Earlier today, Barack Obama gave a speech in which he said that: Congressional leaders from both parties are close to a deal to avert the so-called "fiscal cliff;" that deal has not yet been reached; it is the Republicans' fault that the deal is not being reached; and the Republicans are not going to get their preferred solution to this whole situation. Rumor has it that House Republicans have been seriously pissed off at this speech, and are basically refusing to vote on anything tonight because Obama said mean things about them. What I'm wondering is whether that sequence of events might've been deliberate on Obama's part. It's been obvious all along that the fundamental logic of the deal-making favors Democratic policy results if we go over the cliff into the new year: Obama can then say to Republicans, okay, here's the Obama tax cut, and in exchange for my letting you pass it, which will be giving me what I want anyway, I'll make you give me a bunch of other stuff that I want. Republicans would be in a very difficult position to resist that tactic. So it makes sense for Obama to want to go over the cliff for a day or two. But, as has been usual for the last two years, it's quite important for him to make sure people blame Republicans for it. So making a very public display of having been working on a deal until the last minute, and getting House Republicans to sabotage any potential deal because they felt personally offended by Obama, is arguably the best of all relevant worlds. People keep doubting that Obama is incorporating the craziness of the Republicans into his strategy, which he would typically have been doing by offering more in deals than he actually wanted to give up, secure in the knowledge that House Republicans can't take yes for an answer. But I think that this time, it might well be the truth: Obama had a big noisy press conference because he wanted to throw the House Republican caucus into a hissy-fit, delivering him a more advantageous tactical situation while squarely delivering them the blame.
Happy New Year?
Showing posts with label 2012. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2012. Show all posts
Monday, December 31, 2012
Saturday, December 22, 2012
He did it!
The Doctor saved us!!!
(Okay, given my earlier post about time zones and all, maybe I have to wait another few hours before December 21st, 2012 has good and truly bitten the dust across all of planet earth. Whatever.)
(Okay, given my earlier post about time zones and all, maybe I have to wait another few hours before December 21st, 2012 has good and truly bitten the dust across all of planet earth. Whatever.)
Friday, December 21, 2012
It's Always the End of the World as We Know It
(NOTE: If you haven't seen through the end of Season 7, Part I of Doctor Who, it's possible you won't want to read this post. I think the quote I use isn't particularly spoilerish, but still.)
Friday, November 16, 2012
How Not To Analyze Miguel Cabrera's MVP Win
As indeed I might have predicted in advance, I'm not entirely sure what to think about the American League Most Valuable Player race. I think I would have voted for Miguel Cabrera, who won, so I should be happy, but on the other hand, since I recognize that Mike Trout deserved the award at least as much as Cabrera, I'd've liked to see it a wee bit closer. But I do know some things that I definitely do not think about the race, and many of them are exemplified by this article on Slate, whose thesis is that, like Mitt Romney, Miguel Cabrera was the candidate of old white men, but unlike Romney, his electorate consisted mostly of that group, so he won while Romney lost.
Problems abound. First of all, Miguel Cabrera is himself Hispanic, while Mike Trout is rather distinctly white. Furthermore, as admitted in the article itself, all three of the not-white-men who got to vote for AL MVP voted for, uh, Cabrera. So it looks like race isn't the main factor here, although there is a more plausible statistical link with age. But my more fundamental problem is the way the article frames the arguments behind supporting Cabrera: as unthinking, reactionary gibberish combined with a healthy dose of you-kids-get-off-my-lawn-ism. The evidence for this point seems to be one guy who wrote a column that has exactly these traits, and from this single datum it is inferred that this is the only argument which can be made for Trout. My argument, on the other hand, is simple and, I think, reasonable: yes, Trout was clearly the better player this past season, but Miguel Cabrera won the frickin' Triple Crown, and that's just a trump card. I admit openly that this is what one might call an irrational argument, or at least a non-rational argument. But because I admit it, because I say openly that I think the award ought to go to player X despite the fact that player Y had a better season of baseball, I'm not being ignorant or reactionary or acting in knee-jerk opposition to modern statistical analysis.
This sentence in particular bothers me:
Now, I do agree with the article's actual proposal, though it's a proposal that's never really made explicitly. The BBWAA's voting system does empower people with relatively traditionalist and non-statistical approaches to these issues, and thereby loses out on what the sabermetric types have to offer. It would be nice if this were different, not particularly because the statheads are right (although they are pretty clearly right on the facts and, I think, more often than not right in their interpretations of those facts) but because everyone should benefit from broadening the set of voices which are amplified and empowered. But this problem doesn't mean that the Cabrera for MVP cause was absurd, or that supporting it makes you a reactionary and a fool, or that it makes you equivalent to the old white men who supported Mitt Romney.
Problems abound. First of all, Miguel Cabrera is himself Hispanic, while Mike Trout is rather distinctly white. Furthermore, as admitted in the article itself, all three of the not-white-men who got to vote for AL MVP voted for, uh, Cabrera. So it looks like race isn't the main factor here, although there is a more plausible statistical link with age. But my more fundamental problem is the way the article frames the arguments behind supporting Cabrera: as unthinking, reactionary gibberish combined with a healthy dose of you-kids-get-off-my-lawn-ism. The evidence for this point seems to be one guy who wrote a column that has exactly these traits, and from this single datum it is inferred that this is the only argument which can be made for Trout. My argument, on the other hand, is simple and, I think, reasonable: yes, Trout was clearly the better player this past season, but Miguel Cabrera won the frickin' Triple Crown, and that's just a trump card. I admit openly that this is what one might call an irrational argument, or at least a non-rational argument. But because I admit it, because I say openly that I think the award ought to go to player X despite the fact that player Y had a better season of baseball, I'm not being ignorant or reactionary or acting in knee-jerk opposition to modern statistical analysis.
This sentence in particular bothers me:
Miguel Cabrera’s voters are ink-stained traditionalists who long for a time before nerds ruined baseball by explaining how it worked.Now, this might be descriptively true, although to be sure you'd need to look at the roughly two-dozen individuals who did vote for Cabrera and ask them why they voted the way they did. But it doesn't have to be true. It's perfectly possible, for example, to be perfectly aware of "how baseball works," as this author rather condescendingly puts it, and therefore to know that, in very meaningful senses, Cabrera just didn't come close to having as good a season as Trout, and yet to think that this does not settle the MVP case. Wins Above Replacement can claim, or at least come close to claiming, a rather natural monopoly on being the appropriate subject of analysis from the General Manager's vantage-point, i.e. in asking, which player will increase my team's win total by the most next year? But there's no particular reason to think that the GM mindset is the implicit criterion for the Most Valuable Player Award. And while I don't think it makes sense, for instance, to deny a pitcher the Cy Young Award because, while you cannot deny that their results were the best in the league, you dislike aesthetically their style of pitching, I do think it reasonable to say that the Triple Crown has a certain magic to it, that it constitutes a valid "intangible" which justifies, under the standard of reasonableness, a vote for Cabrera over Trout.
Now, I do agree with the article's actual proposal, though it's a proposal that's never really made explicitly. The BBWAA's voting system does empower people with relatively traditionalist and non-statistical approaches to these issues, and thereby loses out on what the sabermetric types have to offer. It would be nice if this were different, not particularly because the statheads are right (although they are pretty clearly right on the facts and, I think, more often than not right in their interpretations of those facts) but because everyone should benefit from broadening the set of voices which are amplified and empowered. But this problem doesn't mean that the Cabrera for MVP cause was absurd, or that supporting it makes you a reactionary and a fool, or that it makes you equivalent to the old white men who supported Mitt Romney.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
My Election Predictions: They Were Pretty Awesome
I made a prediction in all 51 Presidential state-level contests and all 33 Senate contests that were held last night. Of those 84 races, I was correct in 82 of them, including going 51-for-51 at the Presidential level. I correctly called 332 Obama, 206 Romney as the final electoral tally, with Obama winning all his 2008 states except Indiana, North Carolina, and Omaha's single elector, but winning everything else, including Florida. I also correctly predicted 55 Democratic Senators, assuming Angus King does the obvious thing regarding caucus choice. My only errors were in North Dakota, where I was honestly a bit surprised that Heidi Heitkamp managed to pull it out, and Nevada, where I thought the legendary Democratic turnout machine would deliver a victory for Shelley Berkley. I was wrong as to both of those, but they canceled out in terms of overall partisan balance.
My predictions compare very well to Nate Silver's. Like me, he nailed the Presidential race, even having Florida as pretty much a tie with Obama the narrow victor. Like me, he got two Senate races wrong, both in the west. Unlike me, however, he did not call the final Senate balance of power correctly, because his errors did not cancel out; he had Heitkamp losing in ND, but also had Jon Tester losing re-election in Montana. I had observed a while back that ND and MT were two very sparsely-polled Senate contests, and the FiveThirtyEight model was giving an awful lot of weight to the "state fundamentals" in them. In other words, Nate's model was assuming that the state partisan gravity would assert itself rather strongly against polling that suggested really close races. I was always a bit skeptical that it would, and indeed it didn't. In fact, the reason for thinking Berkley would win in NV was that the state's partisan gravity would outweigh the rather substantial volume of polling in that state. I'm a bit embarrassed, in retrospect, to have bought into that, although the fact that it has happened before in that state makes it a bit more understandable. Overall, however, Nate and I and really anyone who was willing to take the polls at face value did really well in forecasting the state-level contests.
One thing to mention, by way of tooting my own horn, is that I've been saying for at least ten or eleven months now that I thought the Senate races would go very well. Specifically, since Olympia Snowe's retirement I've been pretty damn confident we'd hold the Senate, and even before than I thought it was pretty likely. So I've been correctly predicting what happened last night since a time when pretty much everyone thought we were going to lose control of the chamber. I don't remember if I wrote a blog post to that effect, but I definitely have been saying it in person to my friends and family. Part of why is that the Republican tendency to throw away multiple winnable races per cycle has just become, in my opinion, predictable at this point, so I was always sort of assuming from the start that stuff like that which occurred in Indiana and Missouri would happen somewhere. And I enter the 2014 prediction season, which I admit is looking to be a bloodbath at the Senate level, with that same assumption in mind. I don't know where the Republicans will cough up winnable seats, but I'm pretty sure that they will do it somewhere.
Another thing I'd say is that my method seems to have been pretty well vindicated. That method, specifically, is to get all my polling data from looking at what PublicPolicyPolling says, and what FiveThirtyEight says. Both sources aced the election; many other sources bungled it rather badly. PPP are just clearly the best in the polling game right now, and Nate does the best job I know of at taking the vast bulk of less-awesome polling data and turning it into a useful commodity. I plan on continuing this method going forward, and I expect to continue being vindicated in it.
As for the House...? Well, I'm a bit surprised that Democratic gains were that meager, or maybe disappointed is a better word than surprised, because this was always what people were saying. It looks right now like we might get circa 200 seats when all's said and done, leaving us with a further 18 to take back the House in future elections.
But on the whole, given that my predictions were pretty good ones, it's good to be right.
Forthcoming later today will be a piece of general reactions to the election, and then a piece previewing the next couple of years, both of which could be very long. It's snowing right now, just the perfect little icing (literally!) on the cake of the past 24 hours, so I might not get to them for a while; staring out the window at the snow takes precedence. But they will get written.
My predictions compare very well to Nate Silver's. Like me, he nailed the Presidential race, even having Florida as pretty much a tie with Obama the narrow victor. Like me, he got two Senate races wrong, both in the west. Unlike me, however, he did not call the final Senate balance of power correctly, because his errors did not cancel out; he had Heitkamp losing in ND, but also had Jon Tester losing re-election in Montana. I had observed a while back that ND and MT were two very sparsely-polled Senate contests, and the FiveThirtyEight model was giving an awful lot of weight to the "state fundamentals" in them. In other words, Nate's model was assuming that the state partisan gravity would assert itself rather strongly against polling that suggested really close races. I was always a bit skeptical that it would, and indeed it didn't. In fact, the reason for thinking Berkley would win in NV was that the state's partisan gravity would outweigh the rather substantial volume of polling in that state. I'm a bit embarrassed, in retrospect, to have bought into that, although the fact that it has happened before in that state makes it a bit more understandable. Overall, however, Nate and I and really anyone who was willing to take the polls at face value did really well in forecasting the state-level contests.
One thing to mention, by way of tooting my own horn, is that I've been saying for at least ten or eleven months now that I thought the Senate races would go very well. Specifically, since Olympia Snowe's retirement I've been pretty damn confident we'd hold the Senate, and even before than I thought it was pretty likely. So I've been correctly predicting what happened last night since a time when pretty much everyone thought we were going to lose control of the chamber. I don't remember if I wrote a blog post to that effect, but I definitely have been saying it in person to my friends and family. Part of why is that the Republican tendency to throw away multiple winnable races per cycle has just become, in my opinion, predictable at this point, so I was always sort of assuming from the start that stuff like that which occurred in Indiana and Missouri would happen somewhere. And I enter the 2014 prediction season, which I admit is looking to be a bloodbath at the Senate level, with that same assumption in mind. I don't know where the Republicans will cough up winnable seats, but I'm pretty sure that they will do it somewhere.
Another thing I'd say is that my method seems to have been pretty well vindicated. That method, specifically, is to get all my polling data from looking at what PublicPolicyPolling says, and what FiveThirtyEight says. Both sources aced the election; many other sources bungled it rather badly. PPP are just clearly the best in the polling game right now, and Nate does the best job I know of at taking the vast bulk of less-awesome polling data and turning it into a useful commodity. I plan on continuing this method going forward, and I expect to continue being vindicated in it.
As for the House...? Well, I'm a bit surprised that Democratic gains were that meager, or maybe disappointed is a better word than surprised, because this was always what people were saying. It looks right now like we might get circa 200 seats when all's said and done, leaving us with a further 18 to take back the House in future elections.
But on the whole, given that my predictions were pretty good ones, it's good to be right.
Forthcoming later today will be a piece of general reactions to the election, and then a piece previewing the next couple of years, both of which could be very long. It's snowing right now, just the perfect little icing (literally!) on the cake of the past 24 hours, so I might not get to them for a while; staring out the window at the snow takes precedence. But they will get written.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Jim Cramer's Crazy Election Prediction
So, it has achieved a fair bit of notoriety that Jim Cramer predicted that Obama would win 440 electoral votes. This is pretty patently ridiculous. How ridiculous, you ask? Well, I've taken the 538 state popular vote estimates from a few days ago (when they provided a convenient chart of that figure for all 50 states in one place), and given Obama states in descending order of his margin in them until he hit 440. Here's what the map looks like:
That's, um, ridiculous. It's also 451 electoral votes, which is not 440. In fact, I can't see any good way to hit 440 on the dot. You could subtract an 11, like Arizona or Indiana, but c'mon, we're giving Obama Texas, there's no way AZ/IN are marginal states here. Or you could take away South Carolina and one of the 3's, probably one of the Dakotas, but that's -12, not -11, giving 439. I suppose you could add the next state on the list, West Virginia, which gives an extra 5, and then try to subtract 16, probably just by taking away Georgia. That's 440, but the world in which Obama wins WV but not GA is a really weird one.
Although I suppose that's not such a disqualifier, since we're talking about a world in which he wins Texas, so "weird" is kind of a given. The point here is really that it's clear beyond a reasonable doubt that Jim Cramer did not have a map of states won and states lost in mind when he made his prediction. He couldn't have. Not only does the magnitude of his ridiculousness become apparent when you have to draw up a map, actually getting to that specific number is really, really hard. This is not so much a prediction, in other words, as a blancmange--no, wait, that's something different. Not so much a prediction as an expression of the sense that Obama is going to win, probably by a decent margin, but with no idea what that actually means.
I should add that there were times during this campaign when I thought a map like that one might be possible. If, say, Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain had been the nominee. Maybe if Newt had won the primary, though I'm a bit skeptical that such an enormous landslide would've materialized. In any event, we've had six close elections in a row now, with neither candidate getting 400 electoral votes unless Mr. Cramer knows something the rest of us really don't. That's weird. As best I can tell it's only happened once before that six consecutive elections have been highly competitive, in roughly the 1876 through 1896 period. I have a feeling it has to end eventually, though I'm not sure what will make that happen. But I think the above map is an interesting one to look at as a possible configuration of a latent Democratic landslide. It would be a really fun map.
Although I suppose that's not such a disqualifier, since we're talking about a world in which he wins Texas, so "weird" is kind of a given. The point here is really that it's clear beyond a reasonable doubt that Jim Cramer did not have a map of states won and states lost in mind when he made his prediction. He couldn't have. Not only does the magnitude of his ridiculousness become apparent when you have to draw up a map, actually getting to that specific number is really, really hard. This is not so much a prediction, in other words, as a blancmange--no, wait, that's something different. Not so much a prediction as an expression of the sense that Obama is going to win, probably by a decent margin, but with no idea what that actually means.
I should add that there were times during this campaign when I thought a map like that one might be possible. If, say, Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain had been the nominee. Maybe if Newt had won the primary, though I'm a bit skeptical that such an enormous landslide would've materialized. In any event, we've had six close elections in a row now, with neither candidate getting 400 electoral votes unless Mr. Cramer knows something the rest of us really don't. That's weird. As best I can tell it's only happened once before that six consecutive elections have been highly competitive, in roughly the 1876 through 1896 period. I have a feeling it has to end eventually, though I'm not sure what will make that happen. But I think the above map is an interesting one to look at as a possible configuration of a latent Democratic landslide. It would be a really fun map.
Monday, November 5, 2012
My Election Prediction
As far as the Senate, I predict the following winners: Angus King (I-ME), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Bob Casey (D-PA), Tom Carper (D-DE), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Joe Donnelly (D-IN), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Bob Corker (R-TN), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Rick Berg (R-ND), Jon Tester (D-MT), John Barrasso (R-WY), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Shelley Berkley (D-NV), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Mazie Hirono (D-HI). Democrats would lose seats in Nebraska and North Dakota, but would pick up seats in Maine (assuming, as I am, that King caucuses with the Democrats), Massachusetts, Indiana, and Nevada, for a net gain of two seats and 55 total seats after the election. Of these predictions, I'm on a bit of a limb in Nevada on the grounds that Harry Reid's people know what they're doing, I've declined to go out on a limb in North Dakota, and in Montana I'm being slightly optimistic but eminently reasonable, I'd say. Overall I'd be modestly surprised if the Democrats actually manage to lose net seats, and even holding our position will be an improvement since the caucus will get much more progressive.
As for the House, who the hell knows? My feeling is that the margin of error on any possible forecast at this point must be enormous, because there's just been so little public polling of House races all cycle. I will not be surprised if Democrats take back the House, but I also won't be surprised if they don't. I hear the median House district is R+3 by Cook Partisan Voting Index, but it's not impossible for Democrats to have a +3 kind of election. At the same time, if gains get blunted by Republican incumbent-protection redistricting, it will be depressing but not shocking. (On that subject, actually, I'm wondering why parties don't do new redistricting whenever they take over a state government mid-decade. There's nothing stopping them.)
So, we'll see if I'm right. If I am, I'll be very happy. And if not, well... I may decide to start liking alcohol.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Lingering Effects of First Debate Almost Gone
According to tonight's FiveThirtyEight forecast, or the most recent version of it in any case, Barack Obama has an 83.7% chance of winning Tuesday's Presidential election. The last day on which he had a higher chance of victory was October 5th, at 84.9%, a very similar state of affairs. The day before that, October 4th, was Obama's highest odds of victory ever, at 87.1%. The day before that, October 3rd, was the date of the first Presidential debate in Denver, Colorado, which essentially everyone thought Obama lost. Obviously, the October 4th forecast didn't yet reflect Obama's decline, as the polls released that day didn't include any post-Denver interviews. But starting on the Fifth, Obama plummeted, dropping all the way down to a measly 61.1% chance of winning on October 12th. But the Vice Presidential Debate, on October 11th, was seen as a win for Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, and Obama won the second and third Presidential debates rather handily, and ever since the 12th of October he's been inching his way back up in the forecast. For a while this had looked like basically a point a day, though it's accelerated of late. Long story short, Obama has clawed his way back to roughly the same odds of victory that he had after Romney's debate victory had only been processed by the polls for a single day. One more good day of polling tomorrow could easily get him back to his highest victory odds yet.
Of course, that's just the "percent chance to win" forecast. Since we've gotten a lot closer to Election Day, the implicit margin of error in the forecast has gone way down, so the actual margin that's giving Obama these same odds of winning as on October 5th is much smaller than the margin he held on that date. Specifically, right now he's projected to win 305.3 electoral votes, and to win the popular vote by 2.2%, numbers which shift just slightly to 306.3 and 2.3% if you switch from the forecast to the now-cast. On October 5th, Obama was forecast with 317.7 electoral votes and a 3.9% popular-vote margin, and had a 4.7% lead that equated to an average of 327.7 electoral votes in the October 5th now-cast. So Obama's margin has been declining in more or less lock-step with what I like to think of as the cone of declining uncertainty. (Visualize the lines from any point on the electoral-vote or popular-vote forecast graphs at date X to the point that would, if it were the November 6th forecast, give the same odds of victory. If you do this for the leading and the trailing candidate from the same date, it's a cone.)
Still, the fact remains that Mitt Romney is very close to having failed to increase his odds of winning this election over the last month, including what was by far the best night of his political life.
Of course, that's just the "percent chance to win" forecast. Since we've gotten a lot closer to Election Day, the implicit margin of error in the forecast has gone way down, so the actual margin that's giving Obama these same odds of winning as on October 5th is much smaller than the margin he held on that date. Specifically, right now he's projected to win 305.3 electoral votes, and to win the popular vote by 2.2%, numbers which shift just slightly to 306.3 and 2.3% if you switch from the forecast to the now-cast. On October 5th, Obama was forecast with 317.7 electoral votes and a 3.9% popular-vote margin, and had a 4.7% lead that equated to an average of 327.7 electoral votes in the October 5th now-cast. So Obama's margin has been declining in more or less lock-step with what I like to think of as the cone of declining uncertainty. (Visualize the lines from any point on the electoral-vote or popular-vote forecast graphs at date X to the point that would, if it were the November 6th forecast, give the same odds of victory. If you do this for the leading and the trailing candidate from the same date, it's a cone.)
Still, the fact remains that Mitt Romney is very close to having failed to increase his odds of winning this election over the last month, including what was by far the best night of his political life.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Winning the Small States Would Give Obama Options
One interesting feature of the FiveThirtyEight model is that it doesn't just calculate a point estimate for the popular-vote margin in each state, it also calculates a margin of error for that estimate. And this isn't simply some assumption based on how far in the distance the election is; rather, it's derived from the data available in that state, with I think the most important component being the amount of polling available in each state. The intuition is fairly simple: if a state has been polled to death, we have a better sense of the state of play there, and ought be more confident in our predictions regarding that state, than if there have only been a handful of polls. Part of what that means for 2012 is that Ohio, which has been polled to death, has a rather small error bar around its forecast, as can be observed from the "Competitive State Summary" in this article.
The fact that, in particular, Ohio has a much more confident forecast than Iowa or New Hampshire means that the order of the states by Obama's likelihood of winning them is not the same as Obama's order of states by Obama's expected margin in them. So if you draw up a path-of-least-resistance map based on the 538 odds, you add in all the 90%+ states, and then Wisconsin, and then Nevada, and you're at 253 electoral votes, and then Ohio and you're at 271 and Obama wins. But if you construct a path of least resistance map based on the 538 margins instead, after Nevada's 253 you next toss in Iowa and New Hampshire, getting to 263. Now, since the next state on your list is Ohio, which would've been the tipping-point state anyway by the other method, Iowa and New Hampshire are redundant, and so the path of least resistance is probably basically the same by this method: you add on Ohio, get up to 281, and then ditch Iowa and New Hampshire as superfluous.
But that doesn't mean the fact that Obama's margins in Iowa and New Hampshire are larger than that in Ohio couldn't be relevant. Consider this map:
The dark blue states are those Obama leads by at least 3 points on the current FiveThirtyEight forecast, which total 253 electoral votes. The light blue states are, well, Iowa and New Hampshire, the two other states Obama leads by more than he leads Ohio. The red states are those Romney leads in, and the purple states are those Obama leads in but not by more than in Ohio. If you only give Obama the dark blue states, then he must add Ohio or Colorado and Virginia in order to be victorious. But if you tack on Iowa and New Hampshire, giving him a base of 263, then Ohio or Colorado or Virginia would do it. Ohio would get him to the highly-superfluous 281, Virginia would get him to 276, in which case he could jettison one of IA and NH, and Colorado would put him at 272.
Winning these small states, which for whatever it's worth happen to be the two most important primary states, in other words, gives Obama an extra degree of flexibility. They would allow him to win with his Midwest firewall, his Southern firewall, or his Western firewall, any one of the three. So while Iowa and New Hampshire are superfluous for purely path-of-least-resistance purposes, they matter a great deal in terms of the number of relatively easy paths to victory available to Obama.
The fact that, in particular, Ohio has a much more confident forecast than Iowa or New Hampshire means that the order of the states by Obama's likelihood of winning them is not the same as Obama's order of states by Obama's expected margin in them. So if you draw up a path-of-least-resistance map based on the 538 odds, you add in all the 90%+ states, and then Wisconsin, and then Nevada, and you're at 253 electoral votes, and then Ohio and you're at 271 and Obama wins. But if you construct a path of least resistance map based on the 538 margins instead, after Nevada's 253 you next toss in Iowa and New Hampshire, getting to 263. Now, since the next state on your list is Ohio, which would've been the tipping-point state anyway by the other method, Iowa and New Hampshire are redundant, and so the path of least resistance is probably basically the same by this method: you add on Ohio, get up to 281, and then ditch Iowa and New Hampshire as superfluous.
But that doesn't mean the fact that Obama's margins in Iowa and New Hampshire are larger than that in Ohio couldn't be relevant. Consider this map:
Winning these small states, which for whatever it's worth happen to be the two most important primary states, in other words, gives Obama an extra degree of flexibility. They would allow him to win with his Midwest firewall, his Southern firewall, or his Western firewall, any one of the three. So while Iowa and New Hampshire are superfluous for purely path-of-least-resistance purposes, they matter a great deal in terms of the number of relatively easy paths to victory available to Obama.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Census Reapportionment Not Mattering in Obama/Romney Contest
In the last census, northeastern industrial states lost a bunch of electoral votes, and Sun Belt states gained a lot of electoral votes. Democrats tend to do better in the former than the latter. That's the kind of thing that can only matter in a close election, but we're in a close election, so the electoral math matters. Will this shift of electoral power from the left-leaning to the right-leaning parts of the country matter this time around? Well, I suppose we don't know what the actual map will look like just yet, but we can get a sense of how the states are lining up. If we make a "path of least resistance" map, i.e. assign states to each candidate in descending order of how likely (per 538's current forecast) they are to carry those states, we find that Ohio is the tipping-point state right now, i.e. for both the Obama and the Romney path-of-least-resistance winning map Ohio is the last state added to the tally. The map looks like this:
In this map, Obama has 253 electoral votes, Romney has 267, and Ohio's 18 are the tipping-point. If we give them to Romney, he wins 285-253, and if we give them to Obama, he wins 271-267. So the question is, would either scenario be changed by reverting to 2000 census figures?
Answer: no. Of the blue states on that map, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Illinois each lost a vote, while New York shed two electors and Nevada and Washington gained one apiece, for a net loss of 5 electors under the new figures. So Obama's 253 electoral votes in these states were 258 votes before the 2010 census; not enough for a victory. But, of course, if you tack on the 20 votes from Ohio, you've got 278, and an Obama win. So the path-of-least-resistance calculus would be identical with the 2000 numbers: if each candidate won every state that FiveThirtyEight currently considers them to be more likely to win than any state they do win (i.e., if each candidate takes a path of least resistance given the current 538 odds), it all comes down to Ohio.
We can monkey with this calculus a bit, however. Suppose Obama loses Ohio, but goes looking for backup options. His best bets are Iowa and New Hampshire, worth a combined 10 votes now and 11 votes last decade. Under the new lines, that gets him to 263, which is no good. Under the old lines, that would have been 269, good for a tie but then, almost certainly, a loss in the House of Representatives. Or what about Virginia? It's got 13 votes under both census counts, so adding Virginia to the blue states on that map gives 266 and a loss under the current lines, but 271 and a win under the old lines. Colorado's 9 votes under both censuses would get Obama to 262 or 267, neither of which is sufficient; however, under the old lines, Colorado plus New Hampshire would have done it.
Another wacky scenario would be if Obama were to win Florida, while losing some other states that look easier for him as of this instant. Tack Florida on to the map above and you get 282 electoral votes under the new lines, and 284 under the old lines--since Florida gained two votes, this reduces the difference. Obviously either would be enough for a win, but we can then peel off Obama's other marginal states: taking away Nevada gets us down to 276 new votes and 279 old votes, and then removing Wisconsin gets us 266 new votes, and a loss, and 269 old votes, and a loss-through-tie.
So in the scenario where Obama loses Ohio but makes up for it by winning either Colorado or Virginia, the 2010 census will have changed the result of the election, but in pretty much any other scenario, it won't have mattered.
Answer: no. Of the blue states on that map, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Illinois each lost a vote, while New York shed two electors and Nevada and Washington gained one apiece, for a net loss of 5 electors under the new figures. So Obama's 253 electoral votes in these states were 258 votes before the 2010 census; not enough for a victory. But, of course, if you tack on the 20 votes from Ohio, you've got 278, and an Obama win. So the path-of-least-resistance calculus would be identical with the 2000 numbers: if each candidate won every state that FiveThirtyEight currently considers them to be more likely to win than any state they do win (i.e., if each candidate takes a path of least resistance given the current 538 odds), it all comes down to Ohio.
We can monkey with this calculus a bit, however. Suppose Obama loses Ohio, but goes looking for backup options. His best bets are Iowa and New Hampshire, worth a combined 10 votes now and 11 votes last decade. Under the new lines, that gets him to 263, which is no good. Under the old lines, that would have been 269, good for a tie but then, almost certainly, a loss in the House of Representatives. Or what about Virginia? It's got 13 votes under both census counts, so adding Virginia to the blue states on that map gives 266 and a loss under the current lines, but 271 and a win under the old lines. Colorado's 9 votes under both censuses would get Obama to 262 or 267, neither of which is sufficient; however, under the old lines, Colorado plus New Hampshire would have done it.
Another wacky scenario would be if Obama were to win Florida, while losing some other states that look easier for him as of this instant. Tack Florida on to the map above and you get 282 electoral votes under the new lines, and 284 under the old lines--since Florida gained two votes, this reduces the difference. Obviously either would be enough for a win, but we can then peel off Obama's other marginal states: taking away Nevada gets us down to 276 new votes and 279 old votes, and then removing Wisconsin gets us 266 new votes, and a loss, and 269 old votes, and a loss-through-tie.
So in the scenario where Obama loses Ohio but makes up for it by winning either Colorado or Virginia, the 2010 census will have changed the result of the election, but in pretty much any other scenario, it won't have mattered.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Eastern Sweep Propelling Senate Democrats to Victory
Over the last few months, it has become increasingly clear that Democrats are going to sweep the Senate contests in the eastern half of the country, modulo the Deep South. Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida were supposed to be competitive races with Democrats on the defensive, but really lousy Republican candidates has led to those races all being pretty easy holds (if one ignores the spate of recent polling from lousy Republican firms showing Tom Smith gaining on Bob Casey in Pennsylvania). Connecticut has been mysteriously competitive, but not quite competitive enough for wacky Linda McMahon to triumph. Olympia Snowe's retirement in Maine has led to the impending victory of Angus King, who'll probably caucus with the Democrats, creating a de facto pick-up. The blockbuster Massachusetts contest between Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown appears to have tilted Warren's way, for another pick-up. Likewise in headline toss-up-ish contests in Virginia and Wisconsin, except that the apparently impending victories by Tammy Baldwin and Tim Kaine will result in Democratic holds.
Most entertainingly, the really idiotic comments by Todd Akin (R-MO) and Richard Mourdock (R-IN) about rape (which were only occasioned by their really unpopular policy positions on abortion) seem like they may have delivered an unlikely hold in Missouri, and an even more unlikely pick-up in Indiana. The result is that it looks like the only Senate contests the Democrats seem likely to lose among those states adjoining or east of the Mississippi River are in Tennessee and Mississippi, which are sort of as expected. And we've got three pick-ups: Angus King replacing Olympia Snowe in Maine; Elizabeth Warren replacing Scott Brown in Massachusetts; and Joe Donnelly replacing Richard Lugar in Indiana.
Now, the Western half of the country is not likely to be as friendly. The Democrats can be pretty sure of contests in Hawaii, California, Washington, and New Mexico. They could lose every other race, though, which would include losing seats in Montana, North Dakota, and Nebraska. But even then, with three pick-ups in the East against three losses in the West, we're holding our position, with 53 Democratic Senators, and a more progressive caucus at that. And the North Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, and Arizona races all feel at least somewhat toss-up-ish, even if the general partisan gravity tells us Republicans kind of ought to win them.
Democratic strength in the Eastern Senate races, in other words, means that we get to play offense in the West. Any success there will give us a bigger majority than we entered the cycle with. And given how much ground we had to defend this cycle, that would be just plain fun.
Most entertainingly, the really idiotic comments by Todd Akin (R-MO) and Richard Mourdock (R-IN) about rape (which were only occasioned by their really unpopular policy positions on abortion) seem like they may have delivered an unlikely hold in Missouri, and an even more unlikely pick-up in Indiana. The result is that it looks like the only Senate contests the Democrats seem likely to lose among those states adjoining or east of the Mississippi River are in Tennessee and Mississippi, which are sort of as expected. And we've got three pick-ups: Angus King replacing Olympia Snowe in Maine; Elizabeth Warren replacing Scott Brown in Massachusetts; and Joe Donnelly replacing Richard Lugar in Indiana.
Now, the Western half of the country is not likely to be as friendly. The Democrats can be pretty sure of contests in Hawaii, California, Washington, and New Mexico. They could lose every other race, though, which would include losing seats in Montana, North Dakota, and Nebraska. But even then, with three pick-ups in the East against three losses in the West, we're holding our position, with 53 Democratic Senators, and a more progressive caucus at that. And the North Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, and Arizona races all feel at least somewhat toss-up-ish, even if the general partisan gravity tells us Republicans kind of ought to win them.
Democratic strength in the Eastern Senate races, in other words, means that we get to play offense in the West. Any success there will give us a bigger majority than we entered the cycle with. And given how much ground we had to defend this cycle, that would be just plain fun.
Early Returns on the Debate Look Good
The day or so after a major news event is a really frustrating time for poll-watchers. There's a sense that the event has probably shaken up the political landscape, but because all the polling being released was conducted before that event, it doesn't reflect it yet, not even one tiny bit. The first indications you start getting are the movements of tracking polls on the second day after the event, and even this is tricky because you have to try and guess at single-day samples from the trendlines. Still, since it's the first evidence you get, it's worth giving it a go until better evidence comes along.
So, with that in mind, Barack Obama gained two points on the margin over Mitt Romney in both the registered-voter and the likely-voter models of Gallup's tracking poll today. That would be the poll that's shown wildly better results for Romney than any other for a good long while. Obama's taken a 1-point lead in the RV model, while still trailing by 3 in the LV version, but it's two points of improvement on either end. Now, this is a seven-day tracking poll, which means among other things that getting into the weeds of the one-day samples is extra treacherous, but the simple math suggests that a 2-point shift from a new one-seventh part of the sample means a net 14-point improvement yesterday over the day it replaced, last Tuesday. That's, um, big. Even with the enormous error bars on that estimate, it's a really good sign.
Even better is the fact that Obama's net approval went up by 5 points today. Since that's a three-day tracking poll, unlike the head-to-head, the simple math suggests a 15-point improvement over the day being dropped. That's basically the same number. So we have two different data points suggesting a roughly 15-point improvement for Obama over the status quo ante. If the actual shift was one-quarter that size, it's a huge deal.
In other words, today's Gallup tracking poll results are a big deal, and they're massively bullish for Obama.
So, with that in mind, Barack Obama gained two points on the margin over Mitt Romney in both the registered-voter and the likely-voter models of Gallup's tracking poll today. That would be the poll that's shown wildly better results for Romney than any other for a good long while. Obama's taken a 1-point lead in the RV model, while still trailing by 3 in the LV version, but it's two points of improvement on either end. Now, this is a seven-day tracking poll, which means among other things that getting into the weeds of the one-day samples is extra treacherous, but the simple math suggests that a 2-point shift from a new one-seventh part of the sample means a net 14-point improvement yesterday over the day it replaced, last Tuesday. That's, um, big. Even with the enormous error bars on that estimate, it's a really good sign.
Even better is the fact that Obama's net approval went up by 5 points today. Since that's a three-day tracking poll, unlike the head-to-head, the simple math suggests a 15-point improvement over the day being dropped. That's basically the same number. So we have two different data points suggesting a roughly 15-point improvement for Obama over the status quo ante. If the actual shift was one-quarter that size, it's a huge deal.
In other words, today's Gallup tracking poll results are a big deal, and they're massively bullish for Obama.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Context, Please
Just now I saw a headline on the Huffington Post that a Democratic Senate candidate said that his state wouldn't elect his opponent because "we're not that dumb." The article in question reveals that this was during the debate, and the line was used in a very particular context. Republican Richard Mourdock, a veeery right-wing candidate who Tea Party'd Dick Lugar in the primary, was trying to back off of statements he had made suggesting the unconstitutionality of Social Security and Medicare. Democrat Joe Donnelly said this:
So it's misleading to put just the "we're not that dumb" line in your headline. It could either be something really insulting that would probably deserve to damage a candidate (except that nothing except partisan affiliation actually matters, blah blah blah), or something completely innocuous like this.
"I may have been born at night, but I was not born last night. When you meet with the Madison Tea Party and you say to them, you show me where in the Constitution it allows Medicare, and you show me where in the Constitution it allows Social Security, we're not that dumb. We know what you are implying, and we know what you are driving at. You also said Medicare should be turned into a voucher system."This is pretty standard stuff, right? It's the idea that, look, you're trying to pull a fast one on the voters of this great state, but we're not idiots, you can't fool us. Now, if Donnelly had just said, apropos of nothing in particular, "I know Indiana won't elect Richard Mourdock because we're not that dumb," it would be a serious gaffe. It would be, among other things, deeply insulting to everyone in Indiana who planned on voting for Mourdock. This line isn't anything like that, however. He's not making any accusation against anyone based on their current intentions, just saying, look, if you think that line will work, think again, we're not that dumb.
So it's misleading to put just the "we're not that dumb" line in your headline. It could either be something really insulting that would probably deserve to damage a candidate (except that nothing except partisan affiliation actually matters, blah blah blah), or something completely innocuous like this.
"State Fundamentals" And the 2012 Senate Contest
According to the forecast from FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver's famous election forecasting site, Democrats are currently expected to hold 52.4 Senate seats after this election on average, a decline of just 0.6 Senators from their current position, and are given 86.4% odds of retaining the chamber. Those are some nice numbers for a year when Democrats were expected to get pretty well hammered. They've got Democrats leading solidly in MA, RI, NY, NJ, PA, DE, MD, OH, WV, MI, MN, CA, and WA, with rather robust leads in HI, NM, MO, WI, VA, CT, and FL, plus a tiny lead in IN. Republicans have modest leads in MT, ND, NV, and AZ, with a stronger lead in NE and locked-down leads in TX, UT, WY, TN, and MS. Independent candidates are projected to win in Vermont and Maine, both rather solidly. If you were to just "call" each state according to who's favored to win it, however slightly, you'd get 53 Democrats, including Bernie Sanders and Angus King, maintaining the status quo in overall caucus membership.
But digging into the numbers a bit, we find that there are a lot of important states where FiveThirtyEight is assuming that partisan gravity will play a really substantial role. In Arizona, for instance, the "adjusted polling average" has Republican Jeff Flake leading Democrat Richard Carmona by just 0.4%, but the "state fundamentals" say it's an R+8.3% state, so overall they've got Flake winning by 1.9%, and sporting a 62% chance of victory. In Connecticut, Democrat Chris Murphy's lead over Republican Linda McMahon is just 1.7% in the adjusted polling, but the +19.1% Democratic fundamentals number turns the whole race into Murphy +4.4%, 74% chance of victory. Indiana adjusted polling gives Democrat Joe Donnelly a 2.7% lead, but the fundamentals say it's Republican Richard Mourdock by 1%, so Donnelly's lead is just 0.3% in the forecast, and just a 52% chance of winning. In Montana, Democratic Senator Jon Tester holds an 0.6% lead in the adjusted polling, but Republican Denny Rehberg is favored by the state fundamentals by 8%, giving him a 1.6% lead overall, and Tester just a 38% chance of holding his seat. In North Dakota, adjusted polling shows a tied race between Republican Rick Berg and Democrat Heidi Heitkamp, but Berg takes a 4.9% lead in the forecast on the strength of a 10.5% lead in the fundamentals, and Berg is given 78% odds of victory.
That's a lot of key Senate contests being very heavily affected by our a priori assumptions of the race. That's not to say that FiveThirtyEight is doing anything wrong by adjusting for state fundamentals, and we can see that states with more robust polling are giving less weight to the fundamentals. But it is interesting to observe. As I read the landscape, the battle for control of the Senate is being fought on Democratic terrain in the East and Midwest, in Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. But the battleground in which Democrats will seek to expand their majority is Western Republican terrain: Montana, North Dakota, Nevada, Arizona (okay, and let's give Indiana a special exemption, even though it's not western). If you're a believer in partisan gravity, then you would expect Democrats to squeak through the one blue-state defensive contest where the polling's been a bit scary, namely Connecticut, and to pull through the toss-up races, but not to pick up the Republican-held seats out west. If partisan gravity fails to show up, though, Connecticut will be very close, although probably will still go for the Democrat, but Montana, North Dakota, and Arizona become very interesting. Tack on those three states, plus a slightly more solid lead in Indiana, and Democrats could get to 56 seats without even winning in one of the more Hispanic states in the nation, Nevada.
In one way it will be an interesting test of modelling assumptions. In another, it's a demonstration of the need for more polling. These Senate contests in small states with non-competitive Presidential contests are important. People need to be polling them. That they are not doing so is not okay.
But digging into the numbers a bit, we find that there are a lot of important states where FiveThirtyEight is assuming that partisan gravity will play a really substantial role. In Arizona, for instance, the "adjusted polling average" has Republican Jeff Flake leading Democrat Richard Carmona by just 0.4%, but the "state fundamentals" say it's an R+8.3% state, so overall they've got Flake winning by 1.9%, and sporting a 62% chance of victory. In Connecticut, Democrat Chris Murphy's lead over Republican Linda McMahon is just 1.7% in the adjusted polling, but the +19.1% Democratic fundamentals number turns the whole race into Murphy +4.4%, 74% chance of victory. Indiana adjusted polling gives Democrat Joe Donnelly a 2.7% lead, but the fundamentals say it's Republican Richard Mourdock by 1%, so Donnelly's lead is just 0.3% in the forecast, and just a 52% chance of winning. In Montana, Democratic Senator Jon Tester holds an 0.6% lead in the adjusted polling, but Republican Denny Rehberg is favored by the state fundamentals by 8%, giving him a 1.6% lead overall, and Tester just a 38% chance of holding his seat. In North Dakota, adjusted polling shows a tied race between Republican Rick Berg and Democrat Heidi Heitkamp, but Berg takes a 4.9% lead in the forecast on the strength of a 10.5% lead in the fundamentals, and Berg is given 78% odds of victory.
That's a lot of key Senate contests being very heavily affected by our a priori assumptions of the race. That's not to say that FiveThirtyEight is doing anything wrong by adjusting for state fundamentals, and we can see that states with more robust polling are giving less weight to the fundamentals. But it is interesting to observe. As I read the landscape, the battle for control of the Senate is being fought on Democratic terrain in the East and Midwest, in Wisconsin, Missouri, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. But the battleground in which Democrats will seek to expand their majority is Western Republican terrain: Montana, North Dakota, Nevada, Arizona (okay, and let's give Indiana a special exemption, even though it's not western). If you're a believer in partisan gravity, then you would expect Democrats to squeak through the one blue-state defensive contest where the polling's been a bit scary, namely Connecticut, and to pull through the toss-up races, but not to pick up the Republican-held seats out west. If partisan gravity fails to show up, though, Connecticut will be very close, although probably will still go for the Democrat, but Montana, North Dakota, and Arizona become very interesting. Tack on those three states, plus a slightly more solid lead in Indiana, and Democrats could get to 56 seats without even winning in one of the more Hispanic states in the nation, Nevada.
In one way it will be an interesting test of modelling assumptions. In another, it's a demonstration of the need for more polling. These Senate contests in small states with non-competitive Presidential contests are important. People need to be polling them. That they are not doing so is not okay.
Ron Paul Will Save The Day!
...or not.
There's an article on the Huffington Post about how hilarious, though admittedly awful, an Electoral College tie would be. It's a scarily plausible scenario, honestly, because this is a really plausible map:
That's basically the Kerry states plus New Mexico, which is looking like a virtual lock at this point, and Ohio, where Obama's numbers have held up really well. It feels like this is an actual stopping-point on a uniform-swing analysis, where you shift the margin in each state by the same amount at the same time. In other words, this could happen, on an admittedly pretty bad night for Obama. And it's a 269-all tie ballgame map. Which is scary, because Republicans are almost certain to control a majority of the House of Representatives delegations next year, even if they don't control the House which, if we've had a tied Presidential election, let's be honest, they will.
Now, one quirky thing about this is that even in a tied Presidential race year, the Democrats could actually hold onto the Senate, or at least keep at least 50 votes in it. And it's the Senate, not the House, that picks the Vice President in case of a tie. And, well, that would get us a Romney-Biden Administration, possibly with Joe Biden getting to cast the deciding vote in his own favor. But, well, the VP has no formal legal responsibilities, so except insofar as he would give the Democrats a half-vote's extra maneuvering room in trying to block Romney in the Senate, it wouldn't matter much.
But the thing I found most hilarious about that article is the fact that some Republican electors are, apparently, Ron Paul devotees, and are seriously considering acting as "faithless electors" and voting Ron Paul instead of Mitt Romney. The rhetoric about how the Founders didn't design the Electoral College to just mimic a popular-vote contest is pretty delicious as well. So we could get Obama 269, Romney 267, Ron Paul 2, or some such. Except the problem is, as amazing as it would be for faithless Ron Paul elector to hand Obama the elector, it doesn't work like that. If Ron Paul were actually running in the election and managed to pick off a few EV's, say by winning Alaska, and make it 269-266-3, we'd still go to the House, and they would still be able to do whatever they wanted, namely elect Romney. You need to get an outright majority. If Ron Paul were running and, miracle of miracles, gobbled up a whole bunch of states, so that it was something like 250 Obama, 200 Romney, 88 Ron Paul, it would be the same story. Once Obama doesn't win 270 EV's outright, the only thing that can save him is a sufficient number of faithless electors swapping from Romney to Obama himself. And, uh, I haven't heard any suggest that that's going to happen. If Romney wins 270 or 271 EVs on Election Night, however, Ron Paul's forces of darkness could turn it into a no-outright-majority scenario and send us to the House and the Senate, but that would probably only result in Joe Biden getting to stand around doing nothing for a while.
A pity, because the world in which this was how Obama won the election would just be such an awesome world to live in.
There's an article on the Huffington Post about how hilarious, though admittedly awful, an Electoral College tie would be. It's a scarily plausible scenario, honestly, because this is a really plausible map:
Now, one quirky thing about this is that even in a tied Presidential race year, the Democrats could actually hold onto the Senate, or at least keep at least 50 votes in it. And it's the Senate, not the House, that picks the Vice President in case of a tie. And, well, that would get us a Romney-Biden Administration, possibly with Joe Biden getting to cast the deciding vote in his own favor. But, well, the VP has no formal legal responsibilities, so except insofar as he would give the Democrats a half-vote's extra maneuvering room in trying to block Romney in the Senate, it wouldn't matter much.
But the thing I found most hilarious about that article is the fact that some Republican electors are, apparently, Ron Paul devotees, and are seriously considering acting as "faithless electors" and voting Ron Paul instead of Mitt Romney. The rhetoric about how the Founders didn't design the Electoral College to just mimic a popular-vote contest is pretty delicious as well. So we could get Obama 269, Romney 267, Ron Paul 2, or some such. Except the problem is, as amazing as it would be for faithless Ron Paul elector to hand Obama the elector, it doesn't work like that. If Ron Paul were actually running in the election and managed to pick off a few EV's, say by winning Alaska, and make it 269-266-3, we'd still go to the House, and they would still be able to do whatever they wanted, namely elect Romney. You need to get an outright majority. If Ron Paul were running and, miracle of miracles, gobbled up a whole bunch of states, so that it was something like 250 Obama, 200 Romney, 88 Ron Paul, it would be the same story. Once Obama doesn't win 270 EV's outright, the only thing that can save him is a sufficient number of faithless electors swapping from Romney to Obama himself. And, uh, I haven't heard any suggest that that's going to happen. If Romney wins 270 or 271 EVs on Election Night, however, Ron Paul's forces of darkness could turn it into a no-outright-majority scenario and send us to the House and the Senate, but that would probably only result in Joe Biden getting to stand around doing nothing for a while.
A pity, because the world in which this was how Obama won the election would just be such an awesome world to live in.
Friday, October 12, 2012
The Continuingly Narrow Focus of the Debates
So, that debate was a lot better than the previous one. The moderator, more or less, knew what she was doing, both candidates actually said things (okay, granted, one of them didn't say very many true things, but still...) and, most importantly, the Democrat is widely perceived to have won. You know this because the Republicans are saying, well, the moderator was biased and Biden was smiling too much, but Democrats are just saying, hey, we won big. As David Roberts put it, "the GOP complaint...is that Joe Biden smiled & laughed too much while kicking their candidate's ass."
But, but, but... I'm not completely happy. You see, we're now two debates in, and this one had no particular area of focus, it was just the two Vice Presidential candidates discussing the election at-large. And yet, we've basically only had questions on the "to warmonger, or not to warmonger?" part of foreign policy, taxes, health care, the budget, and "the economy" in the sense of whether or not the labor market has been good under President Obama. That's, um, a narrow set of issues. Okay, last night had one late question about abortion, by far the worst framed question of the debate (in that it didn't just ask the candidates about abortion policy or whatever, but framed it around some nonsense about the candidates' personal religious beliefs). But, here's some stuff we haven't yet had a debate question on:
And then it will still be important two weeks thereafter, on election night.
But, but, but... I'm not completely happy. You see, we're now two debates in, and this one had no particular area of focus, it was just the two Vice Presidential candidates discussing the election at-large. And yet, we've basically only had questions on the "to warmonger, or not to warmonger?" part of foreign policy, taxes, health care, the budget, and "the economy" in the sense of whether or not the labor market has been good under President Obama. That's, um, a narrow set of issues. Okay, last night had one late question about abortion, by far the worst framed question of the debate (in that it didn't just ask the candidates about abortion policy or whatever, but framed it around some nonsense about the candidates' personal religious beliefs). But, here's some stuff we haven't yet had a debate question on:
- Immigration
- Climate Change
- Gay Rights
- Women's Issues
- Criminal Justice
- Poverty
- Medicaid (and, you know, Medicaid is a health-care entitlement, we spent a lot of time hearing about other health-care stuff and entitlements, but nothing on Medicaid)
- Affirmative Action, which is in the news these days
- Labor Issues
- Campaign Finance Reform
And then it will still be important two weeks thereafter, on election night.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
My 2012 MLB Awards Preferences
Obviously, I don't have a vote, so I'm not calling this my vote, but rather just my preferences. Here goes:
National League Rookie of the Year: Bryce Harper, WSN. Harper didn't have the outlandish year that people expect him to have, or that a certain other youngster had in the other league, but he was clearly the best hitter of the National League Rookies. Norichika Aoki is the next-best competition, and according to Fangraphs he was nearly 2 wins less useful than Harper. Harper led all NL rookies who don't play in Colorado in home runs and led all rookies in runs scored, all while playing great defense at multiple outfield positions including center field. The main competition on the pitching side is Wade Miley of the Diamondbacks, who gets a very similar WAR number to Harper from Fangraphs. However, to be honest I think the phrase "Rookie of the Year" legitimately includes some concept of most "impact" rookie, and I think it's hard to deny Harper had lots of impact. You can make an argument that he provided the Nationals with credibility and optimism, although I don't think that's necessary to give him the award.
American League Rookie of the Year: Mike Trout, LAA. If Mike Trout doesn't win this award unanimously, it will be an outrage. His closest competition is probably Yu Darvish of the Rangers, the Japanese import who struggled at times but ultimately had a fine season that justified his All-Star selection. But those words "struggled at times" are crucial; Trout didn't. Yoenis Cespedes of the Athletics is the next-best position-playing rookie, but, uh, the leadoff-hitting Trout had more runs batted in than the middle-of-the-order slugging Cespedes. This better be unanimous.
National League Cy Young Award: R.A. Dickey, NYM. Oh, come on, like I was ever going to say anything else. As if Dickey needed any extra justification on top of how he dominated the league to the tune of 20-6 (for a bad team!) by using a variety of power pitching that just happened to rely on knuckleballs, he pitched the whole year with a big ol' abdominal injury. None of the other starting pitchers is particularly close to Dickey, in my opinion. I have to say that I won't be outraged if Craig Kimbrel wins this instead, because he has been obscenely good this year and in general I think relief pitchers get too little respect especially from the statistically-advanced sabermetric types. However, I'm voting Dickey. He's just that awesome.
American League Cy Young Award: Fernando Rodney, TBR. To be honest, no one had an absurd campaign as a starting pitcher this year. Verlander was great, sure, as always, and people like David Price and King Felix were good as well, but nobody really stands out. Except Rodney, who just posted the lowest ERA of all time (for non-trivial innings pitched). 0.60 runs allowed per nine innings. He allowed five runs all year, across 76 games pitched. Like, actually. I don't know how he did it and I don't know why he did it, but to me, the phrase "best ERA ever" tells me you should win the Cy Young Award. And yes, I know, arguably Kimbrel's season was even more dominant by various advanced metrics, and yes, I may be voting Dickey out of pure Mets rooting/awareness of how awesome the Sun God of Queens is. Get over it.
National League Most Valuable Player Award: Yadier Molina, STL. I really, really, really wanted to be able to say "David Wright" in this spot, and by WAR he's right in the middle of the conversation. But, man, he really just didn't have a good approach all through the second half of the year and it really hurt his team. He should definitely win the Gold Glove, but not the MVP. And, honestly, I have a long experience with how annoying it is to play against the Cardinals because of Molina's defensive ability, so given his current status as a reasonably elite hitter I think he probably contributed more to his team than anyone else.
American League Most Valuable Player Award: Miguel Cabrera, DET. I know, I know, Mike Trout played better than Miguel Cabrera this year. He played a tougher position, he played it better, he ran the bases better, etc. He blew Miguel Cabrera out of the water in WAR. Hell, Cabrera wasn't even second in WAR. Hell, even if you just look at raw offensive performance they were basically neck-and-neck using even a modicum of advancedness about one's stats. And I will not complain if Mike Trout wins this award. He easily deserves it. But, look, Miguel Cabrera won the frickin' Triple Crown. That's, um, impressive. Perhaps close to a majority of this country is not old enough to remember the last time it happened. Yes, I'm ultimately making the argument that the Triple Crown should basically just be an automatic (the precedent of the two times Ted Williams was denied the MVP despite winning the Crown strike me as basically miscarriages of justice, so not of much weight). But I also think that the entirely valid and important (well, insofar as anything in sports is important) critique of over-reliance on traditional counting stats has bled into a hyper-rational denigration of those stats. By "hyper-rational" I mean sort of the view that anything non-rational must be irrational, and therefore wrong. No, Miguel Cabrera's performance did not add as many wins to his team as Mike Trout's, compared to if he hadn't existed and some replacement player had been used. And in general I do think that WAR is a pretty good guide to MVP voting. But a few weeks back I said that if Cabrera won the Triple Crown I would think he needed to win MVP, and otherwise I'd think Trout needed to. There's a kind of magic in the Triple Crown, there's a reason why it's so hard, and honestly in the end I just think the award should this year be given to the sentimental non-rational candidate rather than the candidate who undeniably played better baseball.
Like I said, I have zero problem with things if the BBWAA decides to give the award to Trout instead. He pretty clearly does deserve it. But personally, this is a time when I would allow myself to let the mystical intangible stuff play the deciding role. Besides, Trout is probably going to have occasion to win this award some time when nobody runs up a Triple Crown against him.
National League Rookie of the Year: Bryce Harper, WSN. Harper didn't have the outlandish year that people expect him to have, or that a certain other youngster had in the other league, but he was clearly the best hitter of the National League Rookies. Norichika Aoki is the next-best competition, and according to Fangraphs he was nearly 2 wins less useful than Harper. Harper led all NL rookies who don't play in Colorado in home runs and led all rookies in runs scored, all while playing great defense at multiple outfield positions including center field. The main competition on the pitching side is Wade Miley of the Diamondbacks, who gets a very similar WAR number to Harper from Fangraphs. However, to be honest I think the phrase "Rookie of the Year" legitimately includes some concept of most "impact" rookie, and I think it's hard to deny Harper had lots of impact. You can make an argument that he provided the Nationals with credibility and optimism, although I don't think that's necessary to give him the award.
American League Rookie of the Year: Mike Trout, LAA. If Mike Trout doesn't win this award unanimously, it will be an outrage. His closest competition is probably Yu Darvish of the Rangers, the Japanese import who struggled at times but ultimately had a fine season that justified his All-Star selection. But those words "struggled at times" are crucial; Trout didn't. Yoenis Cespedes of the Athletics is the next-best position-playing rookie, but, uh, the leadoff-hitting Trout had more runs batted in than the middle-of-the-order slugging Cespedes. This better be unanimous.
National League Cy Young Award: R.A. Dickey, NYM. Oh, come on, like I was ever going to say anything else. As if Dickey needed any extra justification on top of how he dominated the league to the tune of 20-6 (for a bad team!) by using a variety of power pitching that just happened to rely on knuckleballs, he pitched the whole year with a big ol' abdominal injury. None of the other starting pitchers is particularly close to Dickey, in my opinion. I have to say that I won't be outraged if Craig Kimbrel wins this instead, because he has been obscenely good this year and in general I think relief pitchers get too little respect especially from the statistically-advanced sabermetric types. However, I'm voting Dickey. He's just that awesome.
American League Cy Young Award: Fernando Rodney, TBR. To be honest, no one had an absurd campaign as a starting pitcher this year. Verlander was great, sure, as always, and people like David Price and King Felix were good as well, but nobody really stands out. Except Rodney, who just posted the lowest ERA of all time (for non-trivial innings pitched). 0.60 runs allowed per nine innings. He allowed five runs all year, across 76 games pitched. Like, actually. I don't know how he did it and I don't know why he did it, but to me, the phrase "best ERA ever" tells me you should win the Cy Young Award. And yes, I know, arguably Kimbrel's season was even more dominant by various advanced metrics, and yes, I may be voting Dickey out of pure Mets rooting/awareness of how awesome the Sun God of Queens is. Get over it.
National League Most Valuable Player Award: Yadier Molina, STL. I really, really, really wanted to be able to say "David Wright" in this spot, and by WAR he's right in the middle of the conversation. But, man, he really just didn't have a good approach all through the second half of the year and it really hurt his team. He should definitely win the Gold Glove, but not the MVP. And, honestly, I have a long experience with how annoying it is to play against the Cardinals because of Molina's defensive ability, so given his current status as a reasonably elite hitter I think he probably contributed more to his team than anyone else.
American League Most Valuable Player Award: Miguel Cabrera, DET. I know, I know, Mike Trout played better than Miguel Cabrera this year. He played a tougher position, he played it better, he ran the bases better, etc. He blew Miguel Cabrera out of the water in WAR. Hell, Cabrera wasn't even second in WAR. Hell, even if you just look at raw offensive performance they were basically neck-and-neck using even a modicum of advancedness about one's stats. And I will not complain if Mike Trout wins this award. He easily deserves it. But, look, Miguel Cabrera won the frickin' Triple Crown. That's, um, impressive. Perhaps close to a majority of this country is not old enough to remember the last time it happened. Yes, I'm ultimately making the argument that the Triple Crown should basically just be an automatic (the precedent of the two times Ted Williams was denied the MVP despite winning the Crown strike me as basically miscarriages of justice, so not of much weight). But I also think that the entirely valid and important (well, insofar as anything in sports is important) critique of over-reliance on traditional counting stats has bled into a hyper-rational denigration of those stats. By "hyper-rational" I mean sort of the view that anything non-rational must be irrational, and therefore wrong. No, Miguel Cabrera's performance did not add as many wins to his team as Mike Trout's, compared to if he hadn't existed and some replacement player had been used. And in general I do think that WAR is a pretty good guide to MVP voting. But a few weeks back I said that if Cabrera won the Triple Crown I would think he needed to win MVP, and otherwise I'd think Trout needed to. There's a kind of magic in the Triple Crown, there's a reason why it's so hard, and honestly in the end I just think the award should this year be given to the sentimental non-rational candidate rather than the candidate who undeniably played better baseball.
Like I said, I have zero problem with things if the BBWAA decides to give the award to Trout instead. He pretty clearly does deserve it. But personally, this is a time when I would allow myself to let the mystical intangible stuff play the deciding role. Besides, Trout is probably going to have occasion to win this award some time when nobody runs up a Triple Crown against him.
Elections as Arguments and the Debate
One way to view any electoral contest is as an argument. As to each candidate there are a number of different proposed reasons why they should be elected and a number of different proposed reasons why they should not be. These reasons can relate to the candidates' policy platforms, what kinds of judges they'd appoint, their moral character, their appearance, whatever. They can, in other words, be good reasons or bad reasons. And then you see how all the various reasons weigh with the polity, and what balance they eventually reach. Of course, the balance within the polity is really just the aggregated sum of all the balances in each member of the polity, each of whom can have their own individual weighting scheme among the various lines of argument.
I've had the feeling all throughout this election that political analysis pays insufficient attention to this argument-based model of an election, and treats elections more as some kind of point-scoring contest, where if X happens and X makes candidate A look good, then it adds points to candidate A's score, etc. So, for instance, we find the almost unanimous view that one of the few things that could materially damage Obama's rather robust lead at this point would be an economic collapse in Europe that spread to the United States. Why would this help Romney? Because political science literature suggests that the "vote for the incumbent because the economy is good" argument and the "vote for the challenger because the economy is bad" argument are among the strongest arguments out there, exerting disproportionate force over even those elections which are not viewed as being about the state of the economy. So, the thinking goes, anything that makes the economy worse is bad for the incumbent. In my view, it's harder to say.
In my view, that's a bit of a premature judgment. Sure, a new economic crisis might help Romney, if only because a new crisis should introduce greater variance and chaos into the whole process which will generically give the trailing candidate more of a chance than he had before. But the "European economic policy has screwed up in a truly massive way, so vote Romney" argument is pretty much incoherent on its face. At least, it's incoherent until and unless anyone develops a reason for thinking Romney would be better at dealing with the consequences of such a crisis, or until Obama displays poor judgment in his handling of the crisis. Either of those things could happen, but their opposites could just as easily happen. And if Romney reacted with a panic of the variety that affected the McCain campaign in September of 2008, the opposite probably would happen, and Obama probably would benefit politically. (Note that the "vote Obama '08 because of the financial crisis" argument is not incoherent, because that was a home-grown crisis that pretty much everyone felt was substantially the fault of the policies of the incumbent regime, and McCain was running on a platform virtually identical to Bush's.)
Now, the counterargument to my view is that I'm taking an overly charitable view of the electorate. I'm giving them too much credit for being smart, or for understanding the issues in some meaningful way that there's really no justification for. I don't mean to be. Remember what I said about how the arguments can be good ones or bad ones. Plenty of voters can give weight to silly arguments, like that one should vote for the candidate with the better speaking voice or whatever. But I do think that it's important to analyze events in the course of the campaign not just in terms of who looks better during them but in terms of how they reinforce existing arguments for or against each candidate or provide new such arguments.
I've had the feeling all throughout this election that political analysis pays insufficient attention to this argument-based model of an election, and treats elections more as some kind of point-scoring contest, where if X happens and X makes candidate A look good, then it adds points to candidate A's score, etc. So, for instance, we find the almost unanimous view that one of the few things that could materially damage Obama's rather robust lead at this point would be an economic collapse in Europe that spread to the United States. Why would this help Romney? Because political science literature suggests that the "vote for the incumbent because the economy is good" argument and the "vote for the challenger because the economy is bad" argument are among the strongest arguments out there, exerting disproportionate force over even those elections which are not viewed as being about the state of the economy. So, the thinking goes, anything that makes the economy worse is bad for the incumbent. In my view, it's harder to say.
In my view, that's a bit of a premature judgment. Sure, a new economic crisis might help Romney, if only because a new crisis should introduce greater variance and chaos into the whole process which will generically give the trailing candidate more of a chance than he had before. But the "European economic policy has screwed up in a truly massive way, so vote Romney" argument is pretty much incoherent on its face. At least, it's incoherent until and unless anyone develops a reason for thinking Romney would be better at dealing with the consequences of such a crisis, or until Obama displays poor judgment in his handling of the crisis. Either of those things could happen, but their opposites could just as easily happen. And if Romney reacted with a panic of the variety that affected the McCain campaign in September of 2008, the opposite probably would happen, and Obama probably would benefit politically. (Note that the "vote Obama '08 because of the financial crisis" argument is not incoherent, because that was a home-grown crisis that pretty much everyone felt was substantially the fault of the policies of the incumbent regime, and McCain was running on a platform virtually identical to Bush's.)
Now, the counterargument to my view is that I'm taking an overly charitable view of the electorate. I'm giving them too much credit for being smart, or for understanding the issues in some meaningful way that there's really no justification for. I don't mean to be. Remember what I said about how the arguments can be good ones or bad ones. Plenty of voters can give weight to silly arguments, like that one should vote for the candidate with the better speaking voice or whatever. But I do think that it's important to analyze events in the course of the campaign not just in terms of who looks better during them but in terms of how they reinforce existing arguments for or against each candidate or provide new such arguments.
About That CNN Snap Poll...
So, the main thing I'm happy to observe in the CNN snap poll about the recently-completed Presidential debate is that, though the respondents overwhelmingly said they thought Romney won the debate, the two candidates' favorability numbers didn't budge an inch between the initial round of calls before the debate and the follow-up after it. Specifically, Barack Obama went from 49% favorable, 50% unfavorable to a 49%/49% split, while Mitt Romney went from 54% favorable to 42% unfavorable before the debate to 56%-42% afterwards. So Obama gained one net point, and Romney gained two net points. Big effing deal.
But, uh, notice anything funny about those "before" numbers? They show Romney quite popular and Obama only sort of middling. That's not what any other poll has found for the general electorate these days. I'll let the pollster.com polling averages speak for themselves: Obama's got a 51.9% favorability rating in the aggregate, against just 44.0% unfavorable, while Romney's sporting just a 43.6% favorable score against 49.1% unfavorable. So in most polling heading into this debate, Obama is a net 13.4% more popularly perceived than Mitt Romney, but in the group of debate watchers in the CNN poll Romney was 13 points more popular than Obama. That's a skewed poll for you.
Now, that doesn't mean the poll is meaningless. Among people who watched the debate, most thought Romney won. But the poll is also telling us that "those who watched the debate" may well have been a Republican-leaning bunch. But that very fact is deeply informative, or should be anyway, of our analysis of the reaction to this debate. Regardless of who's more energized to vote this year, Republicans were far more energized about this debate. And this debate still doesn't seem to have changed very many people's minds about either of the candidates. So it looks to me like, while the debate was unquestionably a "win" for Romney, it may have been sort of a trivial one. And right now, he doesn't need trivial wins, he needs wins that he leverages into big swings in the polls. So far, it looks like he didn't get one. (Of course, that statement can neither be confirmed nor rebutted until about next Monday, when the first batch of post-debate polls will start coming in.)
But, uh, notice anything funny about those "before" numbers? They show Romney quite popular and Obama only sort of middling. That's not what any other poll has found for the general electorate these days. I'll let the pollster.com polling averages speak for themselves: Obama's got a 51.9% favorability rating in the aggregate, against just 44.0% unfavorable, while Romney's sporting just a 43.6% favorable score against 49.1% unfavorable. So in most polling heading into this debate, Obama is a net 13.4% more popularly perceived than Mitt Romney, but in the group of debate watchers in the CNN poll Romney was 13 points more popular than Obama. That's a skewed poll for you.
Now, that doesn't mean the poll is meaningless. Among people who watched the debate, most thought Romney won. But the poll is also telling us that "those who watched the debate" may well have been a Republican-leaning bunch. But that very fact is deeply informative, or should be anyway, of our analysis of the reaction to this debate. Regardless of who's more energized to vote this year, Republicans were far more energized about this debate. And this debate still doesn't seem to have changed very many people's minds about either of the candidates. So it looks to me like, while the debate was unquestionably a "win" for Romney, it may have been sort of a trivial one. And right now, he doesn't need trivial wins, he needs wins that he leverages into big swings in the polls. So far, it looks like he didn't get one. (Of course, that statement can neither be confirmed nor rebutted until about next Monday, when the first batch of post-debate polls will start coming in.)
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
There's More to Domestic Policy than the Economy
The "domestic policy" debate just concluded, and in my opinion, forgetting for a moment the question of who won it, is was just a stupid as hell debate. The biggest reason for that is that the entire debate was about what are considered in political contexts "economic issues." Nothing about the environment, gay rights, women's issues, immigration, etc. "Domestic policy" means "the economy." Now, okay, sure, the economy is important. It's probably the main issue in this election. But that doesn't make it the only issue. All those other things matter! A lot! Taken in the aggregate "domestic policy but not the economy" is probably as important for the welfare of the United States of America than "economic policy" by itself. Honestly I'm kind of offended that the people putting this debate on considered taxes and budgets and deficits and "the role of government" by which they mean the economic role of government the only meaningful domestic policy issues in this election. And not just because it's an enormous softball to Romney, given that Obama is an incumbent presiding over a mediocre economy. Because it buys into the view of life that denies the importance of anything besides money, that considers material goods the only goods that matter.
I think I'll close this blog post with Robert F. Kennedy's famous quote about the failings of the Gross National Product:
I think I'll close this blog post with Robert F. Kennedy's famous quote about the failings of the Gross National Product:
"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)