Monday, November 3, 2008
Hot Jew-on-Jew action
Somehow I'd failed to notice the fact that Norm Coleman and Al Franken, both running for Minnesota's Senate seat, are both Jewish. How many Senate elections have featured a Jew running against a Jew? And why Minnesota?
The returns are in
Obama takes Dixville Notch, NH, 15-6. Even LBJ didn't pull that one off.
Update: Nate Silver points out that the Dixville Notch vote is predictive of approximately nothing.
Update: Nate Silver points out that the Dixville Notch vote is predictive of approximately nothing.
Student predictions
Here's the distribution of electoral vote predictions made by the students in my freshman seminar class:
My predictions
One of my graduate school mentors suggested that it was good for scholars to make predictions. It involves a little bit of risk by having us put our presumed knowledge of political events up for public scrutiny. We're required to actually think about stuff and put our ideas out there. There will always be random events that affect elections, but political scientists should be able to get pretty close in their predictions.
With that in mind, here's what I'm guessing will happen.
Way back on August 1st, I predicted that Obama would get 52.3% of the two-party vote, with McCain getting the remaining 47.7%. This still strikes me as pretty reasonable. Yes, there's a fair amount of polling evidence out there suggesting that Obama will win by considerably more, but I've found more often than not that my early predictions tend to be closer to the truth than the ones I make up just before the election, so I'm sticking with that. I'm guessing that Nader, Barr, and others pull roughly equally from the two major parties. So the final vote share will be Obama getting around 51 and McCain getting around 47.
My electoral map prediction is reproduced here:
If I were drawing it again today, I might reverse Ohio and Florida, or maybe give both to Obama. But I'll stick with this, giving Obama 318 EVs to McCain's 220.
I'll concede that I haven't paid enough attention to House and Senate races. Still, just from what I've been able to read, I'll guess that the Democrats pick up 20 House seats and 7 Senate seats, including Alaska's.
Dems will hold onto the Colorado state House and Senate. The personhood amendment will fail. The Earth will continue to revolve around the sun and men will continue to act goofy in the presence of women.
With that in mind, here's what I'm guessing will happen.
Way back on August 1st, I predicted that Obama would get 52.3% of the two-party vote, with McCain getting the remaining 47.7%. This still strikes me as pretty reasonable. Yes, there's a fair amount of polling evidence out there suggesting that Obama will win by considerably more, but I've found more often than not that my early predictions tend to be closer to the truth than the ones I make up just before the election, so I'm sticking with that. I'm guessing that Nader, Barr, and others pull roughly equally from the two major parties. So the final vote share will be Obama getting around 51 and McCain getting around 47.
My electoral map prediction is reproduced here:
If I were drawing it again today, I might reverse Ohio and Florida, or maybe give both to Obama. But I'll stick with this, giving Obama 318 EVs to McCain's 220.I'll concede that I haven't paid enough attention to House and Senate races. Still, just from what I've been able to read, I'll guess that the Democrats pick up 20 House seats and 7 Senate seats, including Alaska's.
Dems will hold onto the Colorado state House and Senate. The personhood amendment will fail. The Earth will continue to revolve around the sun and men will continue to act goofy in the presence of women.
More on cellphone bias
Interesting graph from 538:
The graphs shows Obama's advantage over McCain as measured in various recent surveys. The yellow-orange bars represent those polling organizations that contact cellphone users for their samples. The implication here is that most polling organizations could be pretty significantly understating Obama's true level of support by failing to contact cell users.
The graphs shows Obama's advantage over McCain as measured in various recent surveys. The yellow-orange bars represent those polling organizations that contact cellphone users for their samples. The implication here is that most polling organizations could be pretty significantly understating Obama's true level of support by failing to contact cell users.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
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