Posted on 02/16/2012 5:38:08 PM PST by blam
Obama Poised To Win 2012 Election With 303 Electoral Votes: The Signal Forecast
By David Rothschild & Chris Wilson
The Signal
Feburary 16, 2012
With fewer than nine months to go before Election Day, The Signal predicts that Barack Obama will win the presidential contest with 303 electoral votes to the Republican nominee's 235.
How do we know? We don't, of course. Campaigns and candidates evolve, and elections are dynamic events with more variables than can reasonably be distilled in an equation. But the data--based on a prediction engine created by Yahoo! scientists--suggest a second term is likely for the current president. This model does not use polls or prediction markets to directly gauge what voters are thinking. Instead, it forecasts the results of the Electoral College based on past elections, economic indicators, measures of state ideology, presidential approval ratings, incumbency, and a few other politically agnostic factors.
We'll dip into what the model says in a moment, but first a note about models in general: there are a lot of them, from complex equations generated by nerdy academics (like the team at The Signal) to funny coincidences like the Redskins Rule, which holds that the incumbent party keeps the White House if Washington's football team wins its last home game. (This is true in 17 of the last 18 elections!) Every year, some of these models are right and some are wrong, and the difference is often just luck. As a result, models get a bad rap as being very good at predicting the past and lousy at predicting the future.
(snip)
The following chart shows our predictions for each state in the general election, based on this model
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Nebraska will go solid GOP.
Iowa will too.
It's all over for the rats except for the crying, cheating and recounts.
Yes there is a sort of civil war going on in the GOP but at the end of the day I think most conservatives will vote AB0.
When the dust settles and we have a nominee, people will conclude that
A) No matter who the nominee is (even Mittens), he'll have to face the voters in 2016. That will act as a restraint.
Not so with Zer0. Nothing will keep his Marxist impulses in check
B) We know what an absolute incompetent and dangerous fool 0bama is, Even Jimmy Carter would be a step up.
I have to believe that once we settle on a nominee people will rally around and support him.
RE: It is highly doubtful Obama will win Washington
A state that will vote for a legislature and a Governor that legalizes gay marriage WILL go for Obama. I just hope I’m wrong.
I’m from Chicago. He will still win Illinois, but he is not well-liked even here. The rank & file, blue collar white democrats in the city mostly despise him. The progressive hipsters hate him for not living up to the progressive messiah myth that they bought into and, although they will still vote for him, 99% have taken the Obama bumper stickers off their Priuses (Prii?). These are people who drove around with Gore/Lieberman stickers AND Kerry/Edwards stickers until Bammy’s inauguration. The collar county moderates are hoping Romney gets the nod so they can vote for their golden boy, but they would vote for Palin at this point, and just deny it to their Lib friends.
Democrat voter enthusiasm is low, and so turnout will be low, unless Obama is able to really rally their support between now and November. The only thing we really have to worry about, is nominating a candidate that will drive Republican enthusiasm even lower.
WOW! They’re using MY MODEL. How the He!! am I not getting paid for this?
Basically here’s what these guys are doing (I haven’t read the article so I can’t tell their method but we have the same numbers for IA & FL and I suspect the others as well)
Look at 2004 votes, 2008 votes, determine voter increase/decrease, determine the share of vote the challenger that lost in 2008 needs to realistically claim in 2012. Compares to primary votes also.
I uploaded IA a while back before the IA caucus and predicted the following result:
GOP Nominee 739,990 48.31%
Obama 791,813 51.69%
Here’s the Google doc (the one people complained about the color coding back in December. Numbers were on the 2nd tab)
for Obama and Republican Nominee
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhY4oeNgAv_ldHVzeWN0RVNQbVozbnZ4dEYtTGZPMFE
I also did one of these models for FL. It had
GOP Nominee 4,734,395 /51.44%
Obama 4,469,730 /48.56%
Attachment here: (results on 2nd tab scroll down to the 100% part where it says Obama and Republican)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhY4oeNgAv_ldEdLR00wUEhTV2xrMjFvRy1ieGhLVmc
How do I get a job doing this stuff?
I have one for SC, I’ll have to add the numbers up and see if I got those percentages too.
How does odds of Obama winning go from 38 % in Fl to 52 % in Virginia and nothing in between?
that is a 14 point spread.....the model is complete BS....
Plus I don’t think Obama is going to win VA,OH.or PA
Another outstanding model.
Since 1960... 23rd Amendment
“Section 1. The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as the Congress may direct:
A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.”
Price it by the quart. That way gas will be under a $1. Hey, these kinds of number tricks work with employment, why not gas prices. Too many people unemployed; no they're not in the labor market. Gas too high; price it in quarts, ounces, or whatever measure to get the number down.
It is hard to beat the MSM and money.
There will be a referendum about homosexual marriage in the State of Washington. Guaranteed.
The majority of voters here are against it and the referendum will prevail in having that legislation eliminated. Seattle, Tacoma, Vanocuver are heavily liberal; the rest of the state, no.
If you ever create a ping list, please include me. I find it interesting that even this lib wishful thinking scenario the GOP picks up Fla, NC, and Mo. How do you score it?
Stupid amendment....!
Although a lot can go wrong, I think that predicting Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana for Obama is suspect. Plus, this scenario has Pennsylvania going for Obama when we don’t yet know how Rick Santorum will figure into the mix.
The good news. We have 9 months to stop Bacrock.
Only one state conceded to the GOP is within that margin (Florida).
I live in the great state of VA...
and the last two elections, we went CONSERVATIVE big time...
so I always look to see how they “predict” VA will go...
and they always give O’bummer the edge...
ain’t gunna happen this time!
Since polls have been wrong by up to 25% with two weeks remaining we may as well just give up.
Pray for Anmerica
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