Electoral College Prediction Model Points To A Winner In 2012 Presidental Election

[Svnla]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...d=maing-grid7|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk2&pLid=195989

Ken Bickers from CU-Boulder and Michael Berry from CU-Denver, the two political science professors who devised the prediction model, say that it has correctly forecast every winner of the electoral race since 1980.

Guess we will have to wait and see in a few months if this will be true or not.

IMO, it will depend on the economy/unemployment rate and the debates.

 

[monovillage]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...d=maing-grid7|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk2&pLid=195989



Guess we will have to wait and see in a few months if this will be true or not.

IMO, it will depend on the economy/unemployment rate and the debates.

Even though an Obama/Biden loss in November would be the best thing for this country, it's citizens and the economy, I still think the odds favor an Obama win. I'd like to see more money spent on Republican efforts to win the Senate.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Holy shit, 1980? Now that's reliable.

 

[gevorg]

Romney has no chance. He won't fail miserably like McCain though.

O-ba-ma!
O-ba-ma!
O-ba-ma!

 

[cybrsage]

Romney has no chance. He won't fail miserably like McCain though.

O-ba-ma!
O-ba-ma!
O-ba-ma!

Did you even read the article? Let me help you:

Electoral College Prediction Model Points To A Mitt Romney Win In 2012

Ken Bickers from CU-Boulder and Michael Berry from CU-Denver, the two political science professors who devised the prediction model, say that it has correctly forecast every winner of the electoral race since 1980.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...d=maing-grid7|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk2&pLid=195989

 

[boomerang]

So, to briefly summarize the factors that predict a Romney win...

• University - check
• Political Science Professors - check (Plus, we know those in academia are smart)
• A prediction model that has been right the last eight presidential elections including the Bush/Gore election. - check

I might just have to put my shades on cause the future's so bright.

 

[Farang]

I don't put a lot of stock in this. While their track record is impressive, it's been argued (correctly I'd say) that this election is unique and past outcomes attributed to economic indicators aren't really applying.

I think it's because it is a unique situation, without trying to sound partisan you had one party leave office during a huge economic crisis and the President took over blameless. Rather than the economy being dim under his watch, a widely held view is that the recovery isn't fast enough (I think a lot of Republicans would even agree with this). This as opposed to Bush I in '92, where the President had the downturn occur solely on his watch.

Add to that the sample size is so small that cause/effect attributed to economic factors is weak. While their model has been successful in predicting outcomes since 1980, frankly how impressive is that when you count how many of these contests have even been close?

 

[michal1980]

^every election is "unique"

 

[Farang]

^every election is "unique"

Not according to models like this. They'd say Clinton won a second term because the economy was doing well, Bush II the same. Bush I the economy didn't do so well so he lost. Reagan the economy was rebounding so he won. See how economic indicators predict election outcomes?

 

[Charles Kozierok]

I remember reading a few weeks ago about some other group with a "never fail" prediction model that said Obama would win.

A Google search for these authors from 2008 turns up absolutely nothing, which is suspect. If their track record is so wonderful, I would have thought they would have been in the news in the last election as well. I could have just missed it, but it's strange.

In addition to what Farang mentioned, the other problem with these prediction models is that they focus too much on the incumbent and not enough on the challenger. There are a lot of people who don't like Obama, and if the alternative was a likable, decent man with real, sound policies, my guess is that Obama would be down by 5 to 10 points. But instead, those who dislike Obama are being asked to vote for a craven, out-of-touch serial liar who has no core convictions and cares about nothing but his own power and money.

To make matters worse, as much as people blame big government for a lot of the current problems, they blame big business and big finance as well, and Romney is the poster boy for those groups.

And the icing on the cake is the Republican Party being batshit crazy on social issues.

All of these are why Obama usually polls above his approval ratings. He's not great, but a lot of people think Romney would be worse.

 

[dmcowen674]

Electoral College Prediction Model Points To A Winner In 2012 Presidental Election

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...d=maing-grid7|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk2&pLid=195989

Told you my map is always right.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Told you my map is always right.

You said in 2008 that there was no way Obama could win.

 

[PokerGuy]

Even though an Obama/Biden loss in November would be the best thing for this country, it's citizens and the economy, I still think the odds favor an Obama win. I'd like to see more money spent on Republican efforts to win the Senate.

Exactly right. :thumbsup:

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally Posted by dmcowen674
Told you my map is always right.

You said in 2008 that there was no way Obama could win.

Really?

Where were you in 2008?

According to your sign up date of May 2012 how would you know?

WWYBYWB?

 

[Charles Kozierok]

According to your sign up date of May 2012 how would you know?

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=26271355&postcount=20

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Well, it looks like McOwned was owned by the forum search function.

 

[MomentsofSanity]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=26271355&postcount=20

And that's how you own someone.

Should add. You've been a welcome addition to this forum in my book!:thumbsup:

 

[thraashman]

Well, we've seen what happens when Republicans get control, they fuck everything up nearly beyond repair. We've seen what happens when Republicans get enough of a minority to disrupt, they intentionally fuck everything up to make Democrats look bad. So why the fuck would anyone vote Republican? I'd like to think the country isn't THAT stupid. Anything other than massive Democrat wins will likely put us in a situation where this country collapses financially as well as socially.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

Well, we've seen what happens when Republicans get control, they fuck everything up nearly beyond repair. We've seen what happens when Republicans get enough of a minority to disrupt, they intentionally fuck everything up to make Democrats look bad. So why the fuck would anyone vote Republican? I'd like to think the country isn't THAT stupid. Anything other than massive Democrat wins will likely put us in a situation where this country collapses financially as well as socially.

/this

 

[Anarchist420]

I can see Romney winning if a lot of people in pa can't vote. Ive also thought that Romney was going to win wisconsin, mainly because santorum actually was much more popular there than romney was and he dropped out because he didn't get credit for it.

I also doubt that Obama will get va. Dr. Paul was the most popular here, but Obama is not as popular in NoVA as he once was and in Hampton Roads where I live, the number of Obama bumper stickers Ive seen is about 1/2 the number ofromney ones in the past month or so. A lot of young people arent going to vote this time even if they voted for Obama last time. Ive also read that Obama is only predicted to get 90% of the black vote when he got 96% last time and the black turnout is going to be lower too.

Obama is doing worse with the Jewish voters (many of whom are in NoVA) also, 64% vs 78% in 08. Finally, he's not predicted to have won enough Hispanic votes compared to last time and he'll need to get like 83% of them since he has lost like 5 percentage points among whites vs. 08.
I was hoping that Obama would win so we could just get this shit over with, but govt and democratic majorities dont take the future into account much at all. dr. Paul will be vindicated someday, although I'll probably have been murdered by that time.

 

[halik]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=26271355&postcount=20

owned

 

[nehalem256]

I remember reading a few weeks ago about some other group with a "never fail" prediction model that said Obama would win.

A Google search for these authors from 2008 turns up absolutely nothing, which is suspect. If their track record is so wonderful, I would have thought they would have been in the news in the last election as well. I could have just missed it, but it's strange.

In addition to what Farang mentioned, the other problem with these prediction models is that they focus too much on the incumbent and not enough on the challenger. There are a lot of people who don't like Obama, and if the alternative was a likable, decent man with real, sound policies, my guess is that Obama would be down by 5 to 10 points. But instead, those who dislike Obama are being asked to vote for a craven, out-of-touch serial liar who has no core convictions and cares about nothing but his own power and money.

To make matters worse, as much as people blame big government for a lot of the current problems, they blame big business and big finance as well, and Romney is the poster boy for those groups.

And the icing on the cake is the Republican Party being batshit crazy on social issues.

All of these are why Obama usually polls above his approval ratings. He's not great, but a lot of people think Romney would be worse.

This. Shame that these people's model will break because of that.

 

[mshan]

"A Google search for these authors from 2008 turns up absolutely nothing, which is suspect. If their track record is so wonderful, I would have thought they would have been in the news in the last election as well. I could have just missed it, but it's strange."

If this model was devised in late 1970s and then predicted, beforehand, all of the results, there might be some credence to results.

However, it almost sounds like model was disingenuously shaped very recently by data mining / backtesting and tweaking model to make it fit all previous presidential elections (just since 1980 only?), and also have it predict win for Romney (320 electoral votes seems absurd, as best case scenario for Romney I've seen is him just squeaking by at 270 electoral votes or so).

Plus data set was taken 5 months before election (May / June data, which showed sudden plunge in retail sales / "poor" seasonally adjusted monthly jobs reports in May and June which should have been consistent with an approaching recession (then: http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=559974 and now: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/are-many-fomc-members-looking-same-economy and when predictions for 2Q GDP were very low 1% (first read ended up being 1.5%, but Bob Johnson, Morningstar economist, said it should be revised up to 1.7% based upon some other report that was released a few weeks afterwards). That economist, who is on the glass half full side, also sees some acceleration in seasonally adjusted GDP for second half of year (housing tailwind), with this May / June soft patch set of data skewed artificially by seasonal adjustment factor* thrown out of skew by economy falling off a cliff as a result of stock market crash / financial crisis of 2008, and more recent economic data which shows upturn in economy that seems to have surprised consensus.

I remember hearing on tv around May June timeframe (economy was looking bleak and Romney hadn't started his parade of gaffes) Republican establishment types saying Romney was wasting historic opportunity by just try to sit back and be the other guy, rather than boldly define himself and set out comprehensively what he stands for and who he is. Obama campaign was probably well aware of that and had already planned to try and define Romney before he could define himself. This was also around time when I heard pundits on tv saying, just based upon economic statistics, etc, Obama should be down to Romney by 10% in national polls.

"According to their analysis, President Barack Obama will win 218 votes in the Electoral College, short of the 270 he needs. And though they chiefly focus on the Electoral College, the political scientists predict Romney will win 52.9 percent of the popular vote to Obama’s 47.1 percent, when considering only the two major political parties."

http://www.colorado.edu/news/releas...ts-romney-win-university-colorado-study-says/

I guess it's just a matter of time before we find out that the study was funded by Koch Brothers...

* "Seasonality and jobs, one more time

Posted by Cardiff Garcia on Jul 06 21:09.


Our thinking on the US recovery has been that things were never quite as bad as we feared in the worst of times (the last two Augusts), and never quite as good as we’d hoped in the best of times (the last two winters).

Back in December, we first started writing about the possibility that distortions in seasonality adjustments — the result of the Census Bureau’s X12 algorithmic program having been thrown off by the severity of the downturn in the fourth quarter of 2008 — had exaggerated the economic upturns and downturns for the past couple of years.

That doesn’t mean the swings weren’t real, or that such events as the Japanese earthquake, commodity price increases, or the debt ceiling debate had no influence. They did.

But we suspected, based on some work done by the economics teams at Nomura and Goldman Sachs, that they weren’t quite as dramatic as the economic indicators had made them out to be."


http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2012/07/06/1074731/seasonality-and-jobs-one-more-time/

Consumer Income vs. Personal Income: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2263109&highlight=bloomberg

 

[jackstar7]

Nevermind.

 

[diesbudt]

I flipped a coin 6 times and got all heads. This obviously means that I can predict accuractely at a much higher than 50% chance that the 7th flip must be heads right?