Axelrod: no answer to Ohio early numbers

[heatmaster]

The 47% unaffiliated you refer to, are Independents and as you know Romney has been leading with Independents and rarely do incumbents win without Indy's; you ignore the southern part of the state, Evangelicals and tea party supporter's are pulling in behind Romney; you also ignore Coal country, these voters don't like Obama and if your side can "persuade" them not to vote and do what they did in 2008, sit out the election - be my guest: what about those pesky women who don't buy into the herd mentality: Obama's lead is not that strong with that group: I know I'm being nasty citing these facts: Maybe you can offset these developments, but your base is not as motivated as you were four years ago. What about Obama only managing 48% in most polls? Not a recipe for success; somebody will be right and somebody will be wrong on Election Night.

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

The 47% unaffiliated you refer to, are Independents and as you know Romney has been leading with Independents and rarely do incumbents win without Indy's;

The people who've been identifying themselves as independents in the polls and the people who are counted as unaffiliated in the early voting statistics are not the same group.

[Yank2133]

The 47% unaffiliated you refer to, are Independents and as you know Romney has been leading with Independents and rarely do incumbents win without Indy's;

The people who've been identifying themselves as independents in the polls and the people who are counted as unaffiliated in the early voting statistics are not the same group.

Yeah.

The majority(women, AA, and young) of the unaffiliated 47% are Obama supporters who didn't bother to vote in the 2010 mid-terms.

[anvi]

As I understand it, one can register as an unaffiliated voter in Ohio, but voters who were previously affiliated but did not vote in a previous congressional election or primary are also considered unaffiliated.  Anyway, my point is quite simple; we'll find out on Tuesday night.  Nobody knows from the early voting reports what margins or spreads there are at the moment.  

[heatmaster]

So 47% unaffiliated are actually secret Democrats; you cite 29% Dems and 23% Republicans; I presume this is early voters: so 47% would be Independents, they are "unaffiliated" . Independents are not affiliated; you are blowing smoke; you are ignoring the absentee ballots, Republicans are up by 108, 000 voters, while Dems are down by 154,911 votes, that's a swing of 263,000 in favor of Republicans; Obama won by 262, 244 votes in 2008; this data is not suspect as you so desperately hoping it was. But I'm happy to wait until Tuesday, and we will both know who's right and who's wrong.

[Sbane]

I don't get why people are wasting their time with trollmaster. If he is too lazy to find out how Ohio registration works, and trolls the forum about it, he should be banned IMO. Definitely not worth anyone's time to explain it to him.

[anvi]

I know, sbane, but more than one person on this forum is throwing around incomplete data on the Ohio early vote, and I can't help but rebut.  In Ohio, the state classification of "unaffiliated voters" includes both voters who register as such or who did not cast ballots in the last congressional election or primary.  I'm sure that 47% includes in this case both newly registered "independent" voters as well as some mixture of Dems who didn't go to the polls in Ohio in either 2010 or in this year's primaries.  I don't know what the share of each of these groups are in the 47% of unaffiliated ballots, nobody does, but the mix is surely there.  So, no matter how many times the Romney campaign, Fox, heatmaster, Cliffy or anyone else repeats over and over the numbers of early Dem and Pub ballots that games out gains or losses in margin, those figures are flat out incomplete and meaningless, and nobody knows what the real margins are, period.  

[Brittain33]

I don't get why people are wasting their time with trollmaster. If he is too lazy to find out how Ohio registration works, and trolls the forum about it, he should be banned IMO. Definitely not worth anyone's time to explain it to him.

I literally can't bring myself to read more than two lines into any of this posts. It's a combination of his syntax and the knowledge of what he's doing.

[Seriously?]

I don't get why people are wasting their time with trollmaster. If he is too lazy to find out how Ohio registration works, and trolls the forum about it, he should be banned IMO. Definitely not worth anyone's time to explain it to him.

Yeah, ban the guy who is making reasonable arguments and assumptions based on the actual numbers in Ohio when there is some dispute to whether the Democrat or Republican argument will win at the end of the day. I agree. He doesn't tow the Obama is surging in the early vote line, so he must be dealt with accordingly.

Look, there are two ways you can look at the Ohio numbers. You are correct, the voter registration numbers are a little bit skewed there because of how Republicans are counted and how Democrats are counted in the state.

With that said, the one way that you CAN compare apples to apples is turnout by county. And the last time I looked at the numbers (which admittedly was a few days ago), it seemed like the Republican-leaning counties were up and the Democrat-leaning counties were either down or flat vs. 2008, with the biggest being the Democrat bastion of Cuyuhoga.

[Sbane]

I don't get why people are wasting their time with trollmaster. If he is too lazy to find out how Ohio registration works, and trolls the forum about it, he should be banned IMO. Definitely not worth anyone's time to explain it to him.

With that said, the one way that you CAN compare apples to apples is turnout by county. And the last time I looked at the numbers (which admittedly was a few days ago), it seemed like the Republican-leaning counties were up and the Democrat-leaning counties were either down or flat vs. 2008, with the biggest being the Democrat bastion of Cuyuhoga.

I think this is a fair argument to make, and I have seen the numbers and there is reason to be concerned. I have always felt Ohio will be closer than everyone thinks. In the end if Romney wins the PV by more than 0.5 points he will find a way to win, and it will likely go through Ohio.

Heatmaster wasn't making this argument though, he was making the idiotic party ID argument which has been refuted a bunch of times. He posts on the 2012 board enough to have at least seen it once.

[heatmaster]

Sbane, Gravis Marketing and Anvi are typical Dems, intolerant with those who don't  buy into there idiotic theories and outright fantasies; guys you can't get me banned from this sight, but give it your best shot and bring it on!; All waffle and hot air! I'll voice my opinion and stick my oar in regarding the narrative, which is advantageous to the anointed one.

[anvi]

I never said I wanted you banned.  And I'm not intolerant of your views.  I'm just contesting the completeness of the data you're relying on.

[heatmaster]

Apologies Anvi, just going on the trends for Absentee ballots, and those trends are down for Dems and up for Republicans; as for the make up of unaffiliated voters, I'm not sure of the make-up of this group, if they are composed of Indys, Dems. or Republicans; Romney is in Ohio and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania tomorrow by the way.

[anvi]

No worries, heatmaster.  Tomorrow night will be both interesting and fun.  May the guy who gets the most votes win, and whoever wins, I hope they are a good president.  Cheers.