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Romney, Obama, Rasmussen

Looks like Obama has recovered a bit from the first debate bounce for Romney. Romney needs another win in the final debate, and it's on foreign policy -- not his strong suit.

I'll be surprised if Romney doesn't scream Libya Libya Libya Libya Benghazi Turrists the whole time. Emphasis on Turrists.
 
I'll be surprised if Romney doesn't scream Libya Libya Libya Libya Benghazi Turrists the whole time. Emphasis on Turrists.

That'd be a big mistake since by now everyone's seen the transcript of the Rose Garden speech and know what was said and done in those two weeks. (Not saying you're wrong though!)

BTW, what was Mitt's point anyway? What exactly was his criticism of the President's handling of this situation? It sounds like he was criticizing Obama for not being omniscient. Or at least for not going off half-cocked without gathering the information and finding out whether or not this was a pre-planned attack or a spontaneous reaction to the film.
 
Nate Silver at 538 has the WTA as...

Obama 70.4%
Romney 29.6%
Speaking of cherry-picking.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/19/nate-silver-vs-the-world/

In the past few years, you’d be hard-pressed to find a star that has risen higher or faster in the political prediction business than New York Times blogger Nate Silver.

This is for good reason. As On The Media notes, “In 2008, his blog FiveThirtyEight correctly predicted the outcome of the presidential race in 49 out of 50 states. (In that same election, he was also right about all 35 senate races.)”

Not too shabby. But one wonders if his reputation might be about to take a hit if Romney actually pulls off a victory.

So far, Silver isn’t hedging any bets. In fact, he’s all in. Using his prediction model, on October 4, he gave Obama a 87.1 percent chance of winning.

Today, he gives Obama a 70.4 percent chance of winning. (70.4!)

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s entirely possible that Obama will win re-election. (Before the first debate in Denver, even I would have agreed with Silver’s analysis.)

But the race changed dramatically, and my guess is that, right now, it’s probably a 50-50 proposition. (Silver would likely dismiss this by arguing that political commentators always think every election is a coin toss. But empirical evidence suggests the race is actually close. At the time of this writing, Real Clear Politics poll average has Romney up .1 percent.)
 
http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/19/nate-silver-vs-the-world/

But empirical evidence suggests the race is actually close.

So is the guy accusing Nate Silver of not using empirical evidence? :confused:

It sounds like he's simply ignoring the complexities of the analysis and just going with the national polls alone.

ETA: And it sounds like his own notion of "empirical evidence" is simply guessing or making up numbers:
But the race changed dramatically, and my guess is that, right now, it’s probably a 50-50 proposition.
 
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So let me get this right...

But the race changed dramatically, and my guess is that, right now, it’s probably a 50-50 proposition.

So Nate Sliver is basing his calculations on factual numbers and this person calls it 50/50 based on his "guess." And I should take this a valid evidence that Silver is wrong?

(Silver would likely dismiss this by arguing that political commentators always think every election is a coin toss. But empirical evidence suggests the race is actually close. At the time of this writing, Real Clear Politics poll average has Romney up .1 percent.)

And Silver has popular vote at around the same margin but that doesn't mean anything. Nate's prediction of the election winner is based on the canidate's chances in the electoral collage... which at the end of the day is all that counts.
 
So let me get this right...



So Nate Sliver is basing his calculations on factual numbers and this person calls it 50/50 based on his "guess." And I should take this a valid evidence that Silver is wrong?



And Silver has popular vote at around the same margin but that doesn't mean anything. Nate's prediction of the election winner is based on the canidate's chances in the electoral collage... which at the end of the day is all that counts.

Didn't the Daily Caller writer ever wonder why the blog is called 538?

My guess is no.

:D
 
But only if yelled to the heavens like Ricardo Montalban in Star Trek..


Ohhhhbaaaaammaaaaaaahhh!

I asked my question of someone defending Romney's debate remarks, and this guy seemed to think that since we could see the protests and see them turn violent in more or less real time that Obama should have been able to take action to prevent the killing of the Ambassador and the others.

:rolleyes:

I pointed out that to his credit Romney at least never said any such a thing.

But I think it remains unanswered. What was his point?

He was technically wrong (Obama did refer to it as a terrorist action the very next day), but to the broader point--the administration couldn't discern whether or not it was a pre-planned attack or merely spontaneous reaction to the film for some days--so what?

Does Romney have a Panopticon where he can get answers to questions like this faster than the existing intelligence apparatus? Did he expect Obama to go in person and somehow get to the bottom of this any quicker?

Or does he think even though they couldn't say for sure whether it was pre-planned, it would have been a good idea to start saying that they could? Is that what a President Romney would have done differently?
 
Others have covered the "guess" part pretty well. What about the rest? You posted your link in response to MM calling "cherry-picking". But I see nothing in the opinion piece that you quoted that speaks at all to cherry-picking. Isn't that a non sequitur? What was your point?

Maybe he was criticizing the author of the dailycaller piece because he was cherry picking by only relying on a national poll as compared to Silver's analysis that takes into account much more data? ;)
 
So is the guy accusing Nate Silver of not using empirical evidence? :confused:

It sounds like he's simply ignoring the complexities of the analysis and just going with the national polls alone.

The way I read that "critique" is that, since Silver's probability shows Obama with > 70% chance of winning, Silver has called the race for Obama (viz., he thinks Obama has a 100% chance of winning). :boggled:

And if Obama loses, then Silver's number is totally wrong. :rolleyes:

I wonder if these guys ever buy lottery tickets?
 

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