: SC, MS, and LA. Blowout. I was right about the popular vote - the updated numbers are 53-46. http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/president/ I was too optimistic about the electoral votes - was wrong about MT, GA, and ND. MO may yet go in the Obama column. Poala, how'd you do? :whistle
November 7, 200817 yr I guess I came close on the House and Senate but things definitely turned for the worse after I posted my presidential prediction. I always place the most value on Rasmussen and I should have stuck with him.
November 7, 200817 yr Ras is definitely the best pollster among the daily trackers. There are a few good pollsters for the state polls - PPP did very well this cycle. However, I'll say that things never turned for the worse after your prediction. Your prediction was flawed from the beginning. No objective analyst would have predicted a McCain victory. That's why people on this thread laughed at you. This election had been over for a few weeks already. The question was how badly McCain would lose. You hung your hat on the possibility of the Bradley Effect (basically, that some racists were claiming support for Obama but really intended to vote for McCain), contrary to all evidence showing that it no longer exists. I even posted an article by a researcher at Harvard showing that the Bradley Effect has not existed since 1996. I guess some people only believe what they want to believe. Ras and Pew are the best national pollsters. Pew also predicted 52-46. Nate Silver at www.fivethirtyeight.com also predicted 52-46. They were only off by one point. I'll stick with those guys for future elections as far as the national popular vote goes. Nate predicted every state, except for Indiana (he had McCain winning there). I'll stick with him for the state by state predictions.
November 7, 200817 yr Author I'm glad for Ras. He seem like a hard worker and fair individual, running a small but effective operation.
November 7, 200817 yr I'm glad for Ras. He seem like a hard worker and fair individual, running a small but effective operation. Definitely. He's a Republican, but the results in his polls show no bias. PPP is a Democratic pollster, and its polls show no bias, either.
November 7, 200817 yr When I posted it the RCP average was in a downward trend and was down to low 5s but unfortunately things turned for the worse and it ended at 7.8%. Obama did overpoll by 1.4%.
November 7, 200817 yr He didn't overpoll. Several of the polls giving him leads of 12, 13, 14 were clearly outliers and not worthy of consideration. The RCP average is not the bible of polls - they merely take the average of all the polls and make a prediction based on that. Any fool can average 15 polls. And just because it's a poll that is published doesn't make it worthy of attention. That's I always looked at Rasmussen. It's legit. And that's also why www.fivethirtyeight.com is the new bible of polls. It weighed polls by their relative strengths - the bad polls received a lower weighing in coming up with the predictions. Again, he did not overpoll. The polls that had him up over 10 percent were plain bad.
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