Romney, Obama, Rasmussen

JoeTheJuggler said:
I think Remirol wins the competition of the charts here. A graph without zeroes intentionally magnifies the apparent significance of small changes. Also the shorter time range does much the same.

I buy Remirol's argument (so to speak). The big picture shows a relatively uneventful history.
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I teach Science and Maths (and TOk) and I really hate graphs like that. They show no trend at all. If you do an analysis on most graphs all you are looking at is statistical noise.

Very cheap way of displaying data, which incidentally loses you marks in exams.
 
remirol said:
As I write this, Mittens is down $0.27 at InTrade for today, and at 42.7% total.

ETA: And as I edit this five minutes later, it's changed to down $0.10. :D That's pretty humorous overall that things are so volatile right now, but I think perhaps sticking with closing prices for each day is a more productive way to measure :D
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Wait?!

What?!!

You mean... the markets at Intrade have corrected themselves downwards for Romney since the price manipulation spikes of a day or so ago??!!!

I could never have seen it coming... oh wait, I did...

MattusMaximus said:
Brainster is also ignoring the fact that we have direct evidence of manipulation of Intrade in the last day or so. In fact, as I was watching Intrade last night at about 10:05pm EDT, I saw another similar spike take place - right in front of my eyes - where one person purchased hundreds of shares of Romney in one shot, driving the price of Romney's shares up to about 48% (again). And there was another big buy spike at about 10:30pm, also trying to drive Romney's shares up to about 48%...

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_77475087d010e2234.png[/qimg]

And since those manipulations, the Intrade market has been consistently correcting itself - downward for Romney. As I said earlier, I will wait another day or so to see what happens at Intrade, but I think the argument by Brainster that this is evidence of a Romney "surge" is pure fantasy on his part.
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:D
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Do you mean if he had a stronger lead in Ohio, he'd be much higher that 68%? Or do you mean if he didn't have a discernible lead in Ohio, he'd be even lower than that? (Because Obama has had a stronger lead in Ohio, and Ohio has been closer than it is now a couple of times.)

I think you mean the former. If so, I agree, and it looks as if Silver recognizes that as a real change rather than just an artifact of prediction market manipulation.
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As Ben said, I think both really. But from what I have read on Nate's blog, the 68% Obama has now is only because he is up in Ohio. If his odds in Ohio go down his odds in the election also go down substantially.

Nate's take is that, while Ohio is often viewed as the most important state in the election, historically it hasn't always lived up to that billing.... however in THIS election it seems as if Ohio is the one key state. The odds of either candidate winning the election depends on if they can carry Ohio.
 
How many times when someone tells you there is a 68% chance of something happening and it doesn't happen, before you stop paying attention?

How long, when the weatherman keeps telling you there is 10% chance of rain, and it rains, before you start watching another channel?
 
not_so_new said:
As Ben said, I think both really. But from what I have read on Nate's blog, the 68% Obama has now is only because he is up in Ohio. If his odds in Ohio go down his odds in the election also go down substantially.

Nate's take is that, while Ohio is often viewed as the most important state in the election, historically it hasn't always lived up to that billing.... however in THIS election it seems as if Ohio is the one key state. The odds of either candidate winning the election depends on if they can carry Ohio.
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Just for reference, currently...

Nate Silver has Ohio going to President Obama at 70.4%

And the Predictwise market has it at 64.9%

I will also note that at 538 there hasn't been one poll out of Ohio in the last week which has had Romney in the lead. The last one was on 10/15 and had Romney up by +1, but since then 5 out of 8 polls have had Obama in the lead by as much as +5 (3 of the 8 have had a tie).

And early voting in Ohio started way back in late September, before Romney started to gain any traction in the polls. That probably locked in a lot of votes for Obama.
 
Nate Silver weighs in on the manipulation over at Intrade...

... In fact, these differences between Intrade and the other prediction markets have persisted throughout much of the past two months. Intrade has consistently shown slightly more favorable odds for Mr. Romney than other prediction and gambling sites.

According to Brandon Adams, a professional poker player and a teaching fellow at Harvard, Intrade’s prices are not necessarily considered more reliable by professional gamblers. Mr. Adams says that Betfair and the sports book Pinnacle, both of which put Mr. Obama’s odds at about 63 percent as of early Wednesday morning, feature more sophisticated market participants.

However, Intrade is cited far more frequently by the American news media. That at least opens up the possibility that someone could place a wager on Mr. Romney (or Mr. Obama) at Intrade in order to influence the news media’s perceptions about which candidate has the momentum.

At several points on Tuesday and early Wednesday, what appeared to be a single trader bought a large number of Mr. Romney’s shares at Intrade, at one point boosting Mr. Romney’s chances to about 49 percent from 41 percent over the span of a few minutes. The betting patterns echo similar ones in the pricing of John McCain and Mr. Obama’s stock at Intrade late in the 2008 cycle. ...
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It's a really long read, but it is quite thorough in its analysis. I do like how Silver ends it:

... So is FiveThirtyEight better than Intrade? I don’t know about that as a general proposition.

But I’d be happy to bet on FiveThirtyEight relative to the price that Intrade offered on Mr. Obama on Tuesday, which was not characteristic of rational market behavior.
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:D
 
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/oh/ohio_romney_vs_obama-1860.html

History tells us that polls should tighten as election day comes closer, they've done that. But it seems Obama maintains a 2-3 point lead (getting slightly larger lately, maybe due to debates)

This has to be frustrating for Republicans, who know there's a very slim chance they will win without Ohio. And there's not much left to change the polls. With even a decent gotv campaign Obama is poised to take Ohio and the presidency. Why are the pundits calling this a "tie" again?
 
SkepticalDrew said:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/oh/ohio_romney_vs_obama-1860.html

History tells us that polls should tighten as election day comes closer, they've done that. But it seems Obama maintains a 2-3 point lead (getting slightly larger lately, maybe due to debates)

This has to be frustrating for Republicans, who know there's a very slim chance they will win without Ohio. And there's not much left to change the polls. With even a decent gotv campaign Obama is poised to take Ohio and the presidency. Why are the pundits calling this a "tie" again?
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Almost makes me think there might be something to the ownership of Ohio's voting machines.
 
Ohio is definitely looking good for Obama. Every single poll, other than Rasmussen which has it at a tie, has an Obama lead ranging from 1 to 5 points. Combine this with the early voting that has Obama at a 2 to 1 advantage, and Romney has a hill to climb, barring any unexpected events. It's way too soon to call Ohio a lock, but recent polls paint a good picture for us Obama supporters.
 
SkepticalDrew said:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/oh/ohio_romney_vs_obama-1860.html

History tells us that polls should tighten as election day comes closer, they've done that. But it seems Obama maintains a 2-3 point lead (getting slightly larger lately, maybe due to debates)

This has to be frustrating for Republicans, who know there's a very slim chance they will win without Ohio. And there's not much left to change the polls. With even a decent gotv campaign Obama is poised to take Ohio and the presidency. Why are the pundits calling this a "tie" again?
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Because the pundits want a horse race that will keep them more than able to wag their tongues uselessly from here until Nov. 6th
 
MattusMaximus said:
Because the pundits want a horse race that will keep them more than able to wag their tongues uselessly from here until Nov. 6th
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True. I remember watching CNN after the debate and they were showing a poll that basically had Obama leading Romney in every "commander in chief-like" category. Then Candy Crowell said something like "I think Romney has to be happy looking at those numbers"

I just laughed. :rolleyes:
 
Looks like someone ran out of betting money... Mitt's back below four bucks at Intrade. For those arguing that this is a reflection of real activity, Where's The Beef. Romney up a tad in NH, down a tad nationally, down a tad in Ohio. No major shifts, yet he's dropped half a buck (11%)?

(It also looks like the gamblers have set $4 as the magic number. There's a bunch of petty activity back-and-forth when it drops below $4 - it'll bounce back up, but then it goes back down again. This is just a snapshot at 9:30 pm, of course... you can't judge anything by examining the minute-to-minute trading in any market unless you have ten million to throw in when it hits one of those flags.)
 
Foolmewunz said:
Looks like someone ran out of betting money... Mitt's back below four bucks at Intrade. For those arguing that this is a reflection of real activity, Where's The Beef. Romney up a tad in NH, down a tad nationally, down a tad in Ohio. No major shifts, yet he's dropped half a buck (11%)?

(It also looks like the gamblers have set $4 as the magic number. There's a bunch of petty activity back-and-forth when it drops below $4 - it'll bounce back up, but then it goes back down again. This is just a snapshot at 9:30 pm, of course... you can't judge anything by examining the minute-to-minute trading in any market unless you have ten million to throw in when it hits one of those flags.)
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Yup, as of this writing, Romney is at 40.2% on Intrade.

Where's Brainster?

Where are all of the Romney supporters who, just less than a day ago, were crowing on and on about a Romney "surge" because people were finally figuring out that he's the man for the job?

And where are all the people claiming that talk of price manipulation amounted to... what was the phrase... conspiracy theorizing?

:popcorn1

Meanwhile, there are those of us who saw this for exactly what it was, and we predicted on this forum less than 24 hours ago that the Romney "surge" in the markets was just a fantasy.

*points to self*

ETA: I want my million $$$ :D
 
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SkepticalDrew said:
True. I remember watching CNN after the debate and they were showing a poll that basically had Obama leading Romney in every "commander in chief-like" category. Then Candy Crowell said something like "I think Romney has to be happy looking at those numbers"

I just laughed. :rolleyes:
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This sort of nonsense is what is meant by "filling the news hole".
 
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