Why is everyone so certain of an Obama victory?

If you are reading the New York Times, The New Republic, or the Atlantic Monthly, you probably think that it is a foregone conclusion that Obama will win reelection this tuesday. What is the reasoning behind this conclusion?

Simply put, Obama is up in individual states according to polls conducted in those states. That is the crux of the argument that Nate Silver and his followers give. And it does happen to be absolutely true. According to every publicly available poll, Obama has held consistent single-digit leads in Ohio, Iowa, and Wisconsin. For this reason, Silver thinks, it is safe to conclude that Obama will win reelection this Tuesday.

However, I am not so sure. Quickly summarizing my reasons for doubt: Romney has maintained comfortable, consistent leads nationally for the past month. You may quip that this doesn't matter because we have an electoral college. but keep in mind that these "swing states" are called such *because* they closely resemble the American electorate. So national trends will be followed in the swing states like Ohio, Iowa, and Wisconsin.

Now has Romney maintained comfortable leads in national polls? According to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, which does not weigh by sample size Romney's lead has averaged between .7 and 1.5 points nationally for the better part of a month. Right now Obama has a razor thin lead of 0.1 points, but weighing the polls by sample size produces a 0.8 point lead for Romney in the national polls, and over the past month it has hovered at about 1.5-2 point lead, a lead outside the margin of error.

So which polls should we trust? Nate Silver thinks that we should trust the state polls as they have, historically, better called an election when they diverge from national polls.

But polling is a constantly changing business, so I think it's better to use the previous presidential election as the base year. So let us check the accuracy of the state polls in 2008 and the accuracy of the national polls in 2008.

According to the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Obama was up by 7.6 points. In the end, he won the popular vote by 7.3 points.http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/national.html

To check the accuracy of the state by state polling, I took all the polls that

Above is a table I made for the states that are now labled as "tossups" by the Washington Post, plus Nevada.

On the right is the projected margin of victory for Obama in the RCP average of state level polls on election day. On the right is Obama's porjected victory by the RCP average of polls. In the middle column is Obama's actual victory margin. On the left is the difference between the two. The difference between teh two averages to just over 3 points.

State level polls were off, on average, by a whole 3 points while national polls, on average, were within .3 points, less than that if you weigh polls by sample size. In that case, Obama's projected victory going on polls in RCP's aggregate was 7.5 points. So using 2008 as our base year, we can see that national polls are clearly more trustworthy at face value than state-level polls. If that is the case, then we can pick Romney as the very slight favorite to win this Tuesday
.

Obama isn't a dumb-ass that puts his foot in his mouth, or inhibits the growth of the American people, no matter anyone's preconceived perceptions.

InEMplease

I don't think we've been watching the same person.

Five Thirty EightDroidPhysX

I personally think that anyone who is too certain either way is simply kidding themselves, having said that it really appears as though Romney's back is against the wall. He has to have Florida, (which he is leading in, but still close and a toss-up), Ohio, and several other states that are considered swing. Obama's road is just easier.

keep in mind that these "swing states" are called such *because* they closely resemble the American electorate.
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radicalcentrist

Not necessarily. They're called swing states because either candidate has a shot at winning these states and they can swing the election in the winning candidate's favor.

Obama isn't a dumb-ass that puts his foot in his mouth, or inhibits the growth of the American people, no matter anyone's preconceived perceptions.

InEMplease

[QUOTE="DroidPhysX"]Five Thirty Eightradicalcentrist

[QUOTE="radicalcentrist"]

[QUOTE="DroidPhysX"]Five Thirty EightDroidPhysX

I have a tendency to not believe polls anymore.There's a good chance obama may win even though it may look like the race is tied.Polls can be really flawed at times and they may not capture the complete picture for an incumbent or challenger.

For Romney to win, he has to win more swing states than Obama does. The states that are solidly Democrat states add up to more electoral college votes than the Republican states.

Therefore Obama has more potential routes to victory, more potential combinations of swing states. The balance of probablility is in Obama's favor. It's not like flipping a coin where it could go either way. It's more like rolling a dice where Obama has 4 sides and Mitt has 2.

The odds are something like 70% chance of Obama winning. That looks pretty good, but it's still far from a sure thing. That would still give Romney a 30% chance which is not bad at all. For example if I were given a 30% chance of winning the lottery, I'd think those were pretty good odds.

wrong question

TC, your post seems like wishful thinking to me, but atleast it's coherent wishful thinking.

[QUOTE="InEMplease"]

Obama isn't a dumb-ass that puts his foot in his mouth, or inhibits the growth of the American people, no matter anyone's preconceived perceptions.

LOXO7

TC, thinking about it, I think one of the mistakes you're making in your OP is that you're using only 2008 whereas models like Nate Silver's or Sam Wang's or Drew Linzer's use several years in their model. Based on that historical data, their models conclude Romney's likelihood of winning partly on the chance that the state polls are comitting errors large enough to overcome his state poll deficits. Once Princeton Election Consortium puts all its articles back up (they took the site down because of the hurricane and just put it back up), I'll link one that explains why state polls tend to perform better than national polls.

Another thing that makes people think Obama is going to win is the behavior of the Romney camp. They are not acting like a campaign that is winning.

I can't say I am sure either way. I'm interested in knowing the outcome, but I couldn't hazard a guess at which one will win. I hear too much conflicting analysis to trust any of it at this point, frankly.

I'd like to say that, as usual, if Congress goes more solidly Republican, then I hope the Democrat gets the Presidency. If Congress goes more solidly Democrat, then I hope the Republican gets the Presidency.

If the two Houses of Congress becomes strongly divided against each other, then either Presidentical candidate will work for me.

romney should win in a landslide

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/05/10/romney_should_win_in_a_landslide_114108.html

romney should win in a landslide

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/05/10/romney_should_win_in_a_landslide_114108.html

neotheinstein

lol Dick Morris.

Not saying Romney can't win (he can), but Dick Morris is ridiculous.

TC, thinking about it, I think one of the mistakes you're making in your OP is that you're using only 2008 whereas models like Nate Silver's or Sam Wang's or Drew Linzer's use several years in their model. Based on that historical data, their models conclude Romney's likelihood of winning partly on the chance that the state polls are comitting errors large enough to overcome his state poll deficits. Once Princeton Election Consortium puts all its articles back up (they took the site down because of the hurricane and just put it back up), I'll link one that explains why state polls tend to perform better than national polls.

Another thing that makes people think Obama is going to win is the behavior of the Romney camp. They are not acting like a campaign that is winning.

GreySeal9

[QUOTE="neotheinstein"]

romney should win in a landslide

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/05/10/romney_should_win_in_a_landslide_114108.html

GreySeal9

lol Dick Morris.

Not saying Romney can't win (he can), but Dick Morris is ridiculous.

Because Romney possible the worst Rep presidential nominee in decades.

He's the Rep version of Kerry.

[QUOTE="GreySeal9"]

TC, thinking about it, I think one of the mistakes you're making in your OP is that you're using only 2008 whereas models like Nate Silver's or Sam Wang's or Drew Linzer's use several years in their model. Based on that historical data, their models conclude Romney's likelihood of winning partly on the chance that the state polls are comitting errors large enough to overcome his state poll deficits. Once Princeton Election Consortium puts all its articles back up (they took the site down because of the hurricane and just put it back up), I'll link one that explains why state polls tend to perform better than national polls.

Another thing that makes people think Obama is going to win is the behavior of the Romney camp. They are not acting like a campaign that is winning.

radicalcentrist

Well, the thing is: Nate Silver has written that for Romney to win, state polls have to be systematically biased. He bases the lion's share of Romney's 16% chance at winning on the possibility that the polls might be biased against Romney. However, what's making his probability of Obama winning more conservative than other models is that he uses elections from as far back as the 60s. If he was to reduce the number of years he used, Romney would have even less of a chance due to the fact that state polls were much less accurate in the past than in recent times.

Here's a relevant article from Drew Linzer, who runs the Votamatic election model:

If you believe the polls, Obama is in good shape for reelection. And my models not the only one showing this: youll find similar assessments from a range of otherpoll-watchers, too. The lead is clear enough that The New Republics Nate Cohn recently wrote, If the polls stay where they are, which is the likeliest scenario, Obama would be a heavy favorite on Election Day, with Romneys odds reduced to the risk of systemic polling failure.

What would systemic polling failure look like? In this case, it would mean that not only are some of the polls overstating Obamas level of support; but that most or even all of the polls have been consistently biased in Obamas favor. If this is happening, well have no way to know until Election Day. (Of course, its just as likely that the polls are systematically underestimating Obamas vote share, but then Democrats have even less to be worried about.)

A failure of this magnitude would be major news. It would also be a break with recent history. In 2000, 2004, and 2008, presidential polls conducted just before Election Day were highly accurate, according to studies by Michael Traugott here and here; Pickup and Johnston; and Costas Panagopoulos. My own model in 2008 produced state-level forecasts based on the polls that were accurate to within 1.4% on Election Day, and 0.4% in the most competitive states.

Could this year be different? Methodologically, survey response rates have fallen below 10%, but its not evident how this necessarily helps Obama. Surveys conducted using automatic dialers (rather than live interviewers) often have even lower response rates, and are prohibited from calling cell phones but, again, this tends to produce a pro-Republican not pro-Democratic lean. And although there are certainly house effects in the results of different polling firms, it seems unlikely that Democratic-leaning pollsters would intentionally distort their results to such an extent that they discredit themselves as reputable survey organizations.

My analysis has shown that despite these potential concerns, the state polls appear to be behaving almost exactly as we should expect. Using my model as a baseline, 54% of presidential poll outcomes are within the theoretical 50% margin of error; 93% are within the 90% margin of error, and 96% are within the 95% margin of error. This is consistent with a pattern of random sampling plus minor house effects.

Nevertheless, criticisms of the polls and those of us who are tracking them persist. One of the more creative claims about why the polling aggregators might be wrong this year comes from Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics and Jay Cost of The Weekly Standard. Their argument is that the distribution of survey errors has been bimodal different from the normal distribution of errors produced by simple random sampling. If true, this would suggest that pollsters are envisioning two distinct models of the electorate: one more Republican, the other more Democratic. Presuming one of these models is correct, averaging all the polls together as I do, and as does the Huffington Post and FiveThirtyEight would simply contaminate the good polls with error from the bad ones. Both Trende and Cost contend the bad polls are those that favor Obama.

The problem with this hypothesis is that even if it was true (and the error rates suggest its not), there would be no way to observe evidence of bimodality in the polls unless the bias was way larger than anybody is currently claiming. The reason is because most of the error in the polls will still be due to random sampling variation, which no pollster can avoid. To see this, suppose that half the polls were biased 3% in Obamas favor a lot! while half were unbiased. Then wed have two separate distributions of polls: the unbiased group (red), and the biased group (blue), which we then combine to get the overall distribution (black). The final distribution is pulled to the right, but it still only has one peak.

Of course, its possible that in any particular state, with small numbers of polls, a histogram of observed survey results might just happen to look bimodal. But this would have to be due to chance alone. To conclude from it that pollsters are systematically cooking the books, only proves that apopheniathe experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data is alive and well this campaign season.

The election is in a week. Well all have a chance to assess the accuracy of the polls then.

Update: I got a request to show the actual error distributions in the most frequently-polled states. All errors are calculated as a surveys reported Obama share of the major-party vote, minus my models estimate of the true value on the day and state of that survey. Positive errors indicate polls that were more pro-Obama, negative errors are for polls that were more pro-Romney. To help guide the eye, Ive overlaid kernel density plots (histogram smoothers) in blue. The number of polls per state are in parentheses.

It may also help to see the overall distribution of errors across the entire set of state polls. After all, if there is bimodality then why should it only show up in particular states? The distribution looks fine to me.

Link.

Has there been overwhelming evidence that Romney really has that big of a chance?

Has there been overwhelming evidence that Romney really has that big of a chance?

WiiCubeM1

Not really. So while the TC's argument could possibly make sense in terms of cautioning against overconfidence, it really doesn't make sense to say he's a slight favorite in any context. After all, Romney is not really ahead in the national polls. Most of them are effectively tied and some of them have Obama ahead.

And since the way Presidents are elected is the electoral college, it naturally makes more sense to put a bit more stock in the state polls since the election is actually not so much one big election as it a whole bunch of mini-races with differening demographics, political climates, economic conditions, etc. Not to mention that Romney's national numbers are partly based on strong leads in the South. The most opitmistic polls for Romney (the Gallup poll) showed Romney winning by huge margins in the South but losing other regions by smaller margins.

If we put stock in the national polls only, the race seems to be a toss-up by all accounts, but if we put stock in the state polls, Obama seems to be a pretty heavy favorite unless we assume that the polls are systematically biased against Romney. Although this could be the case, the likelihood is not something you'd want to bet on.

If we put both stock in the national polls and assume that the race really is a tie, and give Romney a 2 point boost, assuming that the national polls are correct, it's not clear that he would win the electoral college even then. So a case can be made that the race is closer than the state polls imply (tho state polls tend to do somewhat better on average), but I don't see any evidence that Romney is even a slight favorite.

I'm not certain at all. I think it's currently Obama's election to lose but I don't think Obama has a huge advantage. Romney is a pretty terrible candidate though, shame anyone sees him as a legitimate candidate.Ace6301

I'm not certain either. Although the evidence shows Obama to have the edge, I'm still pretty anxious.

Nate Silver called 2008 and 2010. He predicted the electoral map with 98% accuracy (49/50) and missed only five seats for the House race in 2010. In both years, his general predictions (Obama wins 08, House falls to Republican control in 2010, Senate remains Democratic in 2010) were proven true.

His method has proven to be statistically viable thus far. If read his explanation of his work it's quite clear that it's all mathematically sound.

And really, his prediction on Ohio is all this race really comes down to; Obama has consistently lead there in state polls. Romney hasn't led Obama by a significant margin in any of them. And he effectively shot himself in the foot with that ridiculous Jeep/Chrysler ad he decided to put out in desperation.

The real ultimatum for Romney is winning Ohio. If he can't, election projections will come in pretty early Tuesday night.

Nate Silver called 2008 and 2010. He predicted the electoral map with 98% accuracy (49/50) and missed only five seats for the House race in 2010. In both years, his general predictions (Obama wins 08, House falls to Republican control in 2010, Senate remains Democratic in 2010) were proven true.

His method has proven to be statistically viable thus far. If read his explanation of his work it's quite clear that it's all mathematically sound.

And really, his prediction on Ohio is all this race really comes down to; Obama has consistently lead there in state polls. Romney hasn't led Obama by a significant margin in any of them. And he effectively shot himself in the foot with that ridiculous Jeep/Chrysler ad he decided to put out in desperation.

The real ultimatum for Romney is whether or not he can't win Ohio. If he can't, election projections will come in pretty early Tuesday night.

princeofshapeir

because RG3 and Alf are gonna roll over Scam Newton and the Panthers tomorrow.

He called 2008 and 2010. He predicted the electoral map with 98% accuracy (49/50) and missed only five seats for the House race in 2010. In both years, his general predictions (Obama wins 08, House falls to Republican control in 2010, Senate remains Democratic in 2010) were proven true. His method has proven to be statistically viable thus far. If read his explanation of his work it's quite clear that it's all mathematically sound. princeofshapeir

And with all due respect to the TC (whose argument is actually constructive rather than being a whole bunch of foot stomping), I'm not sure I see the logic in casting doubt on Nate's model by using only one year as a model. Only relying on one year as opposed to relying on a multitude of years (uncluding 2008) doesn't seem like it would produce as accurate results. Essentially, what that does is reduce the sample size of elections. Granted, the sample size is not very big in the first place, but still, using a multitude of years and allowing the model to apply the various historical patterns seems to make more sense. Of course, there is always a danger of overfitting (which means that your model is better at predicting the past than predicting the future; however, this can be avoided by avoiding including too many factors), but a model, by neccesity, needs something to go off of to give the data context.

Im voting Obama. But really, pre-polls dont mean anything. The only poll that counts is the one on tuesday.

Here's the article I was talking about:

In this years race, national polls show a tie, while state polls show a decisive Obama advantage. Here I suggest that the difference may arise from the fact that the same systematic pollster errors can have different ultimate effects, depending on whether they occur in national vs. state surveys. Based on past elections, national poll aggregates differ from election results by as much as 2.5%. During the same period, state-poll aggregation has been considerably more accurate. The core reason is this: even if state polls have the same accuracy as national polls, races at that level are usually decided by larger margins, leaving room for aggregation to remove the effect of the error. For this reason, I suggest that the Meta-Analysis of state polls provides a more accurate poll-based prediction of next Tuesdays outcome than national polls.

In the Wall Street Journal (October 31, 2012), Karl Rove surprises basically nobody by predicting a Romney win. His reason? He cites a Romney lead in some national polls. This has become a rallying cry for the right. But is the math correct?

Here at the Princeton Election Consortium, the Meta-Analysis points toward an Obama electoral victory. The median outcome is Obama 308, Romney 230 EV, with a Meta-Margin of Obama +2.4%+/-0.5%. To put it into plain English: If state polls are on the whole as accurate as they have been in past elections, then Obama will win.

However, national polls give a different result. National polls since October 14th give a tied median, Obamney +0.0 +/- 0.3% (n=44 polls, median +/- estimated SEM). Indeed, the discrepancy with the Meta-Analysis has been over 2.0% all season.

What is going on? Nate Silver chewed it over yesterday. Lets go through some possible reasons using PECs approaches.

Do differences in national and state poll methods account for the discrepancy? If we only accept polls from organizations that survey both the national race and individual states, we will have an apples-to-apples comparison. The result is the same: a national poll median of Obamney +0.0 +/- 0.6% (n=10 pollsters, 1 poll per organization). Dropping automated phone polls (PPP, Rasmussen, Gravis) gives Obama +0.5%, still not enough to account for the difference. Answer: no.

Are state polls slow to catch up? State polls take 10-12 days to reach a new steady state, even when the change occurs in one day, like Romneys 5-point bounce after Debate #1. Could it be that they have not caught up with national polls? This is unlikely for two reasons:

• In national polls, the race has been stable for the last two weeks long enough for state polls to catch up.
• The Meta-Analysis is moving toward Obama opposite to the direction expected.

Answer: no.

Are there hidden advantages in non-swing states? Unlike state polls that influence the Meta-Analysis, national polls sample non-swing states. Could Romney have exceptional support in red states or make the race close in blue states? Using polling margins from Pollster.com (and filling in a few missing values using 2008 returns), an average (weighted by 2008 turnout) gives Obama +2.1 +/- 0.6%. Sean Trende of RCP has done a similar calculation. That number is basically the same as the Meta-margin. Answer: no.

How is the track record of national polls? Here is a comparison of poll margins and final results.

YearFinal polling medianActual resultDiscrepancy2008Obama +7.0 +/- 0.9 % (n=15)Obama +7.3%0.3% (0.3 sigma)2004Bush +1.0 +/- 0.5 % (n=13)Bush +2.4%1.4% (2.8 sigma)2000Bush +2.0 +/- 0.9 % (n=15)Gore +0.5%2.5% (2.7 sigma)

For a bell-shaped curve, the average error is supposed to be 0.8 sigma. Here its much larger, 1.9 sigma. Ahahere may be our culprit.

Evidently, national polls have systematic problems. Answer: national polls do about 2.5x worse at predicting the popular vote outcome than expected if the wisdom of crowds of pollsters were perfect.

How is the track record of state polls? In terms of predicting both state-by-state and overall electoral outcomes, state polls do extremely well. In 2008, I correctly identified the leader 49 out of 51 races. I called two races (Indiana and Missouri) tossups, and those races had margins within 1%. In addition, the 2004 EV median precisely matched the final outcome. In other words, state polls get it 98-100% correct. Answer: pretty darned good.

But if state polls use the same methods, why would they do better than national polls? Well, state polls have three advantages.

1. Most state races, even in swing states, are decided by margins of 2% or greater. So an error that makes a big difference in national polls doesnt matter nearly as much for state polls.
2. State polls target more homogenous populations, which poses fewer technical problems to the pollster. For this reason, the systematic error might be smaller.
3. In critical swing states they are done more frequently. This focuses the data where information is most needed.

As for why the weighted sum of state polls gives a result that differs from national polls, the only reason I can think of is (2) above: state polls might be technically easier to conduct and weight. Still mulling that one.

BOTTOM LINE: Even if national and state polls have the same flaws, they are consistent with one another. Because state poll aggregation is so powerful, the result based on state polls is likely to be more accurate. That is what I would call The Math.

Link.

Here's the article I was talking about:

In this years race, national polls show a tie, while state polls show a decisive Obama advantage. Here I suggest that the difference may arise from the fact that the same systematic pollster errors can have different ultimate effects, depending on whether they occur in national vs. state surveys. Based on past elections, national poll aggregates differ from election results by as much as 2.5%. During the same period, state-poll aggregation has been considerably more accurate. The core reason is this: even if state polls have the same accuracy as national polls, races at that level are usually decided by larger margins, leaving room for aggregation to remove the effect of the error. For this reason, I suggest that the Meta-Analysis of state polls provides a more accurate poll-based prediction of next Tuesdays outcome than national polls.

In the Wall Street Journal (October 31, 2012), Karl Rove surprises basically nobody by predicting a Romney win. His reason? He cites a Romney lead in some national polls. This has become a rallying cry for the right. But is the math correct?

Here at the Princeton Election Consortium, the Meta-Analysis points toward an Obama electoral victory. The median outcome is Obama 308, Romney 230 EV, with a Meta-Margin of Obama +2.4%+/-0.5%. To put it into plain English: If state polls are on the whole as accurate as they have been in past elections, then Obama will win.

However, national polls give a different result. National polls since October 14th give a tied median, Obamney +0.0 +/- 0.3% (n=44 polls, median +/- estimated SEM). Indeed, the discrepancy with the Meta-Analysis has been over 2.0% all season.

What is going on? Nate Silver chewed it over yesterday. Lets go through some possible reasons using PECs approaches.

Do differences in national and state poll methods account for the discrepancy? If we only accept polls from organizations that survey both the national race and individual states, we will have an apples-to-apples comparison. The result is the same: a national poll median of Obamney +0.0 +/- 0.6% (n=10 pollsters, 1 poll per organization). Dropping automated phone polls (PPP, Rasmussen, Gravis) gives Obama +0.5%, still not enough to account for the difference. Answer: no.

Are state polls slow to catch up? State polls take 10-12 days to reach a new steady state, even when the change occurs in one day, like Romneys 5-point bounce after Debate #1. Could it be that they have not caught up with national polls? This is unlikely for two reasons:

• In national polls, the race has been stable for the last two weeks long enough for state polls to catch up.
• The Meta-Analysis is moving toward Obama opposite to the direction expected.

Answer: no.

Are there hidden advantages in non-swing states? Unlike state polls that influence the Meta-Analysis, national polls sample non-swing states. Could Romney have exceptional support in red states or make the race close in blue states? Using polling margins from Pollster.com (and filling in a few missing values using 2008 returns), an average (weighted by 2008 turnout) gives Obama +2.1 +/- 0.6%. Sean Trende of RCP has done a similar calculation. That number is basically the same as the Meta-margin. Answer: no.

How is the track record of national polls? Here is a comparison of poll margins and final results.

YearFinal polling medianActual resultDiscrepancy2008Obama +7.0 +/- 0.9 % (n=15)Obama +7.3%0.3% (0.3 sigma)2004Bush +1.0 +/- 0.5 % (n=13)Bush +2.4%1.4% (2.8 sigma)2000Bush +2.0 +/- 0.9 % (n=15)Gore +0.5%2.5% (2.7 sigma)

For a bell-shaped curve, the average error is supposed to be 0.8 sigma. Here its much larger, 1.9 sigma. Ahahere may be our culprit.

Evidently, national polls have systematic problems. Answer: national polls do about 2.5x worse at predicting the popular vote outcome than expected if the wisdom of crowds of pollsters were perfect.

How is the track record of state polls? In terms of predicting both state-by-state and overall electoral outcomes, state polls do extremely well. In 2008, I correctly identified the leader 49 out of 51 races. I called two races (Indiana and Missouri) tossups, and those races had margins within 1%. In addition, the 2004 EV median precisely matched the final outcome. In other words, state polls get it 98-100% correct. Answer: pretty darned good.

But if state polls use the same methods, why would they do better than national polls? Well, state polls have three advantages.

1. Most state races, even in swing states, are decided by margins of 2% or greater. So an error that makes a big difference in national polls doesnt matter nearly as much for state polls.
2. State polls target more homogenous populations, which poses fewer technical problems to the pollster. For this reason, the systematic error might be smaller.
3. In critical swing states they are done more frequently. This focuses the data where information is most needed.

As for why the weighted sum of state polls gives a result that differs from national polls, the only reason I can think of is (2) above: state polls might be technically easier to conduct and weight. Still mulling that one.

BOTTOM LINE: Even if national and state polls have the same flaws, they are consistent with one another. Because state poll aggregation is so powerful, the result based on state polls is likely to be more accurate. That is what I would call The Math.

Link.

GreySeal9

This was the article that I really paid attention too. It seems like that you shouldn't be putting much stock in the polls, but with the right kind of statistical analysis.

To answer the TC's question, I don't think it's a forgone conclusion that Obama will win, but he has far more in his favor when it comes to the Electoral college.

Poll errors should help Obama like they did the last time.

Polls underestimate minority and young people. They're good for likely voters (Which Obama is ahead on) & the numbers will only go up from there. Romney has little to no chance of winning.

This article by a Republican strategist sums it up nicely.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/03/mitt-romney-s-delusions-of-victory.html

It all comes down to some battleground states like Ohio and a few others. I think Obama has the lead there.

I don't want Obama voters to get complacent, so I have no problems with pushing idea that he's in a heated tie.

He sold more masks

This is why. 6 Bizarre Factors that Predict Every Presidential ElectionTylendal

Simply put: Romney has too many 'toss up' states that he needs to win compared to Obama.

Even if we treated Ohio, Va., N.H., Iowa, etc. as even money tossups, the probability of a Romney win is narrow b/c needing to win moar. Narrower still when we consider that most Ohio polls favor Obama. It really does not matter that Romney is winning national polls. First, at this point, he is BARELY winning. Secondly, Obama's lead is disproportionately held in swing states. This is quite a favorable set up for him.

[QUOTE="radicalcentrist"]

[QUOTE="DroidPhysX"]Five Thirty EightDroidPhysX

That's not good enough.

because RG3 and Alf are gonna roll over Scam Newton and the Panthers tomorrow.

Cloud_Insurance

because state polls and that Obama has more chances to win with the swing states then Romney does.

in the US, it's the Electoral college that decides the winner, not the popular vote.

personally voting for Obama in Minnesota, and while i think he has a good chance to win, what will matter the most is who shows up to vote on election day. so if your American citizen, make sure you take the time out of your day to vote. you only do it once every 2-4 years (if your interested in voting in the midterms that is).

Why? Because the media wants people to think that their choice is pointless to vote for. This leads people to vote for who they think will win rather than who they actually want to win. The Republicans play this game with the libertarians. They say "you are wasting your vote by voting based on your morals, so why not vote for someone who actually has a chance of winning?"