It's going to be a nail biter. Almost all of the polls show both candidates within 1% of each other with Obama holding a razor thin advantage in enough of the swing states to give him the 270 electoral votes he needs to serve another four years. But every reputable poll I have seen is deep within the margin of error. Bottom line: It's a statistical tie with a very unreliable nod in Obama's direction.
A couple of interesting demonstrations of how close this is going to be might be amusing. Both sides have mobilized their own army of lawyers who are ready to fly into any state where there is the slightest question about the vote counting. And if you really want to sample some craziness, the loons on both the left and the right are whispering about the "nuclear option" in Ohio. That being where the vote is so close that it is being contested in court and threatening the ability of the state to certify it's electors in time to meet in Washington on the real election day. In this apocalyptic scenario some on the far left and right are noting that both chambers of Ohio's legislature are majority Republican and they could, quite legally, ignore the popular vote and appoint the state's electors on their own authority. Presumably they would be directed to vote for Romney.
Nonsense. Those polls are always wrong. Romney will have at least 300 electoral college votes.
ReplyDeleteI think Nate Silver says that you should but 4:1 against Romney.
ReplyDeleteI will be interested to see how accurate the polls are this go around. I am not a conspiracy theorist by any means, but I think the methodology of most of the polls is completely faulty. They don't poll anyone's cellphone, which is the primary means of communication for most folks under 40. In fact, many do not even have a land line. So, that factors out that demographic pretty much on its face. Secondly, most of the polls I am reading if you read their fine print say that they are averaging around 9% response rate per 100 calls made. How on earth they possibly think that methodology is sound, I have no earthly idea. They'd get laughed out of a quantitative Ph.D. research project with those sorts of numbers.
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