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Nate Silver has a win probability of 90.5% and 347EV.

I think after last night that's likely to hold steady.

It may even go up.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Wed Oct 8th, 2008 at 04:46:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I expect it may well go up.  This was a pretty rubbish day of polling for Obama on the national trackers.  Nate's model only had him going up because McCain turned in such craptacular numbers on the state polls.

Aside from the Gallup poll, Obama went down in everything, although by such small amounts that I expect it's just noise (especially given the Gallup result).

I think something in between Gallup and Ras is generally the state of the race.  Ras says O+6, Gallup says O+11.  Call it O+8.5.  Ras says Dems have a +6 party ID advantage.  Gallup says it's about +10.  Doesn't seem way out in left field.

Keeping in mind, too, that today's polls don't include reaction to the debate.  If the snap polls were even in the ballpark, I expect Obama will go up.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin

by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Wed Oct 8th, 2008 at 05:24:18 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Looking at the UK betting market, having been crawling in both their respective directions, both  sets of odds have moved significantly in the last twelve hours, by about 10% Obama up, McCain Down.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Wed Oct 8th, 2008 at 06:43:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I'm almost inclined to call the race now, because the new BIGGEST THING EVAH on the right-wing websites -- even at "respectable" places like National Review -- is to try to turn the fact that Obama pronounces "Pakistan" correctly into a campaign issue.  You see, it's "ostentatiously exotic" to do so.

The Right has officially become a joke.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin

by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Wed Oct 8th, 2008 at 06:52:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Looking at the intrade daily graphs, (and looking at the daily graphs for the last two debates, they've shown similar characteristics) would you say that the big spike McCainwards on the two graphs on that day look like an attempt to force a perception that McCain has one the debates and hopefully create some momentum for him? (it's snapped back afterwards so if the theory is true then it's not working). Or would you say its more likely that people are jumping in in the hope that the debate will push the  perception of the two campaigns in a different direction, so are an attempt to take profit?

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Wed Oct 8th, 2008 at 06:58:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I'm not sure, honestly.  Intrade is known by almost everyone who "does politics" in the states, so it wouldn't surprise me to find it a little bit of a messy market where people are buying into their own bad perceptions.  It's difficult to gauge how undecideds are going to respond to a candidate.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Wed Oct 8th, 2008 at 07:33:29 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Intrade is a bit of a joke - although I suppose if you were smart and could be bothered you could make some money on it.

There's still a bizarre idea that 'markets' are 'right' about things just because they aggregate average perceptions. Or informed perceptions. Or something. And if people have to bet real money they'll be more careful about speculation than people who are just speculating.

Well. We know how well that worked elsewhere.

So all that Intrade gives you is the chance to bet for or against common wisdom. If anyone had uncommon insight they'd be swamped by the mooing herd there. So if you're looking for high quality predictions, as opposed to a lagging indicator which is reliably behind the polls and can be gamed by zealots, Intrade isn't anything more than a curiosity.

The famous Bush win prediction was within any realistic MOE. And allowing for a rather right-leaning client base, it was never that much of a surprise.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Wed Oct 8th, 2008 at 08:20:19 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Intrade also got it wrong in 2006, if I'm not mistaken.  Pretty badly too.

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Wed Oct 8th, 2008 at 08:39:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Here's one for ya.  The Village Elders in the GOP are officially scared to death of Sarah Palin.  Carney over at the TIME magazine blog received this email from an RNC operative:

Fascinating.

She really is what Bush pretends to be -- she 's a true anti-intellectual. She's has this very Pentecostal view of the world. We don't need to study the Bible, we don't need ministers, we can just feel the spirit and let the spirit speak through us. It's this classically Alaskan value system that places experience over all other values. I know what mothers need because I am a mother.

We don't need to read or even learn because that just fills our heads with confusing ideas and facts and figures. We feel.

Bush plays at this anti-elite stuff but he's Harvard/Yale/Andover, all of that. She is really a celebration of a glorious know-nothingness that is truly dangerous....

She's terrifying and represents a streak of the Republican party that is a permanent minority. She will not play well with suburban women in Montgomery County [OH]. They want their kids to go to good schools and college. Palin basically says that isn't necessary. You can just speak plainly from the heart and that's good enough. But that's how you end up a fish picker from Alaska.

It's not that she is an idiot that bothers me. It's that she celebrates non-learning and anti-knowledge. She celebrates ignorance.

Terrifying.

David Brooks, the NYT's Very SeriousTM Conservative, also sez:

[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party. When I first started in journalism, I worked at the National Review for Bill Buckley. And Buckley famously said he'd rather be ruled by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. But he didn't think those were the only two options. He thought it was important to have people on the conservative side who celebrated ideas, who celebrated learning. And his whole life was based on that, and that was also true for a lot of the other conservatives in the Reagan era. Reagan had an immense faith in the power of ideas. But there has been a counter, more populist tradition, which is not only to scorn liberal ideas but to scorn ideas entirely. And I'm afraid that Sarah Palin has those prejudices. I think President Bush has those prejudices.


Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Wed Oct 8th, 2008 at 08:46:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Stupid? Sure! Incompetent? Definetly! Dangerous? You bet!

Worse than the educated morons that has been running the US for the last eight years? How can she be?

I have to agree with Helen on this. It's all about class. The insiders are horrified at the possibility some house wife from Alaska will stink up their cocktail parties.

by Trond Ove on Thu Oct 9th, 2008 at 05:57:39 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I'm sure there's some of that, but if she'd turned out to be a foreign policy genius the class issue would have been irrelevant.

I think it's more that she reminds them of the core of the Republican party. While 'Republican ideas' hide the racism, militarism and all-round vapid stupidity under a thin intellectual veneer - which is exactly what think tanks are paid to do - Palin dispenses with the veneer, and you get the true beating heart of Republicanism neat, with no fine wrapping.

And it's a loathesome thing. I don't think they hate her for being what she is, because in the end she is what they are. What they can't forgive her is not having the good political sense to put PR and marketing before personal ambition.

She's destroying the Reagan illusion and replacing it with directness and honesty.

Ironically we should be grateful to her for that, at least for now - because she's making it much more difficult for Republicanism to be taken seriously by anyone who isn't a racist kook.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Thu Oct 9th, 2008 at 09:18:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Drew J Jones:
the fact that Obama pronounces "Pakistan" correctly into a campaign issue.  You see, it's "ostentatiously exotic" to do so.

jeez louise...

what a radical notion, the idea that a president can correctly pronounce an ally's name...

as for 'exotic', i think they want him wearing overalls, chewing a grass stem, and calling mccain 'massa'. that and nothing less would make freepers happy...

obama is the biggest threat they ever had to their notions of white intellectual supremacy, they're waking up to a whole new world, most very unwillingly.


~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Thu Oct 9th, 2008 at 04:22:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]
White supremacists will say that the election of a Black President proves the decay of America.

I am not a big fan of Obama policy-wise, but I do think the election of a Black Emperor will be a momentous (and positive) event. I'm actually looking forward to it.

A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Oct 9th, 2008 at 09:28:26 AM EST
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Migeru:
White supremacists will say that the election of a Black President proves the decay of America.

whaaa?

nice try, pull the other one!

...and they dance better...


~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Thu Oct 9th, 2008 at 04:17:49 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Wanna bet?

A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Oct 10th, 2008 at 08:00:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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