Comments on: Final predictions for 2008

By: Mike L

Mike L — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:44:24 +0000

The Florida young Dems are reporting that Early/Absentee votes are over 50% higher than 2004, contrary to media reports.

Link:http://www.futuremajority.com/node/3869

This might be a case in point of what Sam said in comment # 17 about the underpolling of cell-phone only people, which has been demonstrated quantitatively by PEW.

By: John (Australia)

John (Australia) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 22:03:08 +0000

Unprecedented interest in your election down here. MY basic theory is that George Dubya has trashed brand America and if Johnny Mac gets in, there goes the neighbourhood and there will be no coming back for the USA, goodwill wise.
Final thought which should help the big O “heaps of swear words, American investment bankers”

Cheers all and enjoy.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:34:08 +0000

I think that the most important judgment that pollsters must make in this election, and the one that has the least data to support it, is the number and preferenees of likely voters.

Obama’s ground game is unprecedented, both in its use of technology and in its organization. Moreover, the effort is occurring in an equally unprecedented economic evironment. I think that this reduces the utility of past elections for predicting the voting behavior of registered voters.

My sense is that the pollsters’ assumptions about the number and voting behavior of registered voters, not limited to first time voters, is leading them to underestimate the likely Obama vote by at least 2%. On the other hand, I don’t have the data to predict how this under-estimation is distributed amongst the states.

Also, I love the site. Makes me wish I’d paid more attention to statistics is college.

By: John B.

John B. — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:19:34 +0000

I, too, am mathematically inept. This is why I have so enjoyed this site. Thanks.

By: mg5904

mg5904 — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:19:27 +0000

New guy here without much experience in statistical analysis and self-confessed scientifically/mathematically inept.

Is it possible to quantify the effects of the precipitation occurring in the VA/NC area on the results. It has me concerned.

Thanks,
mg5904

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:50:18 +0000

Sam — I think he’s a poster child for a lot more than just that. When I figure out where we should donate to get him some help, I’ll post it here as a public service. ;-)

By: Alan Cobo-Lewis

Alan Cobo-Lewis — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:48:40 +0000

Blair // Nov 4, 2008 at 5:37 am wrote:

blair>Great work, Sam.

Agreed!

blair>My guess is that, other factors equal (which they are not!), more recent polls will prove more predictive of individual states’ results.

Maybe. But there’s a tradeoff between sources of error. If public opinion has moved in the past few days, then confining analysis to recent polls will have less systematic error (bias). On the other hand, it’ll have more random error (noise) because it’ll be based on smaller aggregate sample size. This is one reason, I believe that Sam likes to keep things simple: even a more correct model might lead to poorer predictions than a simpler model if the more correct model requires a lot of data to estimate all its many parameters.

By: Eleição 2008: Corrida dos modelos (II) | Na Prática a Teoria é Outra

Eleição 2008: Corrida dos modelos (II) | Na Prática a Teoria é Outra — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:48:16 +0000

[...] Os caras do Blog eleitoral de Princeton chutam 352, com Obama levando a Carolina do Norte, Ohio e [...]

By: Sam Wang

Sam Wang — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:44:50 +0000

Michael – The deeply crazy guy is a poster child for the need to calculate a median rather than a mean from the 3BlueDudes data.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:39:19 +0000

…one (deeply crazy) guy has J Mac winning the election…

And amazingly, he gets this result without McCain flipping PA.