Obama Wins NE-02

[Gustaf]

Wow, that's awesome. Remember when Obama was going to lose the election because was spending way too much money and resources in NE-02 and it was Safe Republican anyway and millions of voters would be turned off by his hubris?

When you win by 7% it doesn't really matter that much...had the race been close it would have been a mistake.

[Gustaf]

Wow, that's awesome. Remember when Obama was going to lose the election because was spending way too much money and resources in NE-02 and it was Safe Republican anyway and millions of voters would be turned off by his hubris?

When you win by 7% it doesn't really matter that much...had the race been close it would have been a mistake.

lol

That's a nice attitude. Do you have any substance to offer? Any disagreement to voice?

[Gustaf]

Wow, that's awesome. Remember when Obama was going to lose the election because was spending way too much money and resources in NE-02 and it was Safe Republican anyway and millions of voters would be turned off by his hubris?

When you win by 7% it doesn't really matter that much...had the race been close it would have been a mistake.

When he made the move into NE-2, he wasn't heading toward a knife-edge election, and he had local resources that couldn't be profitably used in Iowa.

I don't recall when he made the move, but if I ran for president I don't think I would ever assume that the election was going to be a blow-out for me. Obama's lead was never big enough to stop caring, imo. But, ok, let's assume that the election was already over. I guess it wasn't exactly a mistake then but it's still meaningless. The point is to win a majority of the electoral votes. Getting an extra fun one from Nebraska has no value. If you're 100% certain (and I don't mean 99.99% certain) the pay-off from going there would be 0 (assuming that there is NO way of using the money profitably anywhere else).

[Gustaf]

Wow, that's awesome. Remember when Obama was going to lose the election because was spending way too much money and resources in NE-02 and it was Safe Republican anyway and millions of voters would be turned off by his hubris?

When you win by 7% it doesn't really matter that much...had the race been close it would have been a mistake.

lol

That's a nice attitude. Do you have any substance to offer? Any disagreement to voice?

he WON there in a race he won by about 6 or so % nationally.  Hard to argue that campaigning there was a mistake.  At least  no more of a mistake than campaigning in NC, MO or PA for that matter.

How about all the wasted efforts in NH, NM, NV, etc? 

I don't know if I would have bothered going for 1 EV, but since he won it, they must have known it was competitive.  and they were right.  so, yeah, I disagree with your analysis.

He put a considerable effort into that 1 EV and it got to what, McCain +7? It obviously wasn't going to decide the election. NH, NM and NV were not wasted efforts. All of them were must win states for Obama. Getting into double-digits there pretty much ensured his election. On election night my thinking was that Obama had 291 EVs definitely in the bag. Getting to that kind of situation is the important thing. If some freak thing had occurred in the final days making the race close again or some local event throwing, say, Pennsylvania back to tossup status then the money spent on NE-02 would have been a mistake. If he won comfortably, as he did, then it didn't really matter. But I don't see any scenario that made it a positive factor.

I don't really see the comparison to NC, MO or PA. PA was a must-win. With the other 2 I wouldn't say campaigning was that important in those states either, however: a) they were must-wins for McCain (wouldn't really say that of the 1 EV) and b) McCain campaigned back there. He didn't, as far as I know, in NE-02. That they got to the same margin eventually therefore doesn't really reflect reality. The fact that it turned out the way it did shows to me pretty clearly that there was no way this was going to pay-off in a close election.

I mean, an accurate comparison to this is something like Gore campaigning in Louisiana in 2000 or Bush going for Oregon in 2004. I don't see wasting your resources on places like that as smart, unless the criteria I mentioned are met. Then it's just not stupid.

[Gustaf]

Wow, that's awesome. Remember when Obama was going to lose the election because was spending way too much money and resources in NE-02 and it was Safe Republican anyway and millions of voters would be turned off by his hubris?

When you win by 7% it doesn't really matter that much...had the race been close it would have been a mistake.

lol

That's a nice attitude. Do you have any substance to offer? Any disagreement to voice?

he WON there in a race he won by about 6 or so % nationally.  Hard to argue that campaigning there was a mistake.  At least  no more of a mistake than campaigning in NC, MO or PA for that matter.

How about all the wasted efforts in NH, NM, NV, etc? 

I don't know if I would have bothered going for 1 EV, but since he won it, they must have known it was competitive.  and they were right.  so, yeah, I disagree with your analysis.

He put a considerable effort into that 1 EV and it got to what, McCain +7? It obviously wasn't going to decide the election. NH, NM and NV were not wasted efforts. All of them were must win states for Obama. Getting into double-digits there pretty much ensured his election. On election night my thinking was that Obama had 291 EVs definitely in the bag. Getting to that kind of situation is the important thing. If some freak thing had occurred in the final days making the race close again or some local event throwing, say, Pennsylvania back to tossup status then the money spent on NE-02 would have been a mistake. If he won comfortably, as he did, then it didn't really matter. But I don't see any scenario that made it a positive factor.

I don't really see the comparison to NC, MO or PA. PA was a must-win. With the other 2 I wouldn't say campaigning was that important in those states either, however: a) they were must-wins for McCain (wouldn't really say that of the 1 EV) and b) McCain campaigned back there. He didn't, as far as I know, in NE-02. That they got to the same margin eventually therefore doesn't really reflect reality. The fact that it turned out the way it did shows to me pretty clearly that there was no way this was going to pay-off in a close election.

I mean, an accurate comparison to this is something like Gore campaigning in Louisiana in 2000 or Bush going for Oregon in 2004. I don't see wasting your resources on places like that as smart, unless the criteria I mentioned are met. Then it's just not stupid.

1.  you assume all the states conform to some sort of hierarchy.  which may not be the case.  and if it is, then NC and IN and MO are good comparisons to NE-2.
2.  not sure Obama's efforts would amount to "considerable effort".
3.  Obama had a lot of money, and in many areas had saturated to the point of diminishing returns.
4.  Obama won PA by double digits.  Polls showed that very late in the campaign.  Yet you assume the efforts there were rational, while efforts in Ne-2 were a tactical error, all despite the fact the guy won BOTH. 

I'd say Obama was pretty savvy in his decisions, tactically, and this decision is one of them.

1. Not a completely rigid hierarchy, no, but I don't think any campaign decisions in the world could have made Idaho more Democratic than Massachusetts. I think there is a limit to what campaigning can do.

2. I'm not sure either. Relative to the number of EVs I would think it qualifies though?

3. I realize that, but I do refer to that in my post. You can even save the money under those circumstances.

4. I assume it was rational because he needed to win Pennsylvania.

See, my point is this. In order for the money in NE-02 to be well spent you must imagine a scenario where a) states like Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and Indiana swung back to McCain in the last days while b) NE-02 remained more or less tied and c) where this one single EV actually ended up deciding the election (that is, Obama got 270 or probably 269). I would say the joint probabilities of these events is so close to 0 it can be deemed to be 0. On the other hand, in order for there to be a good idea to spend money in Pennsylvania you only have to imagine a scenario where the nation as a whole swung towards McCain by about 7% or so. The probability of that occurring, in the last days, obviously was pretty small. But it was, imo, a lot larger than the one listed above.

Again, the expected pay-off was basically 0.