Mother Nature is our best teacher and the only one who is always right. – Viktor Hamburger, biologist In yesterday’s Los Angeles Times, several prognosticators (including me) commented on why we were right or wrong. On the wrong side are Colorado researchers Bickers and Berry, who thought that Romney would get 330 electoral votes. Now, [...]
Entries Tagged as 'President'
Feeding Karl Rove a bug
November 9th, 2012, 1:40am by Sam Wang
Today’s PEC news clips: USA Today, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the LA Times, Atlantic Monthly, and the Daily Princetonian. Early on Election Night, the New Hampshire results made clear that the state polls were on target, just as they were in 2000-2008 – more accurate than national polls. At that point it seemed more interesting to watch [...]
Tags: 2012 Election · President · Senate
After the storm
November 7th, 2012, 9:42am by Sam Wang
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. -T.S. Eliot Good morning! The day after the election is always a bit of a relief for me. We’re still waiting on a few races, but here’s [...]
Tags: 2012 Election · House · President · Senate
Comment thread #1 – and a little live blogging
November 6th, 2012, 7:39pm by Sam Wang
9:34pm. CBS: New Hampshire called for Obama. Erm, election’s probably over. And unskewers are full of it. On the same note: Florida is Obama 50.01%, Romney 49.99% with 81% counted. <0.5% is recount territory (Brennan Center).
Tags: 2012 Election · President
Geek’s Guide to the Election 2012
November 6th, 2012, 5:20pm by Sam Wang
I’ve made a simple guide for tracking the election. It’s at geeks-guide-2012-b.pdf. My two pieces of advice are: Ignore exit polls and large states. Watch New Hampshire (expectation: Obama +3%) (CNN) (electoral-vote.com) I’ll use this post to list some resources. I’ll update this on the fly – check back now and then. Or leave your own [...]
Tags: 2012 Election · President
Presidential prediction 2012 – final
November 6th, 2012, 2:00pm by Sam Wang
I apologize to all for the late update. We wanted to make sure all the polls were in. And it’s a hectic day. The following are final estimates, based on taking polling data over longer intervals than our usual 1-week rule. Instead, I found the period over which a state’s polling variance was minimized, as [...]
Tags: 2012 Election · President
Tea leaves: early voting
November 6th, 2012, 1:00pm by Sam Wang
Early voting has been kicked around as an indicator of how the vote will turn out. It’s not perfect, since it reflects a combination of opinion, voter intensity, and maybe get-out-the-vote efforts. Still, here are some comparisons, taken from Prof. Michael McDonald’s early voting site at George Mason University. These are the fraction of early [...]
Tags: 2012 Election · President
Presidential prediction 2012 (Election Eve)
November 6th, 2012, 1:47am by Sam Wang
If state polls perform as well as they did in 2004 and 2008, most aggregators should get within +/-15 electoral votes and 48/51 races correct. The question is how to squeeze a bit more out of the data. The topline listed just below the title of this website is not our prediction, but the automatically-generated snapshot. It [...]
Tags: 2012 Election · President
The 1-point Sandy bounce?
November 5th, 2012, 10:02pm by Sam Wang
(Today’s our all-time high of traffic – over 300,000 350,000 views. That’s three times our 2008 traffic. Welcome, readers of Andrew Sullivan, Paul Krugman, Wired, Deadspin,Kevin Drum, Peter Norvig, The Blaze…The Blaze? ZOMG!!! I thought you were PECer-heads! Seriously…everyone go read that piece. Alternate reality.) Some of you expressed concern at an “unnerving” drop in the [...]
Tags: 2012 Election · President
