If the media is wrong and McCain's campaign has secret strengths, here's how I see the electoral vote breaking down.
For various reasons, some of them detailed in my recent article Counting Your Chickens Before They Hatch, I think that the pollsters and the pundits and the increasingly sold-out media have missed some of the key trends in this presidential campaign. They've concluded that it's a lock for Obama and are acting like he's already won.…
Article comments
26 - Zedd
Maurice,
Come on.... even now? Today? Brother you need some laying of hands. This has got to be a psychological thing. Whats up????
27 - Dave Nalle
Bliffle, I have to question your idea on the giant Nevada solar plant.
Using current technology a 90 mile by 90 mile area would produce a very generous maximum of 1 trillion watt hours of power. Current US electricity consumption is about 5 twillion watt hours, so your giant solar plant just isn't big enough.
Solar cell output is about 5wh per square foot, so to produce 5 tillion wh you would need an area about 200 miles by 200 miles, maybe a bit more.
Ok, the land space for that is available in Nevada or West Texas. That's not a problem.
The problem is that what you're talking about is many times the total number of solar cells ever produced. The cost would be greater than our current national debt and it would consume so much petroleum and other resources that I can't even imagine where they would come from.
Dave
28 - Jet
Sweet! according to their polling map, Obama has Ohio by 6 points!
29 - Jet
Whoops, sorry that's CNN
30 - Dave Nalle
Jet, don't set your hopes on CNN. Their polling seems to be retarded in some way. They're saying that Wisconsin is leaning McCain which seems totally unbelievable.
Dave
31 - Jet
Dave, click the link at #17-according to their on-line map they have Obama taking Wisconson by 53 to 42. Where are you getting that?
32 - Jet
Dave you need a more reliable source for your reliable source!
33 - zingzing
so... no one has commented. dave, you missed. such is life. for
4
years
.
and the house and senate too. get really used to it
it's our turn.
send me an email about moon, as you haven't yet.
34 - zingzing
alright, 2 years. whatev.
35 - pleasexcusethisinterrutpion
Dave,
If I had seen this map days ago I would have told you it was laughable. First of all the premise of your article - that people of declared support for one candidate will switch to the other at the last minute - is completely unfounded. Barring some massive Bradley effect, which has been proven largely irrelevant since the 90s, this doesn't occur. What you really should have been looking at is the breakdown of undecideds. The absolute best a candidate can almost ever do is claim about all of the undecideds. Once Obama's support topped 50% in these battleground states it pretty much sealed the deal - even if all the undecideds went to McCain he would lose.
A few of your more amusing allocations:
Virginia solid McCain - Obama's support there has been 50-51%. No one in hell McCain won it.
New Mexico toss up: again no way in hell McCain won this.
FL as solid red - should have been toss up.
Colorado - Obama had this locked down, McCain was hardly campaigning in the state. Obama polled 51-52%, undecideds could go all McCain and mean squat.
North Carolina and Indiana should also have been toss up.
Dave your fundamental failure was not distinguishing between undecideds and those who had declared support for a candidate. All of the signals were there for Obama wins in VA, CO, NM - McCain wasn't even bothering. Why do you think he tried a surprise attack on PA where he was down by almost 20% in the polls? In short, because he had no other options. He saw some weakness in the polls there and went for it realizing he was never going to win CO, NM, VA.
36 - pleasexcusethisinterrutpion
The failures of polling are too often exaggerated. If you are familiar with them and know how to use them you can accurately predict the results in any state within 2%.
37 - pleasexcusethisinterrutpion
And don't tell me I have the benefit of hindsight, I would have laid down my savings with 20 or 40 to 1 odds this past week. I can tell you I tried - I was looking to take bets with 10 to 1 odds this week but found no takers. Too bad I don't live near you.
38 - pleasexcusethisinterrutpion
In addition, all of the polls are using weighting systems based on hypothetical assumptions about demographics, voter turnout and voter attitudes which have no basis in anything except the partisan wishful thinking of the pollsters and their employers. With McCain running such a wildly unconventional campaign, clearly based on a completely different set of assumptions, the talking heads seem foolishly arrogant in their premature conclusions.
I take it this applies to you now?
39 - pleasexcusethisinterrutpion
I mean honestly, I follow polling and elections very closely and I can tell you that the assumptions made in this article - esp to project a VA McCain win - are absurd. Does Dave really think he is the first to have thought of all this? Does Dave really think the entire polling industry - including McCain's own internal polling - shows massive favoritism to Obama which not one single professional polling expert has noticed?
Most predictions fell between splitting the undecideds 50-50 and 80-20 to McCain. The real result, on a national level, will fall in that field.
40 - John
Barack Obama swept to victory as the nation's first black president Tuesday night in an electoral college landslide that overcame racial barriers as old as America itself. Source.
41 - Dave Nalle
PETI, I never claimed to be any good at these predictions. I should have included a disclaimer that this was for entertainment only, not for wagering. I certainly would never have bet on it.
If anything what I presented was the scenario under which McCain could win. If the scenario was faulty then he would not win. It was, he didn't.
Dave
42 - Maurice
Zedd #26
I probably need more than the laying on of hands. The thought of a brother beating the odds is overwhelming. Today I am overcome. Nothing negative needs to be said today.
43 - Zedd
Maurice,
I feel you. Much love.
44 - Dr Dreadful
@ # 39, 41:
Before the actual vote all things were possible, however unlikely. Dave simply highlighted a possible path to victory for McCain.
The king of poll nerds, fivethirtyeight.com's Nate Silver, writing in the New York Post a few days before the election, presented a similar scenario, which he gave about a 5% chance of actually happening.
45 - Lisa Solod Warren
Nate Silver rocks. Nerd that he is. He really called it. I doubted he could be that RIGHT. But, boy, is he uncomfortable being on T.V.
46 - Dr Dreadful
He wasn't the only one, Lisa. The two other sites I follow at election time, Electoral-vote.com and Election Projection, also got it pretty much on the money. (Caution led them both to call Indiana - and in the case of the latter, North Carolina - for McCain, but effectively the vote was a tie in both those states so you can hardly blame them.)
In the run-up to the Big Day, we kept hearing from Republicans that 'you can't trust the polls' and 'they've been wrong in the past'. That's true to some degree, of course, but sites like these three have demonstrated that if you gather a hell of a lot of polls, and develop some sound algorithms for analyzing them, you'll be able to predict the final outcome with a high degree of accuracy.