The Velvet Underground was one of the first really interesting bands I listened to. They are simple, but amazing. I learned about them around 1982 in an interview with R.E.M., who revered them. Also, my house at Caltech had a rock band composed entirely of physics majors, who only did V.U. covers. This was within […]
Entries from October 27th, 2013
Just how steep is that climb in 2014, anyway?
October 24th, 2013, 10:52pm by Sam Wang
With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk. –John von Neumann If we want to forecast House control in 2014 without drilling into individual Congressional districts, we need to know two things: What national popular vote margin is needed to flip House control; and What […]
Tags: 2014 Election · House
How high is the House levee?
October 17th, 2013, 7:33pm by Sam Wang
Today we have some outlier statements made by other political analysts. As rounded up by Andrew Sullivan, we have Nate Cohn at the New Republic quoting Alan Abramowitz: Democrats need a 13 point Democratic edge on September 1 to win the 17 seats necessary to retake the chamber in November. For any wave election, that […]
Tags: 2014 Election · House
How long will the shutdown’s effect on opinion last?
October 17th, 2013, 10:42am by Sam Wang
A video clip of my appearance last weekend on MSNBC is here. It is brief, but I did state the main point: the shutdown leveled the House playing field in a rather unexpected manner. Republican-gerrymandered districts (FL, MI, OH, NC, PA, VA, WI) have swung away from Republicans about twice as hard as the rest of the nation. Why? When […]
Tags: 2014 Election · House
A difference with Nate Silver? Not exactly.
October 12th, 2013, 3:30pm by Sam Wang
From Brad DeLong, this headline caught my attention: SAM WANG VS. NATE SILVER: NOTED Always good to see the Ali-Foreman thing. Seriously, though, take a look at Silver’s essay at his new home at Grantland. His description of conditions is a good overview of pre-shutdown conditions. If we stop with the continual budget crises, then […]
Tags: 2014 Election · House
Has the shutdown leveled the House playing field?
October 11th, 2013, 10:08pm by Sam Wang
Tomorrow at 4:00pm ET, I’ll be on MSNBC’s Disrupt with host Karen Finney and E.J. Dionne. In addition to the sharp swing in the last week (now a median of D+8% in the generic Congressional, n=5 surveys), I’ll mention this:
Tags: 2012 Election · 2014 Election · House
What the Gerrymander giveth with one hand: House control in 2014 now a toss-up
October 10th, 2013, 10:30am by Sam Wang
Andrew Sullivan has collected some commentary that argues against my suggestion that the House could potentially flip in 2014. There were some good points made. However, it should be noted that some of these analysts’ comments have been OBE (Overtaken By Events) – the shutdown. The incredible numbers in yesterday’s NBC/WSJ poll pretty much demonstrate that […]
Tags: 2014 Election · House
Gerrymandering creates a point of weakness
October 9th, 2013, 3:45pm by Sam Wang
In the fight over the shutdown, a residual feature of partisan gerrymandering has become unexpectedly important. Andrew Sullivan quotes Kyle Kondik at Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball: [I]t’s the House Republicans in marginal districts who could see their ranks decimated, just like the House Democratic moderates whose anti-Obamacare votes couldn’t save them in 2010. An examination of […]
Tags: 2014 Election · House
The risk to the GOP’s majority in the House
October 8th, 2013, 7:03am by Sam Wang
In the current shutdown, John Boehner might be acting out of fear of losing his position. If he doesn’t appease the hardliners who are willing to take the government and economy over the brink for their goals, he could be ejected from the Speaker’s seat. However, is there some chance that he’ll lose his position […]
Tags: 2014 Election · House
A draft of a paper on the Meta-analysis
October 7th, 2013, 8:27am by Sam Wang
Dear readers, I’ve been invited to write an academic article on the Meta-analysis. I’m horribly late with it…but I do have a draft. I’d be interested in your thoughts and reactions. I’m sure I have not done justice to some important topics. The article text is here (PDF) and the figures are here (6.7 MB […]
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