Poll-Based System Predicts U.S. Election Results For President, Senate 519
An anonymous reader writes "Election Analytics is a website developed by Dr. Sheldon Jacobson at the University of Illinois designed to predict the outcomes of the U.S. presidential and senatorial elections, based on reported polling data. From the site: 'The mathematical model employs Bayesian estimators that use available state poll results (at present, this is being taken from Rasmussen, Survey USA, and Quinnipiac, among others) to determine the probability that each presidential candidate will win each of the states (or the probability that each political party will win the Senate race in each state). These state-by-state probabilities are then used in a dynamic programming algorithm to determine a probability distribution for the number of Electoral College votes that each candidate will win in the 2012 presidential election. In the case of the Senate races, the individual state probabilities are used to determine the number of seats that each party will control.'" You can tweak the site by selecting a skew toward the Republican or Democratic tickets, and whether it's mild or strong. Right now, this tool shows the odds favor another four years for Obama, even with a strong swing for the Republicans.
What's amazing about Romney (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Poll based system... (Score:5, Interesting)
That would be the definitive poll.
The idea of something like this is to illustrate how different shifts would effect the result.
If you're a campaign for example, and you're trying to figure out how to win usually, tools like this will tell you which areas are still 'in play' and might be worth fighting in (spending your advertising dollars). The campaigns themselves almost certainly have huge amounts of data about what potential voters in each area care about, and how they're going to vote, but that analysis requires a large team of people to manage. This is more for people to play with relatively easily.
In that sense I'm not hugely fond of the tool, it's still a bit too complex for easy casual fiddling, and if I was a serious campaigner I'd likely have much more data to work from - the question becomes how easy is it to flip a particular state (the obvious ones from the charts are Iowa, Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin ) rather than which would it be nice to flip. The democrats would like to pick up texas, the republicans California, but that doesn't seem likely.
I'm in canada, so it's a little different here, but in our last federal election the NDP managed to take themselves from 3rd party to official opposition essentially from one issue, in one province (French language stuff in quebec), in one stroke they pulled the rug out from one party (the bloc quebecois) - and picked up a lot of seats putting themselves ahead of one of our two big parties (the liberals). A real GOP strategist is looking at probably 4 -6 states and wondering if there's a major issue they can take a stance on an flip the whole state. The rest of us are just playing with sliders to wonder about what could happen.
Asimov Short Story Franchise (Score:5, Interesting)
Plot summary
In the future, the United States has converted to an "electronic democracy" where the computer Multivac selects a single person to answer a number of questions. Multivac will then use the answers and other data to determine what the results of an election would be, avoiding the need for an actual election to be held.
The story centers around Norman Muller, the man chosen as "Voter of the Year" in 2008. Although the law requires him to accept the dubious honour, he is not sure that he wants the responsibility of representing the entire electorate, worrying that the result will be unfavorable and he will be blamed.
However, after 'voting', he is very proud that the citizens of the United States had, through him, "exercised once again their free, untrammeled franchise" - a statement that is somewhat ironic as the citizens didn't actually get to vote.
The idea of a computer predicting whom the electorate would vote for instead of actually holding an election was probably inspired by the UNIVAC I's correct prediction of the result of the 1952 election.
Re:Interesting Algorithm (Score:2, Interesting)
It seems to me Republicans have two big issues - demographics; that is Caucasian people are a decreasing percentage of voters, and they have a social platform that is becoming increasingly unpopular with women.
Romney has been skyrocketing in terms of female popularity lately...
You can't win with so much of the electorate unhappy with your policies.
I presume you're talking about 0bama? heh
He's in for some hurt come November! :-)
59 states? (Score:4, Interesting)
Pretty sure you meant 58 states [youtube.com], Mr Obama
Re:The person who spent MORE? (Score:4, Interesting)
Question:
(In theUSA) Did the candidate who spent more than the other candidate on their election campaign ever lose the election?
It's a common misconception that spending more money will increase a candidate's chances of winning an election, but it's just that - a misconception. If you don't have enough money to get your message out, then yes, that can mean a loss, but it rarely comes into play.
Yes, there have been plenty of races where the candidate that spent more lost the election. In fact, most studies show that increased spending by an incumbent can actually negatively affect their chance of winning.
There is an interesting discussion regarding this misconception over on Freakonomics [freakonomics.com].
Re:Not possible! (Score:4, Interesting)
What are you talking about? Romney is pretending to be more right-wing than he really is in order to appease core republican voters. The only reason he's the republican nominee is that many people in the GOP thought they needed a more moderate guy in order to beat Obama. Now that they have the guy it seems they are worried about their voter base, which is why Romney has drifted to the right and they nominated Tea Party darling Ryan as vice president.
The point is that once you get a Republican talking about Medicare and Social Security -- two major Democratic programs that nobody really believes Republicans support with any enthusiasm, he's on the losing side of the argument. Bringing up those programs is a giant mistake for any Republican who wants to get elected.
Re:Not possible! (Score:2, Interesting)
Huntsman was the only sane one in the bunch. His only problems were being loyal to his country before party and having a party that is intent on trying to prove it is the "America for Americans" party in the face of that socialist, Marxist, Muslim, 60's radical extremist, foreign born, global warming and evolution believing party. In a room full of yelling and screaming people, you can almost be certain that the one to listen to is the one speaking the calmest.
As for Romney, George H.W. Bush called his plan "Voodoo Economics" when it was proposed by Reagan and the analysis still stands. Reagan lead the way in deficit spending and debt growth. Romney want to accelerate it from its already staggering pace with more tax cuts (the current cuts were meant to expire) but he has replaced the voodoo with Ryan's faeries and gnomes that will magically make debt disappear.
POTUS Achievement Unlocked! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not possible! (Score:2, Interesting)
Remember Michelle Bachman? Herman Cain? Newt Gingrich? Rick Santorum? John Huntsman?! I'm sure I'm forgetting half a dozen more.
I'm a atheist liberal utahn, some would even say socialist, and I'm here to tell you that John Huntsman does NOT belong with that group of whackos. I even think he'd make a really good president.
THIS. Also an atheist here, and I was praying that John Huntsman would somehow win the republican nomination. I mean, THE MAN EVEN THINKS SCIENCE SHOULD BE DONE BY SCIENTISTS. It's truly only fair to respect John Huntsman and not lump him in with the rest of that bunch.
Re:How is cutting anything being a Democrat? (Score:4, Interesting)
You can't really do that because the economy was in free fall when it became Obama's responsibility. It's like having the copilot take over because the plane is in a nose dive and then when he pulls the plane out of the dive and levels off, you immediately blame the copilot for the loss of altitude. Much like a plane or a car, economic policy can't instantly change direction and speed, it has inertia (which a casino paradigm fails to acknowledge). However, if we count from the beginning of Obama's first major economic policy move (his stimulus bill), the U.S. has net positive job growth under Obama.
It's not great job growth, but respectable economists credit Obama's economic policies with preventing the loss of an additional million jobs (which likely would have occurred under McCain's stated policies) and recovering a million jobs lost under Bush's economic policies.