2004 User Predictions - Discussion

[Gustaf]

Wonderful technical changes, it is all so easy now!!

I have added my prediction, which is based on the assumption that the race gets close. If it doesn't there is no real point in making predictions; Bush wins and there is nothing to it. If the race gets close the reasonable swing states, which a party might lose from the last election, would be: Dems: Iowa, Minnesota, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Oregon, Reps: Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and West Virginia. (You all know why so I won't go into that).

This gives the following number of vulnerable EVs: Dems 39, Reps 35. Considering that the Dems are 18 EVs down to begin with there isn't much to hope for. Some of you would probably like to put Lousiana, Arkansas and Florida among the weak states. The two latter I've made lean states, but local politics are irrelevant.

Comments are welcome!

[Gustaf]

Sadly, I don't think they are jokes. Why would anyone join a forum like this with the sole purpose of making jokes?

[Gustaf]

I'm not against making jokes. I just doubt that someone would dedicate a lot of time to joining a forum wih making jokes as the only purpose. That is fine by me, I love jokes, I just wouldn't have that as my only activity in a serious forum.

[Gustaf]

Because with our electiuons we will rule the world.

Honestly I've been wondering why Europeans care so much about our electiuons.  seems like we have more european democrats than american ones.

Not a big deal, but we just don't see the reverse, Americans could care less about European elections for the most part.

Sadly, I don't think they are jokes. Why would anyone join a forum like this with the sole purpose of making jokes?

America is more important than most European states. Also, it is a matter on national ego. Americans have a tradition of not caring and not knowing about anything else besided their own country, living in their own little world, which occurs in most big states (China, France, Japan, the UK, etc). This works because you are big enough. It wouldn't work for Swedes since we live in a so small country!

[Gustaf]

No, the French wouldn't elect an American come hell or high water, no matter how liberal!! He'd probably be right at home in the 'wet' wing (i.e liberal wing), of the Tory party. Even Dean isn't left enough for the Lib Dems or Labour, but I could easily see him being elected in Chipping Barnet :-)

Most people in Sweden think, quite rightly, that the Democrats pretty much correponds with the Swedish right, whereas the Republicans are off the edge! It can be seen, for example, that the Swedish left, left of centre, centre, right of centre and right hate Bush. The "conservative", or rather libertarian, right is split on whether to hate him or not.

[Gustaf]

Although it has to be noted that the Swedish "right" would be considered as leftish is most other countries!

Well, yeah, I suppose so...
Though, we have liberals (European ones), we just don't have any conservatives. Still, to cut taxes to, say, Finnish levels of 43% of GDP is seen as madly radical in Sweden, so I guess you are right.

[Gustaf]

Currently, it is obvious that Bush will win. So talking about current polls isn't necessary. If the elction were held today Bush would win. If it is a close race, similar to 2000, Bush will probably win as well. The Dems need a lot to go their way, and currently nothing is. And that's the bottom line. And you can't accuse me for living in a cacoon, since I don't want that to happen.

[Gustaf]

When I look at these polls it doesn't really seem that Dean is doing worse against Bush than the supposedly more electable and well-known candidates, such as Clark, Gephardt, Lieberman or Edwards. Is that just lack of name-recognition?  

[Gustaf]

Most of you are probably aware of the 31-31-31 theory. For the first time since it was analysed, America is split into three even camps of Dems, Reps and Inds. That 31% who hold no affiliation are those who will decide the election. Theres no point in either party trying to target the 31% in their own camp, those votes are in the bag. This trend should lead to a more 'centrist' political campaign. Deans campaign for one, is skewed in favour of those he knows are going to vote for him anyway. This is a big mistake. Several months for now it will be down to Dean versus one other candidate. Because the 'anti-Dean' vote is so split between Clark, Lieberman Edwards and Kerry (purposely ignoring the other 3 candidates) I think the odds are still against Dean even at this stage.

I am not aware of the 31-31-31 theory. Is there a brief explanation? And btw is voter turnout included or excluded in polls and so on, since turnout is so low in the US I would have thought it important. If you have 31% of the elctorate that would be enough with a turnout of 55%.

[Gustaf]

Gustaf, you've hit on a good point about polls and voter turnout.

In a close election, the party that best mobilizes its base will probably win.  Each party has certain segments that would never vote for the other party, but might stay home if they are not happy with the candidates, or even go over to a third party.

In 2000, both parties had problems with their base, with many Christian conservatives staying home, and thereby costing Bush the popular vote.  On the Democratic side, there was Ralph Nader, who siphoned votes away from Gore in certain critical states, most notably Florida.

Polls that don't take likelihood of voting into account can be seriously flawed.  This is a very hard thing to gauge, which is why the polls are sometimes unreliable in predicting the winner.

Nixon had his 40-40-20 theory, that each party would receive 40% of the voters regardless, and that the 20% of the swing voters would decide the election.  There are some theories out now saying that the percentage of swing voters is down to 10%, and that therefore makes it more important for a party to mobilize its base than to go for swing voters.  Maybe this is the theory that Dean is using.

The 31-31-31 theory goes the other way.

Different presidential candidates have used different strategies.  Both Nixon and Clinton used the "last vote" strategy, meaning that they would push as far as they could to the "frontier" of their support (left for Nixon, right for Clinton) as they could without endangering their base.  Others, like Reagan, have mainly concentrated on keeping their base happy, and following through on several core ideas.

Bush seems to be emulating the Clinton strategy, with his massive increases in government spending and the prescription drug care plan.  Dean seems to be going for the base.  We'll see which approach is more successful.

Well, thank you! Nice words are always appreciated! Now I get what the 31-31-31 thing is all about. But I am wondering if anyone know how the polls are made in this respect? If we suppose that turnout is higher among Reps and Dems than among undecided (which one would suppose) then the undecided wouldn't matter so much. If the polls are actually based on the electorate, and not on likely voters, then 35-40% would actually be well enough, if you just get all of them to vote. That seems wrong since the polls then would make no sense. But if you try to exclude people from polls it can easily backfire. Anyone got insights in what polling institutes do here?

[Gustaf]

Explode?

?

[Gustaf]

Explode?

Yes, explode at Realpolitik.  I already asked him for a link.

Ah. I get it.

[Gustaf]

No way  a Republican polling in the high 50s nationally is polling 10 points behing that figure in the deep South.  

Get real.

One explosion for you.

The word explosion isn't actually in the quote...

[Gustaf]

No way  a Republican polling in the high 50s nationally is polling 10 points behing that figure in the deep South.  

Get real.

One explosion for you.

The word explosion isn't actually in the quote...

He means he "exploded" with anger...

He did get a little SNIPPY when he said..."get real".

At least Dan gets me.

I got confused. I didn't recognise the word explode when Agcat introduced it. Then I found it in your post. So I thought that was what you were trying to show and...whatever, never mind...

[Gustaf]

HUH???

You used explode. Agcat posted "explode?". I didn't get where he had gotten explode from. Then I saw that you had written it down. Then I mixed up his misunderstanding with mine, so I thought you were going to show him when explode was posted first but you didn't. OK? I am tired and thick. Let's move on...

[Gustaf]

Well, thank you! Nice words are always appreciated! Now I get what the 31-31-31 thing is all about. But I am wondering if anyone know how the polls are made in this respect? If we suppose that turnout is higher among Reps and Dems than among undecided (which one would suppose) then the undecided wouldn't matter so much. If the polls are actually based on the electorate, and not on likely voters, then 35-40% would actually be well enough, if you just get all of them to vote. That seems wrong since the polls then would make no sense. But if you try to exclude people from polls it can easily backfire. Anyone got insights in what polling institutes do here?

Accurate polls must gauge the probability that a person will actually vote, and discount the opinions of those unlikely to vote.  People can be asked if they plan to vote, but they may not answer truthfully.  They can also be asked if they voted in the last election, or if they are even registered.  Statistically, adjustments can be made to determine voting likelihood, and discounting the opinions of those unlikely to vote.

As far as the undecideds go, they are also a problem, so certain assumptions have to be made there too, depending upon how far away the election is.  Generally speaking, voters who are undecided close to the election will probably break in favor of the challenger rather than the incumbent, since being undecided that late implies reservations about the incumbent.  In addition, other questions can be asked to determine the direction in which the voter is likely to lean.

It's true that Republicans generally have a better turnout than Democrats because their voters are generally more motivated.  But it may not be as true as it used to be.

I think I get your point about needing 35-40% of the electorate to win.  The actual number is lower, given our low voter turnout.  But I don't think it can be looked at that way for the reason you mentioned -- the people you count on to vote for your candidate must turn out.  So I think the only way to look at it is in terms of likely voters.

All these complications point out why it's so difficult to accurately predict winners in elections.

I know that in Sweden attempts to predict elections based on likeliness of people voting failed miserably. They actually gave worse results than those ignoring turn-out. This happened both before our last election when the right was boosted in the polls due to higher turn-out, which didn't materailze on election day, and in our referendum, where everyone thought the yes-side would do better than the polls b/c they were showned to ave higher turn-out, but they actually did worse.  

I'm not an expert but these things are really hard to predict.

[Gustaf]

The link is www.dcpoliticalreport.com/CurrentPolls.htm

Lot's of very interesting trends, even though I don't trust polls a lot...

This site has been posted once before by someone and then been posted again by me, so this is the third time. But everyone seem equally happy each time...

[Gustaf]

I noticed before when I checked, that after, what I think was hundreds of predictions, the median was actually that every single state would vote like they did in 2000. Points at a lack of fantasy, don't you think? According to Jvravnsbo it is leaning republican now, so maybe people are really making predictions now!

[Gustaf]

Btw, shouldn't tossups always be equally distributed between the parties? I notice a lot of people mark states as tossups on their confidence maps, and then hand all or most of them to one party in the prediction map. That isn't really intelectually honest, is it?  

[Gustaf]

I do it on balance of probabilities(ie: current polling shows that Bush might struggle to hold MS but I'm not sure either way, so I put it as a low D on the prediction map but tossup on the confidance map)

I just loked up your prediction map. It's interesting...you kind of go against the general view in predicting the dems doing well in the south but worse than in 2000 in other places (NM, NV, NH, etc). You have given most of the tossup EVs to the GOP, but that is acceptable since you still put the Dems as winner and is one yourself!

[Gustaf]

Btw, shouldn't tossups always be equally distributed between the parties? I notice a lot of people mark states as tossups on their confidence maps, and then hand all or most of them to one party in the prediction map. That isn't really intelectually honest, is it?  

Tossups should not sbe equally distributed between the parties.  If the popular vote of the rest of the nation is 60-40%, why would you give 50% of hte tossups to each side?  Distribute the tossups like this:

If there are 250 Dem Ev's and 200 Republican Ev's, give 20% more of the remaining states to the Dems.

Please tell me if this is heard to understand.

Okay, I see your point. I think of tossups as states where the candidates are tied and thus they are hard to predict. Then I think they would most likely spread out equally. I don't reason like they would be affected by how other states vote. If the Dems carry New York resoundingly it won't help them win a close race in New Mexico, or whatever states you might pick.

[Gustaf]

I am far from being an expert, but I did think that Arkansas was not part of the deep south. It seems to make sense looking at electoral maps, if you define deep south states as those who always vote the same way: Goldwater, Wallace and so on. Then you get a marked difference between those with DS voting patterns and those with other ones.

[Gustaf]

I have never really considered Arkansas to be part of the deep South.

An Agreement!

The unholiest alliance on the forum so far?

[Gustaf]

I would say...

Every forum has an incredibly long thread, and this is ours!  Yay!

That is actually natural, since it is an ongoing discussion as predictions change and events unfold.

[Gustaf]

Let's set a trap... something like "is sex with poodles always immoral"... and wait for John-mr_president to fight for the "yes" side...

I thought they were on opposite sides of the political spectre (or maybe they're an entity of some sorts...). John actually asked us to stop talking about them "like that" on another thread, so maybe they will join forces! It is kind hard to understand them though.  

I think you could get jmf to post rather a lot on that subject if you got him mad enough (although there might be a limited number of bible quotes there...)