The 2012 US Election

[Erunáme]

Another story from Romney's "relief event".:

But the last-minute nature of the call for donations left some in the campaign concerned that they would end up with an empty truck. So the night before the event, campaign aides went to a local Wal-Mart and spent $5,000 on granola bars, canned food, and diapers to put on display while they waited for donations to come in, according to one staffer. (The campaign confirmed that it "did donate supplies to the relief effort," but would not specify how much it spent.)

As supporters lined up to greet the candidate, a young volunteer in a Romney/Ryan T-shirt stood near the tables, his hands cupped around his mouth, shouting, "You need a donation to get in line!"

Empty-handed supporters pled for entrance, with one woman asking, "What if we dropped off our donations up front?"

The volunteer gestured toward a pile of groceries conveniently stacked near the candidate. "Just grab something," he said.

Two teenage boys retrieved a jar of peanut butter each, and got in line. When it was their turn, they handed their "donations" to Romney. He took them, smiled, and offered an earnest "Thank you."

link

I get that he has a more difficult time than Obama regarding this.. but he didn't exactly help himself with this event.

[River]

Silver now has the president's chances up to 79%. It is interesting to see how much vitriol there is out there against him, primarily from conservatives. It's not like he is the only one indicating that the president's chances are good. Anyone can look at the state polls and see that they suggest that he is likely to win, whatever Gallup says about the national race. In fact, other places that do no more than aggregate polls give the president a higher chance of winning than 538 does.

There's an impulse to shoot the messenger when you don't like the message. Even if you don't actually understand the message. Part of the problem is probability and statistics are actually much more counter-intuitive than people think they are. Another part is people seem to be forgetting that a predictive model is a) only as good as the data and the algorithm and b) still a prediction. Silver's giving Obama a 79% chance of a win. That doesn't mean that it is now written in stone that Obama will win. It does, however, mean that if you put the Romney logo on one side of a coin and the Obama logo on the other and flip it five times, on one of those five flips Romney's logo will come up on top. That might not be as close as some would like it to be, or feel* like it is, but it's hardly a guarantee of anything.

I think what also might be going on is the media has a lot of interest in portraying the election to be as close as possible because it boosts ratings and ad dollars. This is why the polls that make the headlines are cherry-picked from the pile. A cold splash of reality, in the form of guys like Nate Silver or Sam Wang or outfits like InTrade, frustrates pundits because it shows them to be blowing hot air. Which is odd because blowing hot air is sort of a pundit's job description. If they can't handle that simple truth about themselves maybe they should find a different line of work.

*That "gut feeling" we all love to fall back on when we don't really know what's going on is what casinos depend on to keep customers gambling. Be very very careful about trusting it.

[Dave_LF]

Silver now has the president's chances up to 79%. It is interesting to see how much vitriol there is out there against him, primarily from conservatives.

I guess once you've denied biology, climatology, and history, it's not that big a deal to throw statistics into the mix too.

It's not just Silver, either. Public Policy Polling likes to retweet the insults and threats they receive, and some of them are pretty nasty.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Quite surprised to hear that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, perhaps the most prominent Independent politician in the country, endorsed President Obama today. Mayor Bloomberg declined to endorse either candidate in 2008, and has been critical of the president at times during the past four years. He indicates in his endorsement that climate change is the primary factor behind his endorsement, which is interesting because the issue has barely been raised in the campaign.

Michael Bloomberg endorses Obama

Not very likely to have much effect on the race (I doubt the president will run ads touting the endorsement the way he did with Colin Powell's), but it is interesting nonetheless.

[Alatar]

Actually laughing out loud at this!

http://youtu.be/ltCIEbLMaQg

[Dave_LF]

I hesitate to say this with a week still left, and maybe it's just because I'm not in a competitive state and don't watch TV, but it seems to me there's been a lot less silly stuff from serious people this time around.

I knew I should have kept my mouth shut:

The Romney campaign is running an ad in Florida that says Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez support Obama.

ABC News

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Last Jobs Report Before The Election Stronger Than Expected

Unemployment rate actually ticked up a point to 7.9%, but that was due to the fact that more people reentered the workforce. The economy added 171,000 jobs, considerably more than economists were expecting, and the numbers for the previous months were also revised upward.

Of course, Gov. Romney can (and already is) claiming that these numbers are not nearly good enough, but the president and his team must be relieved.

[Dave_LF]

Except the headlines are focusing on the fact that the unemployment rate is up. Why does a 0.1 percentage-point change in a highly imprecise metric get reported as significant when a consistent 3% lead in the polls is considered a statistical tie?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Really? I'm not seeing that. All the reports that I am seeing are either saying that its a mixed bag or that it is positive for the president. Where are you seeing headlines that focus on the increased unemployment rate? Even the ones that do that I am seeing spin it as good news, such as this one from the WSJ:

Good News! The Unemployment Rate Rose

Or this one from the WA Post:

Job growth, unemployment rate rose in October, as workers re-entered labor force

[Dave_LF]

It's starting to lean more toward good/mixed news as more outfits put their headlines up. Even Fox has a couple up that are as more-or-less neutral sounding . Still; the standard headline seems to be something like the one CBS has: "Unemployment rises to 7.9 percent; 171K jobs added."

[River]

Except the headlines are focusing on the fact that the unemployment rate is up. Why does a 0.1 percentage-point change in a highly imprecise metric get reported as significant when a consistent 3% lead in the polls is considered a statistical tie?

I've been wondering the exact same thing.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

One of the more interesting polling that has come up recently is that Joe Donnelly, the Democratic Senatorial candidate in Indiana, has for the first time been shown to have a consistent lead in his race against GOP nominee Richard Mourdock. Some may recall that Mourdock defeated longtime Senator Richard Lugar in the GOP primary on a platform of rigid anti-compromise. More recently, Mourdock expressed the shocking view that pregnancies stemming from rape were "something that God intended to happen" (perhaps even more shocking is that his statement may not have even been the most callous statement made by a GOP congressional candidate about rape in the last several weeks; see here.) This seat, had Richard Lugar been renominated for a sixth term, would have been about the safest of safe GOP senate seats. Instead, it looks more and more likely to pass into Democratic hands. When added to the seats that the GOP lost in 2010 because they nominated extremist candidates Christine O'Donnell (Delaware) and Sharon Angle (Nevada), that likely will make the difference between GOP control of the Senate and Democratic control. I wonder whether that lead to a scaling back of the GOP move to the far right?

[Primula Baggins]

The Mourdock/Angle/O'Donnell voters don't care about the "big picture" of control of the Senate, from what I see. It's more important to them to "stick to their principles" by voting for the most right-wing candidate available in every possible circumstance, and whatever the consequences.

[N.E. Brigand]

"I'm not in this race to slow the rise of the oceans or to heal the planet. I'm in this race to help the American people." -- Mitt Romney, Sep. 9, on Meet the Press. Emphasis mine.

In conjunction with Sandy video, that could be a very effective Obama ad.

And there it is.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Do you (any you) think that will influence anyone's vote?

[Holbytla]

This is one of the reasons why I detest stats. People use them to their own advantage, and they rarely convey the whole truth when taken on face value.

There was a fairly large to do by both parties last month, when the jobs report came out. Both campaigns either overly marginalized it or overly trumped it, depending on the party. That was when the grand sum was a .2 reduction in unemployment. Why is a .1 advance significantly different?

Seriously, even though jobs grew by 177,000 or whatever the figure is, how is that good news when more people are in the workforce? Statistically speaking, if you are one of the 23+ million in the unemployment line, your chances of landing a job are reduced this month because there is more competition.

I understand that job growth is a good thing, but if you can't find work, more people looking for jobs probably doesn't make you feel a whole lot better.

Too many people are unemployed, and if you are one of the people looking for a job, your outlook hasn't changed much at all.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Seriously, even though jobs grew by 177,000 or whatever the figure is, how is that good news when more people are in the workforce? Statistically speaking, if you are one of the 23+ million in the unemployment line, your chances of landing a job are reduced this month because there is more competition.

That 23 million person figure, which Gov. Romney likes to quote includes the people who had given up looking for work. It is positive that people who had previously given up are returning to the work force but it indicates growing confidence. Job growth begats more job growth. This job report probably was a better report overall than last month despite the fact that the employment rate went up this time, and down last time.

(Just to be pedantic, the reduction in the unemployment rate in the September report was 0.3, not 0.2.)

[River]

Do you (any you) think that will influence anyone's vote?

At this point? I think people's minds are pretty much made up.

[Holbytla]

I guess I just don't understand the numbers and what they mean.

How does being listed as having "given up looking for work" make the numbers any better or worse? You either have a job or you don't. Either the numbers were skewed then or now.

People that don't have jobs (either because they gave up or can't get work) equals a certain number. I don't really see any other number that is meaningful. Not receiving income is not receiving income regardless of why.
It is theoretically possible to have an unemployment rate be negative and yet have corporations be desperately seeking employees.

You can slice the last 6 or so years of numbers however you want and you can state the stats in whatever way that suits whatever party, but not having a job and being able to subsist lends a different reality to the numbers. Too many people out of work. Trends, forecasts and stats don't shelter or feed people.

[River]

I think they define as unemployed as not working and trying to change that. If you're not employed and not trying to change that, they don't count you as unemployed. This keeps retirees, stay-at-home parents, people in school, and the disabled out of the bin (can you imagine what the unemployment number at any given time under any given economic conditions would look like if it included students and retirees, especially now that the Boomers are retiring??). The reason why this jobs report is being given such a rosy glow is because it looks like people who gave up trying to find a job are tossing their hats back into the ring.

I read somewhere that the margin of error on jobs added in the monthly jobs reports is 100K. So, the better way to report it would have been 77,000 - 277,000 jobs were added in October. As DaveLF pointed out, it's not exactly a precise metric. But the stock market rises and falls on it all the same.