Of Polls and Pundits

Polls seem to be in the news a lot lately. I had a post not too long ago where I groused a bit about the quality of the sampling data in the polls, but grousing about polls in general seems to have spread to many places.

In the past couple of weeks, there has been some significant movement in the polls. Mr. Obama got a small polling bounce after the Democratic Convention. That dissipated after about a week to a tie. Now it seems that there has been some movement towards Mr. Obama, enough for the polling aggregate site Real Clear Politics to move Ohio to "Lean Obama".

The reaction to these polls has been heavy on the extreme ends. Supporters of Mr. Obama are crowing about the polls and all but declaring the race over. Supporters of Mr. Romney are dismissing the polls, with some even declaring that the polls are all rigged and only those by Rasmussen are worth anything.

The answer is probably somewhere in middle. No one can know what the final polling sample is and much of the statistical manipulation of the raw data is driven by the internal biases of the pollster. So it is probably true that many pollsters either actually think (or at least hope) that turnout will be similar to that of 2008.

On the other hand, reducing your scope to a single pollster (because you like their results), you blind yourself to broader trends. Even with a skewed poll, if the skew is relatively consistent, you can observe movements that generally reflect reality.

The only poll that really matters is the one that is counted on the night of November 6th, so any handwringing, knashing of teeth, or premature celebrating before then is just wasted effort. There are three possiblities of where this race is right now:

1. The majority of polls are right and Mr. Obama is winning the race handly.
2. The majority of polls are a bit off and the race is a statistical tie.
3. The majority of polls are way off and Mr. Romney is winning the race handly.

As I reminded Daughter X after one of her soccer games when she talked about how her team won the third quarter, it doesn't matter who wins a quarter. It only matters who's ahead at the end of the game. The real problem is that we are not sure exactly of what the field is like to determine how the final score will be resolved.

In 2008, there were 7% more Democrats at the polls than Republicans (39-32) with Mr. Obama also winning Independent voters. In 2010, Democrats and Republicans came to the polls in equal numbers (35-35). My own personal take is that Democrats will end up having a 2 or 3 point advantage in turnout, but I could be completely wrong about that. That also doesn't tell you if the votes will match the partisan split or to whom the Independent vote will break.

The best anyone can do is to sit back, relax, watch trends (both short and long-term) and go vote for their preferred candidate on the 6th.

Soviet Music

Say what you want about the Soviets, they did inspire some good music:

Let's Go:



Soviet National Anthem:



The Red Army is the Strongest:



Smuglianka:



Echelon's Song:



And as a bonus, a heavy metal remix of the Soviet March from Red Alert 3:

1979 Again

Yesterday, the American embassies/consulates in Cairo, Egypt, and Benghazi, Libya were stormed. The Egyptian riot destroyed a few things and burned the flag, but no one seems to have been injured in the melee.

Things were much worse in Libya. The ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three marines were killed in the attack. It appears that they were taken to a separate building by Libyan security officials and then the mob was informed that there were Americans in that building. The mob stormed the building and killed those inside.

With these attacks, one can't help but be reminded of the Iranian assault on the US embassy in 1979. In that case, our people were taken hostage rather than killed, but the feeling is about the same. Of course, with no hostages, there won't be a botched military rescue effort, but that does not preclude the possiblity of things going south in any reprisal efforts.

Couple this with the public slap of Prime Minister Netanyahu, and yesterday was not a particularly good day for anyone in this country. With the possibility of more protests forming in North Africa, it doesn't look like things will be improving anytime in the near future.

Fantasy Freakiness

My fantasy league is run through CBSSports and one of the things CBS does is put a list of players with comments (both good and bad) during the week. It has me a bit unnerved that all of the comments are about players that I have.

In reverse order, the comments are about:
Donald Brown (RB-Ind) - back up running back
DeShawn Jackson (WR-Phi) - starting wide reciever
Michael Turner (RB-Atl) - starting running back
Aaron Hernandez (TE-NE) - starting tight end
Wes Welker (WR-NE) - starting wide reciever
Lions Defense - starting defense
49er's Defense - back up defense
Cam Newton (QB-Car) - starting quarterback
Darius Hayward-Bey (WR-Oak) - starting wide reciever
Carson Palmer (QB-Oak) - back up quarterback

It's actually even worse because the player that had dropped off the list with the addition of Palmer was Randy Moss, who I picked up as a back-up wide reciever. Hopefully all this attention means good things today.

And Now We Fight

With the close of the Democratic National Convention, we are now officially in to the Presidential race.

At the moment, just about everything is drawn even. Almost all national polls, and most battleground state polls show a statistical tie between President Obama and Mr. Romney. Some polls show Mr. Obama up a little while others show Mr. Romney up a little. At this point, it is all noise.

From a historical point of view, a tied race is not the best news for Mr. Obama. He has had the advantage in being able to spend campaign money while Mr. Romney has been unable until the Republican convention finished. That Mr. Obama has not been able to build himself any kind of significant lead would be troubling. Also troubling is that historically undecideds break towards the challenger. The idea is that if a President is doing a good job, less people are undecided and will voice their support for the President. If they are not sure, the generally opt to see if the other guy can do any better.

This is still a close race any anything can happen. But Mr. Obama is going to have put some blood, sweat, and tears into this race to win it. The generally panning reviews of Mr. Obama's acceptance speech are not the most auspicious start to the general campaign.

Likewise, Mr. Romney is not going to be able to sit back and just say that I'm not Barack Obama and expect to win. He will need to draw blood and risk getting bloodied himself if he wants to win. Mr. Romney has made large ad buys in a number of battleground states but has oddly omitted Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania from the ad buy. Even if he doesn't think he'll win any of these states, it would be beneficial to attack them, if only to spread Mr. Obama's thinning resources even thinner.

We have two months to go and it will be interesting to see how the battle tactics evolve as the field shapes up.

The Black Knight Rises

It's just a flesh wound.

Via TeeFury

Going Dark on Facebook

I avoid politics on Facebook, but I think this is funny.