Axelrod: no answer to Ohio early numbers

[Cliffy]

lol.

On Chris Wallace's show he says we'll see who's bluffing, lol nice answer. What bluff? we've erased your 2008 edge.  260k+ EV swing.  Romney will win:D

http://youtu.be/Hrsbm-nCy24

[Ljube]

LOL!

This is priceless.

And we'll know in two day who is shaving and not shaving.

[Joe Biden 2020]

Axelrod without a mustache seems a little weird...

[dirks]

[Cliffy]

Well he didn't bet over Ohio, which is telling.  I think he bet over not losing PA, WI or MI.

[Cliffy]

He sure looks like they're losing OH though.

[Orion0]

It is quite funny that he just says "we'll see who's bluffing', if he was feeling good about Ohio the answer is naturally "those numbers are irrelevant and we are still confident in victory"

I think the continued democratic "leads" in Ohio polls is pushing up enthusiasm among republicans, not only in ohio but also in neighboring states. republicans are worried that ohio might not go their way and are increasing their efforts on gotv, which would explain the tightening in pa, mi, mn, etc. I expect an upset or two in areas that democrats are relying on shoddy polls (ppp) to secure their base's enthusiasm.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Well he didn't bet over Ohio, which is telling.  I think he bet over not losing PA, WI or MI.

I don't think the bet involved winning/losing at all. From what I remember, Scarborough bet that Romney would win FL and NC, while Axelrod bet that Obama would win PA, MI, or WI (although that WI might have been MN, I'm not sure).

[milhouse24]

I wonder if Obama supporters are annoyed by the daily "Obama campaign GOTV calls" - I know a few people who are just sick of the "Obama calls to vote" and will lie and say they are voting, when they aren't going to vote at all, or switched their votes to Romney.

[anvi]

lol at the assumptions the Romney campaign is making both about early voting and about election day turnout.  Gotta hand it to 'em, it takes a lot of "moxy" to be behind in early voting, not having led any poll taken in the state for some time, and conclude they're going to roll to an easy win.  

Regarding early voting in Ohio, reports today say ballots turned in by registered Dems total 29% of the total, 23% by Pubs and 47% by unaffiliated voters, voters, namely that didn't cast ballots in the last primary, so, if they're not going to count the unaffiliated ballots but only those cast by voters with established party ids,, how does the Romney campaign infer that they've wiped out anybody's advantage?  Especially when the Dispatch poll reported this morning that Obama is winning 2-1 among the voters they polled who didn't cast a ballot in 2010, a lot of whom could have been lapsed Dem voters from 2008?  On top of all that, a few days ago, a guy at George Mason U. keeping track of early voting in all the states reported that the reports of early voting totals from Ohio counties on October 30th totaled a lesser number than those that were reported in the first batch of county reports he got on October 26th.  The reports are not all exact, even with what they give us, at the moment.

Bottom line: neither you nor Fox nor the Romney campaign nor Axlerod knows where the margins are in Ohio at the moment and everyone will have to wait till the 6th (and 7th) to find out what the count is.  In the meantime, Romney is down in early voting and he is consistently slightly behind in the polls, and in order for him to win the state, he, by all the actual evidence we have, has to overtake Obama.  

lol

[Yank2133]

Apparently, there are some very long lines in Cuyahoga county today............

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Apparently, there are some very long lines in Cuyahoga county today............

Black churches doing their thing, I'd expect.

[Holmes]

I wonder if Obama supporters are annoyed by the daily "Obama campaign GOTV calls" - I know a few people who are just sick of the "Obama calls to vote" and will lie and say they are voting, when they aren't going to vote at all, or switched their votes to Romney.

People will say they're voting just to stop the calls, but no one will change their votes over them.

[Gass3268]

Apparently, there are some very long lines in Cuyahoga county today............

Black churches doing their thing, I'd expect.

Yup, souls to the polls!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/04/ohio-souls-to-the-polls-election

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Apparently, there are some very long lines in Cuyahoga county today............

Black churches doing their thing, I'd expect.

Yup, souls to the polls!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/04/ohio-souls-to-the-polls-election

The level of civic commitment that many institutions in the black community in this country show and advocate is really exemplary, regardless of what you think of the form that commitment takes. The same is true of Mormons, actually.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Apparently, there are some very long lines in Cuyahoga county today............

Black churches doing their thing, I'd expect.

Yup, souls to the polls!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/04/ohio-souls-to-the-polls-election

The level of civic commitment that many institutions in the black community in this country show and advocate is really exemplary, regardless of what you think of the form that commitment takes. The same is true of Mormons, actually.

[heatmaster]

Axelrod, saying "Well see who's bluffing" is false bravado and suggests, that Obama and company know that Romney and the Republicans are outpacing Dems in Ohio, game on and Dems trying to spin what is occurring is pitiful.

[anvi]

What's false bravado is the Romney campaign weighing numbers of Dem vs. Pub ballots cast while ignoring another whole 47% of ballots cast by unaffiliated voters and claiming they've wiped out Obama's advantage.  I think Axelrod called it what it is, a bluff.

[heatmaster]

This response, is to be expected from a Democratic supporter, the blind leading the blind and all I saw was false bravado from Axelrod, and the best response he could come up with, "We'll see who's bluffing"; why no response to why the Dems are down from there 2008 totals? All I head was crickets and silence; Axelrod stuck for words, now I know there are desperate days for Team Obama.

[anvi]

And I just gave you the response above.  The numbers the Romney campaign is running through Fox account for the 29% of Dem early ballots turned in in Ohio so far compared to the 23% of early ballots turned in by Pubs, claiming that Obama's margins are not high enough--all the while ignoring the 47% of ballots turned in by unaffiliated voters.  That's not only a bluff, it doesn't even qualify as a bluff, since the Romney campaign doesn't even know what cards its holding with those ballots and claiming they're doing great.  It's spinning numbers that they don't have. 

[heatmaster]

So how come you have Romney drawing larger crowds? How come the Republicans have a 10% enthusiasm advantage? Or does that count? Also Dems absentee ballot's are down 154,911 from 2008, and Republicans are up by 108,000, that's a swing of 263,000 and as you know Obama won Ohio by 262,264 votes in 2008; Axelrod says Romney was bluffing and claims that the Obama campaign are dealing with facts; well he's ignoring the facts he was presented with and went off on his talking points spin, what gives; if you deny false bravado, be my guest: but Romney has data which can't be ignored, Axelrod knows this, as he and Obama have access to the same data, but they are ignoring the stubborn facts, talk about suffering from denials.

[Lief 🗽]

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[anvi]

heatmaster,

The data you're extrapolating comes out of the clip in the OP.  But notice that these are only counts of Dem and Pub ballots.  But notice in the following story from yesterday that 47% of the ballots cast in Ohio so far are from unaffiliated voters.

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/03/3899281/obama-seems-to-have-early-voter.html

The Romney camp's numbers you are referencing don't include any of these 47% of ballots cast, and they don't know which candidate the unaffiliated voters picked.  So how would they be in a position to say whose margins are down or up?  Facts don't tell the true story if they're not complete.  

Now, I don't know which candidate these 47% of unaffiliated voters chose either, so I don't know what the margin is right now.  I'm not the one making up the size of the swing, though, Romney is, and you're just repeating what his campaign, though Fox, is claiming.  But I do know that being an unaffiliated voter in Ohio often means that you didn't cast a ballot in the last congressional election (2010), and so a lot of those people could be Dems who didn't vote last time and are now coming back to the polls.  Not all of them are, but some of them very likely are.

But, with regard to that 47%, I wouldn't be so confident, because the Dispatch poll released this morning, which includes polling of early voters, claims that Obama is leading 2-1 among voters who didn't cast ballots in the last election.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/11/04/dispatch-poll-shows-ohio-a-toss-up.html

So, the numbers you're reciting, particularly since they leave out lots of data, don't tell us any story about margins or swings or anything.  Now, neither Axelrod nor I know what the real numbers are either, but neither he nor I ever claimed to know in the first place--Romney is claiming that knowledge on the basis of woefully insufficient data.  What I do know is those Fox numbers this morning are not the whole story and allow no inferences about margins or spreads.  And Axelrod knows that too, which is why he called it a "bluff."

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

So how come you have Romney drawing larger crowds? How come the Republicans have a 10% enthusiasm advantage? Or does that count?

In strict order of asking: Partially because he's the challenger; there's no conclusive evidence that they do; and no, none of your 'gut feelings' count for much at all.

[Lief 🗽]

Romney isn't drawing larger crowds... Obama just held the largest political rally in New Hampshire history today with a crowd of 14,000.