Here’s a topic far from our daily discussion. But it’s an important subject, one that often gets mishandled badly. Tonight I’m hosting as a speaker Prof. James R. Flynn, a real maverick.
Entries from October 9th, 2008
Purple polls
October 9th, 2008, 8:44am by rvdb
I’ve now started making “Purple Poll” and “Red/Blue Poll” maps using poll-data from RealClearPolitics. I hope to update the maps on an almost daily basis between now and the election. You can see the maps at http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2008/. -Bob Vanderbei
Tags: 2008 Election · Princeton
The 500,000th site view…
October 8th, 2008, 9:09pm by Sam Wang
…will occur around 1:00am tonight. Our per-day traffic is about 5-10% that of Pollster.com, Electoral-Vote.com, or FiveThirtyEight. Not so bad for a site that went dormant in 2004 and re-launched in late July. Thank you all. (And you are most welcome to exit this site via my ActBlue page.)
Tags: Site News
Donna Brazile isn’t going to the back of the bus
October 8th, 2008, 2:02pm by Sam Wang
Just watch. (Jezebel via Andrew Sullivan).
Tags: 2008 Election · Uncategorized
Wishes, spiky histograms, and Debate #2 reactions
October 8th, 2008, 10:13am by Sam Wang
Today I wish for fresh data from Missouri and North Carolina. In one case, you get a vote in whether a survey is done!
Tags: 2008 Election
The neuroscience of being “undecided”
October 7th, 2008, 10:30am by Sam Wang
At Pollster.com, Charles Franklin examines this year’s campaign trends. In his data, “undecided” voters make up a similar fraction to the current Obama-McCain polling margin. How many of them are really undecided? Based on psychology and neuroscience research, maybe not many.
Tags: 2008 Election
Stretching your political dollars
October 5th, 2008, 3:03pm by Sam Wang
When you give money to political campaigns, you deserve to see good value for your donation. Democrats are well positioned to win the White House and make substantial gains in the House and Senate. Where is your money most effective? I don’t ask for donations to keep this site going. Instead, I ask people to [...]
Tags: 2008 Election · Site News
Obama’s red ceiling
October 3rd, 2008, 3:32pm by Sam Wang
I just gave a talk over in the Politics department/Woodrow Wilson School. A lively group! It was edifying and fun, and I was sorry to rush off. Here are my slides as PDF and PowerPoint. Unfortunately, they don’t capture the interplay or the chalkboard work, which I’ll write about later. But first, some thoughts on [...]
Tags: 2008 Election
Instant debate reaction: Biden wins
October 2nd, 2008, 11:28pm by Sam Wang
I call it for Biden, who got better and better over time. Palin herself might be off the table as an issue. I also think we won’t be seeing much more of her this month. That puts us back in the usual position of the vice-presidential nominee not mattering. I might expect some change in [...]
Tags: 2008 Election
Interview Sarah Palin!
October 2nd, 2008, 12:30pm by Sam Wang
This is interesting: a Markov chain-based model of Sarah Palin’s interview answers. It uses her existing public statements to construct a computer model of what words/phrases would be likely to follow one another, then uses the model to generate random answers. It’s relatively coherent. Ask a question! Some ideas.
Tags: 2008 Election
