2012 Race for the White House II: The Two Towers

Again, not really. Last year, when Europe imploded and a cataclysm hit Japan, our economic output stalled at around 2% growth. Down from the sky-high 3% growth we are currently facing. Don't get me wrong; Europe would hurt. It just wouldn't hurt nearly enough to be salient in the election.

 

I hope you're right. The situation over there is looking pretty frickin' scary to me.

 

It will really depend on how severe the recession gets. A lot can and will happen in the next six months, especially if Greece leaves the euro.

 

I think it's funny how women, who make up over half the vote, are a "demographic."

Folks, women aren't a demographic. Men are.

 

I would say the biggest problem is there really is no difference between Obama and Romney that it pretty much an election of which devil will not screw you as hard as the other. The only thing we the people can hope is that their is major changes in the ideology of both parties. I'm hoping that the Ron Paul movement in the republican party changes the right for the better. I am also hoping something that can improve the left in a movement. But the main thing is Both the Right and the Left need to get their houses reorder and lose this Neocon World Police elitism point of views that ignore everything that make the USA great.

 

Oh, this canard again.

You wouldn't be wrong, except for everything that's happened in the last 20 years.

Ideology is the problem.

I'm pretty sure Ron Paul doesn't give a crap about changing anything in the Republican Party. The party's shredding of any of its moderate core keeps Ron Paul relevant.

 

You clearly have no idea what demographic means...

 

I know! I know!--

 

You know what will happen when Greece leaves the euro? It will remake its currency, devalue it, let inflation go a bit to tamp down on unemployment, and broaden the tax base in order to pay off its deficits. There is a very easy solution to much of the current problem (hint hint: it rhymes with ginpration) but the problems are political: the Germans don't want to inflate the euro. So they'd rather put the rest of the continent on a diet.

 

Germany is waging war on the rest of Europe again. This time it's called "austerity". Full stop.

 

Well Germany is the only euro country whose economy is worth a damn. Of course they're going to protect it. It's the inherent problem with having multiple countries share the same currency in a social experiment which we call the "euro".

 

I remember this kind of arrogance earning your country a lot of friends back in the day...

 

Pennsylvania a swing state?

http://www.rollcall.com/issues/57_135/Is-Pennsylvania-In-Play-for-November-214491-1.html

 

Well, this columnist (with a decent pedigree when it comes to this stuff) seems to agree with a lot of my previous points about the closeness of the race.

"Although we are getting to the point where these national polls are at least worth a passing glance, it is still also worth paying attention to Mr. Obama’s approval rating."

"Mr. Romney also went through a period where his favorability ratings were quite poor. However, they have since improved to about even, possibly because his job has been less complicated since the effective end of the Republican primary campaign. It is not uncommon for favorability ratings to shift over the course of a campaign, particularly once the primaries end."

"The marginal factors in the past four or six weeks have looked slightly better for Mr. Romney than Mr. Obama. The recuperation in Mr. Romney’s favorability numbers, for instance...also reduces the risk that his personal qualities might cause him to lose an election that he otherwise would have won, as during another economic downturn."

"Meanwhile, the tumultuous situation in Greece may increase the chance of an economic downside case for Mr. Obama."

"Put another way, if you are being very detail oriented, there is a case to be made that Mr. Romney’s odds of being elected have improved somewhat over the past six weeks. I suppose we can be even more detail oriented once we get the general election model up and running. If you just want the 30,000-foot view … well, it looks pretty close, as it did before."

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/a-30000-foot-view-on-the-presidential-race/

 

Is it not true? I thought I was simply stating a fact, not trying to be "arrogant". Germany is currently the only euro country whose economy has navigated the economic crisis and remained above water. Not to mention they've virtually single handedly prevented the euro from collapsing.

 

Its actually kind of a simple thought experiment-- imagine that Greece stays on the Euro and Germany leaves it.

The results seem predictable enough that, whatever you think of the rest of his opinions, this one doesn't seem so arrogant...

 

From a guy known for backing a winning side: More Reverend Wright!

Also, apparently, Obama sold himself as a "metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln". Which is kinda awesome.

 

You are missing the point. The point is not that it's a close election. The point is that you are convinced that the closeness of the election invalidates all predictability of it when there is absolutely no evidence to suggest we should return to sacrificing animals to divine the future from the gods. Strangely, you've highlighted some very bizarre parts of Silver's column. But here's what I say about any column that isn't poll-heavy, or peer-reviewed, or both.

1) The words "can" and "may" show up an awful lot.

2) There are no certainties, no absolutes. Silver is obviously better about this than other people, but notice in this article that he says "Romney's favorability has returned to about half." Were this a decent article, it would read "Romney's net favorability based on an aggregate of polls has rebounded from -2% to 4%."

3) Were it peer-reviewed, the point of the article would not be the fundamentals of the election but why certain facets are more or less interesting - i.e., why don't national polls matter so early? That's political science, compared to the punditry that you get from most political discussion.

Anyway, back to the point. I agree with you; this is not going to be a popular-vote landslide (although I'd like to hope it still may become one). However, it does appear that we have plenty of historical information, polling, and demographic data to predict with relative ease the electoral outcomes of more than 40 states in the Union. Then we use probability to estimate the outcome of the remaining ten. Here's a way to do it:

Ten polls come out in state X showing, on average, an Obama lead of 3%. That means that if no other parties get votes and everybody votes, Obama will win 51.5-48.5% at the end of the campaign. If you were to flip a coin, you get a 50-50% chance of heads (assuming everything else is equal). That's a simple probability, but in a 2-way race, someone ahead of that 50% barrier is going to win that state more than 50% of the time, if sufficient simulated elections are run. Then analysts and campaign managers use these probabilities to determine which states they will invest money and resources in. Here is a list of the Romney ad buys and the Obama ad buys by state:

Romney - Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, Virginia and New Hampshire. The bolded states are those that Bush won twice. The Romney campaign is playing defense.

Obama - Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Hampshire. The bolded states are those that Gore/Kerry won twice. The Obama campaign is playing offense.

From this we can see that the 2012 election is playing out in the same battlegrounds as 2008, not the same ones as 2004 or 2000. Ohio and Florida each get $5 million from Obama's ad buy, but when broken down by electoral vote, the money spent is approximately the same. Obama's campaign does not consider Michigan to be a battleground, meaning that if Obama adds money to Michigan, that's bad news for him, but if Romney withdraws money, that's bad news for Romney.

Germany 2011 - 2.6% GDP growth
Netherlands - 1.9%
Belgium - 2.4%
France - 1.8%
Denmark - 1.7%
Ireland - 0.6%
Spain - 0.8%
Portugal: -2.2%
Italy - 1.0%
Finland - 3.7%
Estonia - 4.7%
Austria - 2.4%
Slovakia - 3.5%
Slovenia - 1.7%
Greece: -3.5%
Cyprus - 1.5%

Now none of these account for inflation, and when you do, real GDP growth crawls to zero everywhere, including Germany. But the point is that Germany's economy isn't the only one growing.

 

Al valid points. I just have an inkling Romney's going to make the EV count closer than some think. Mainly because of North Carolina and Virginia. These typically red states will probably end up readjusting themselves to their mean. Remember, Obama only won those two very narrowly in 2008. If Romney gets those two back, it's anyone's ballgame.

On another note, can you explain the recent polling in Wisconsin? Seems very strange. Both with regards to the presidential and governor races.

 

Might be the recall race that has energized the Democrats...

http://news.yahoo.com/dems-shift-tactics-pound-wis-governor-probe-070501174.html

 

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=tsieb020

Your link did not work, but Greece is not growing at least not in any other source I have seen.

Actually the fastest growing countries are the Nordic Countries, the 3 Baltics, Germany, Iceland, Sweeden, Poland

also Austria, Macedonia and Slovakia all @ 3+%

Turkey was tops at 8.5%

Also contrary to what AmeroGerman said, Poland seems to be the only country that did not suffer negative growth the past few years.

2009 Germany growth was also negative.

So maybe Poland is the new engine of the EU

 

Firms that do polling on the governor's race and the Presidential race are trying to get a likely voter model. Likely voters are more difficult to ascertain than registered voters (duh), which are in turn harder to ascertain than adults (again, duh). Likely voters in the gubernatorial election may not be the same people who vote in the Presidential election. Some Democratic voters may not care about Walker, or be ambivalent toward him, or may not think he's doing that poorly a job, and are thus not inclined to go vote for Barret again. However, they may still support Obama. I'd caution that by saying I have not read any of the polling cross-tabs and that the cross-tabs will hold all that information.

 

I think you can blame his messed up formatting. For the positive growth countries he used <country> - <percent growth> and for the negative growth countries he used <country>: -<percent growth>. So if you weren't looking for the colon you would think that the minus sign in front of the percentage for Greece and Portugal was just the separator between the country and the percentage.