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Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

by Darryl — Friday, 6/22/12, 11:58 pm

Obama For America outtakes.

Young Turks: CIA documents show Bin Laden warnings ignored:

Thom: Republicans find another union to bust.

Greenman: Climate crocks…Marc Morano at Heartland.

ONN: The Onion Week in Review.

Thom: The Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly.

Sam Seder: New 9/11 documents expose Bush admin. lies.

Susie Sampson Tea Party Report: Immigration!

Full of Mitt:

  • SlateNews: Mitt to America: Ignore the good news.
  • Sam Seder: Mitt talks and talks but won’t answer on immigration.
  • Alyona’s Tool Time Award: Mitt Romney wants G.O.P. Govs to lie to Americans.
  • Obama on Mitt Romney outsourcing jobs.
  • Thom: Mitt wants a 12.5% Tax Break that you pay for.
  • Mitt Romeny on immigration reform.
  • Maddow: Romney fails to lead on immigration
  • Ann Telnaes: Mitt explains his immigration policy.
  • Sam Seder: Mitt’s sons on their dad.
  • Romney learns about touchtone touch screen technology (via Slog).
  • John King on Romney’s immigration speech
  • Mark Fiore: DeficitBots.
  • Sam Seder: Mitt to G.O.P. Governors, “Shhhhhhhh”.

Slate News: Springsteen won’t hang with Chris Christie.

Alyona: Romney Doppelganger hates poor people.

Indecision in the park.

A clown answer for Harry Reid: video platform
video management
video solutions
video player

Sam Seder: Vagina mentioning Rep. like “child who needed a time out”.

Thom: What do Republicans love about rape?

Young Turks: Secret right wing money spent on deceptive ads.

Ann Telnaes: Sheldon Adelson’s gift.

Fast, but mostly Furious:

  • Thom and Pap: Ongoing Fast and Furious conspiracy theory.
  • Jon attacks the Obama admin over executive privilege.
  • Sam Seder: GOP’s sad attempt at finding a scandal.
  • Ed and Pap: Darrel Issa’s contempt for democracy
  • Maddow: Gun fanatics invent conspiracy, ignore real gun violence.
  • Thom: F&F, why didn’t Pelosi arrest Rove?

ONN: Tea Party quiet—too quiet.

Sam Seder and Chris Hayes: Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy.

Young Turks: Poll shows Republicans grossly misinformed on Iran, Iraq.

Alyona: Indiana Wingnut covers his bases on SCOTUS ruling.

Obama in Tampa.

“Joe” the “Historian”:

  • Slate News: Joe’s surreal ad
  • “Joe” the “Plumber” blames gun control for the Holocaust.
  • Sam Seder: Joe’s new bizarre ad.

White House: West Wing Week.

Alyona’s Tool Time Award: Arizona’s Secretary of State Ken Bennett is back with more Birfer insanity.

Anti-Obama teleprompter ad.

Young Turks: 2/3 of Republicans believe Obama was born outside of U.S.

Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

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Poll Analysis: Romney slips

by Darryl — Friday, 6/22/12, 12:30 pm


Obama Romney
99.7% probability of winning 0.3% probability of winning
Mean of 326 electoral votes Mean of 212 electoral votes

Ten days ago, Mitt Romney was on a roll. He had increased his probability of beating President Obama in a hypothetical election held then from 0.4% to 0.8%, and he gained in expected electoral votes up to 225. That was last week. This week, Romney slips.

There have been 18 new polls released to weigh in on the race:

start end sample % % %
st poll date date size MOE O R diff
AZ PPP 04-Jun 05-Jun 791 3.5 46 49 R+3
CO PPP 14-Jun 17-Jun 799 3.5 49 42 O+7
FL Quinnipiac 12-Jun 18-Jun 1697 2.4 46 42 O+4
IA WeAskAmerica 18-Jun 18-Jun 1086 3.0 45 44 O+1
ME WBUR 13-Jun 14-Jun 506 4.4 48 34 O+14
MI Mitchell 18-Jun 18-Jun 750 3.6 47 46 O+1
MI WeAskAmerica 18-Jun 18-Jun 1010 3.1 43 45 R+2
MI Rasmussen 14-Jun 14-Jun 500 4.5 50 42 O+8
MI Baydoun 12-Jun 12-Jun 1783 2.3 46.9 45.5 O+1.4
MT Rasmussen 18-Jun 18-Jun 400 4.5 42 51 R+9
NE PNA 11-Jun 13-Jun 601 — 40 52 R+12
NV PPP 07-Jun 10-Jun 500 4.4 48 42 O+6
NH Rasmussen 20-Jun 20-Jun 500 4.5 48 43 O+5
NJ Eagleton-Rutgers 31-May 04-Jun 1065 2.9 56 33 O+23
WA PPP 14-Jun 17-Jun 1073 3.0 54 41 O+13
WA Elway 13-Jun 16-Jun 408 5.0 49 41 O+8
WI Marquette 13-Jun 15-Jun 594 4.1 49 43 O+6
WI Rasmussen 12-Jun 12-Jun 500 4.5 44 47 R+3

[Read more…]

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Drinking Liberally — Seattle

by Darryl — Tuesday, 6/19/12, 4:59 pm

Please join us tonight for an evening of politics and conversation over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally.

We meet every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm. Some people show up earlier for Dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings this week. The Tri-Cities chapter of Drinking liberally meets every Tuesday night, and Drinking Liberally Tacoma meets this Thursday.

With 228 chapters of Living Liberally, including twelve in Washington state and four more in Oregon, chances are excellent there’s a chapter near you.

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Poll analysis: Two new WA gubernatorial polls

by Darryl — Tuesday, 6/19/12, 2:44 pm

Two new polls have been released this week in the Washington state gubernatorial contest between former 1st CD Congressman Jay Inslee and state AG Rob McKenna.

The first poll is from Elway. The poll surveyed 408 people (5% MOE) from the 13th to the 18th of June. McKenna leads Inslee in that poll 42% to 40%.

To translate McKenna’s lead into a probability statement, I ran a million simulated elections using the observed percentages and poll size from the Elway poll. Inslee won 369,617 to McKenna’s 615,161 wins, suggestingg that, for an election now, McKenna would beat Inslee with a 62.5% to 37.5% probability.

The other new poll is from Public Policy Polling, and surveyed 1,073 people (MOE 3%). The poll was conducted from the 14th to the 17th of June—it completely overlaps the Elway poll. In this poll, McKenna leads Inslee 43% to 40%.

Doing the same analysis for this second poll shows Inslee winning 219,670 “elections” and McKenna winning 773,413. In other words, this poll provides evidence that McKenna would win with a 77.9% probability in an eleciton held now.

But given the temporal overlap of the polls, we can do better by combining the two June polls. Together they cover 1,481 adult registered voters of whom 1,225 had decided on McKenna or Inslee. Inslee took 40.0% of the votes to McKenna’s 42.7%.

The Monte Carlo analysis gives Inslee 207,467 wins to McKenna’s 786,651 wins. In other words, the June polls suggest McKenna has a 79.1% probability of beating Inslee, and Inslee would win an election now with a 20.9% probability. Statisticians often consider a lead with anything less than a 95% winning chance to be a statistical tie.

Here is the distribution of election outcomes for the combined results:

PPPandElwayJune

And here is a snapshot of all the polls for this race:

InsleeMcKennaJune19

The new polls suggests to some folks (like Joni Balter and the election wonks at Daily Kos Elections) that the gap is closing in this race.

Could be. Or maybe it has just been close all along. A straight line through 48% Inslee to 52% McKenna fits within the margin of error for all of the polls. On the other hands, the polls from last year, taken as a whole, seem more favorable to McKenna than the collective polls taken this year.

I guess we need more polls to sort it out.

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Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

by Darryl — Friday, 6/15/12, 11:56 pm

Slatester: Michigan lawmaker says “vagina,” is banned from House floor.

Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak: Mitt Romney has history of firing people.

Bill Maher: Obama’s hologram.

Susie Sampson’s Tea Party Report at Netroots Nation.

You’re Welcome: BP Voices from the Gulf:

Stephanie Cutter: Mitt distorts.

Romney’s bizarre “jobs plan”.

Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Jon: Senate’s misguided drone criticism.

Young Turks: Obama admin. will stop deporting young immigrants.

Mark Fiore: Big Latvia success story!

Alyona’s Tool Time Award: Attack of the vagina.

White House: West Wing Week.

Pap: How Wisconsin uprising was hijacked.

Thom: The root of Romney’s comfort with lying.

Young Turks: “Vagina” gets Rep. banned.

Jon: Judging Jamie Diamon.

Romney senior advisor Kevin Madden has an Etch-A-Sketch moment on immigration.

Thom: Money has crushed the voice of the people.

Eric Schwartz: Vagina Jase Bolger (R-MI):

Romney advisor says his position on immigration is the same as President Obama’s.

Actual Audio: Mitt v. jobs.

Thom: The Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly.

I Didn’t Speak Up, 2012.

Sam Seder: Don’t say “vagina” in Michigan.

Obama: Department of Homeland Security Immigration announcement.

Stephen: Union cafeteria workers.

Sam Seder: Virginia Republicans war on words “Sea Level Rise”.

Jonathan Mann: The Vagina Song:

Thom: The GOP witchhunt against Holder.

The Mitt Romney “jobs plan”.

Letterman: Romney and doughnuts.

Liberal Viewer: Steven Crowder supports NAMBLA?

Obama: LGBT Pride Month reception.

Newsy: U.S. will stop deportation of young immigrants.

Ben LaBolt: Mitt Romney is running for office on a false premise.

Young Turks: Obama heckled by Daily Caller reporter during immigration remarks.

Ezra Klein: Nailing Romney for supporting Bush policies.

Newsy: “Vagina” comments get lawmaker blocked in Michigan.

Thom and Pap: Why are Senators fondling banksters?.

Daily Show: Florida voter purge.

Pap: Rick Scott and the pathology of lying.

Jen with pollster, John Whaley, How to ask poll questions.

Obama Boy: Crush on Obama:

Sam Seder: Rick Scott still disenfranchising voters, suing Homeland Security to save face.

Mitt Romney: Out Of Touch!

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

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Publicola to Return

by Darryl — Wednesday, 6/13/12, 9:21 am

Via Crosscut:

This is our last post at Crosscut. The team here is great — and founder David Brewster has been particularly gracious and supportive, bringing Erica and me on board so we could continue to report and write. […]

We’re grateful for Brewster’s amazing support, but PubliCola is our thing. And it will live on. More details to come, but the Cola will be back in full force later this month.

Glad to hear it!

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Poll Analysis: Romney squeaks out a little more

by Darryl — Tuesday, 6/12/12, 7:03 pm


Obama Romney
99.2% probability of winning 0.8% probability of winning
Mean of 313 electoral votes Mean of 225 electoral votes

The previous analysis showed President Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney with a mean of 321 to 217 electoral votes, and a 99.4% probability of winning an election held now.

Since then, eighteen new polls covering fourteen states have been released:

start end sample % % %
st poll date date size MOE O R diff
CO Rasmussen 06-Jun 06-Jun 500 4.5 45 45 tie
CO Purple Poll 31-May 05-Jun 600 4.0 48 46 O+2
CT Quinnipiac 29-May 03-Jun 1408 2.6 50 38 O+12
FL Purple Poll 31-May 05-Jun 600 4.0 45 49 R+4
FL PPP 31-May 03-Jun 642 3.9 50 46 O+4
IA Rasmussen 11-Jun 11-Jun 500 4.5 46 47 R+1
MI EPIC/MRA 02-Jun 05-Jun 600 — 45 46 R+1
MN PPP 31-May 03-Jun 973 3.1 54 39 O+15
MO Rasmussen 07-Jun 07-Jun 500 4.5 42 49 R+7
NY Siena 03-Jun 06-Jun 807 3.4 59 35 O+24
NC PPP 07-Jun 10-Jun 810 3.4 46 48 R+2
ND Mason-Dixon 04-Jun 06-Jun 625 4.5 39 52 R+13
OH Purple Poll 31-May 05-Jun 600 4.0 45 48 R+3
PA Quinnipiac 05-Jun 06-Jun 997 3.1 46 40 O+6
PA Franklin & Marshall 29-May 04-Jun 412 4.8 48 36 O+12
VA Purple Poll 31-May 05-Jun 600 4.0 49 46 O+3
VA Quinnipiac 30-May 04-Jun 1282 2.7 47 42 O+5
WI We Ask America 06-Jun 06-Jun 1270 2.8 48 43 O+5

[Read more…]

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Drinking Liberally — Seattle

by Darryl — Tuesday, 6/12/12, 1:00 pm

DLBottlePlease join us tonight for an evening of politics and conversation over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally.

There are a couple of events today that will fuel our conversation. First, a double-header debate takes place this afternoon between Washington state attorney general candidates Bob Ferguson (D) and Reagan Dunn (R). That debate takes place at 2:00 pm. At 3:30 pm, gubernatorial candidates Jay Inslee (D) and Rob McKenna (R) go at it. The event takes place in Spokane, but you can watch (or stream) the debates on TVW, and KUOW will carry the audio.

Tonight there is a special election for AZ-08, the seat formerly held by Rep. Gabby Giffords (D). The only poll in the election, from Public Policy Polling has Democrat Ron Barber leading Republican Jesse Kelly, 53% to 41%.

Drinking Liberally Seattle meets every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm. Some people show up earlier for Dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings this week. Tonight the Tri-Cities, Bellingham, and Vancouver, WA chapters meet, and Thursday night Drinking Liberally Bremerton meets. Next Monday there are meetings of the Olympia, Yakima, and Shelton chapters.

With 228 chapters of Living Liberally, including twelve in Washington state and four more in Oregon, chances are excellent there’s a chapter near you.

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Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

by Darryl — Friday, 6/8/12, 11:59 pm

White House: West Wing Week.

Purging Florida:

  • Pap and Sam Seder: Will Rick Scott go to jail for voter purge? PT 1
  • Pap and Sam Seder: Will Rick Scott go to jail for voter purge? PT 2
  • Pap and Sam Seder: Will Rick Scott go to jail for voter purge? PT 3
  • Thom: Voter purge…Rick Scott gives the finger to Washington.

Maddow: Someone might go to jail in the John Ensign scandal.

Darcy Burner’s keynote at the Friday mid-day Netroots Nation plenary:

Lilly Ledbetter on Paycheck Fairness.

Slatester: Michelle Obama does David Letterman.

Thom with The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Ann Telnaes: Paycheck Fairness Act fails in Senate.

Obama’s message for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.

Mark Fiore: Dogboy and Mr. Dan with Who’s on Second.

Mitt Romney criticizes Obama for wanting to hire more police, firemen and teachers?!?

Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Obama for America: Jobs.

Maddow on the bitter and best thing about the former Sonics.

Roy Zimmerman: Song of Mitt Romney:

We’ve heard it all before….

Sen. Cantwell (D-WA): Working for Washington.

Recalling the Wisconsin Recall Election:

  • Sam Seder: Looking into WI recall election.
  • Pap: Mitt will get spanked in Wisconsin.
  • Thom and Pap: About Wisconsin.
  • Young Turks: Big $$$ wins in Wisconsin.
  • Alyona: How to buy an election.
  • Sam Seder: Wisconsin and the demonization of public workers
  • Stephanie Miller: Lessons from Wisconsin.

Lawrence O’Donnell: Mitt Romney penchant for impersonating a police officer.

Stephanie Miller with Dr. Jill Biden on troop support and the 2012 campaign.

Pap: You can’t make nice with the Tea Party.

Actual audio: Mitt’s campaign Day 1, part II.

Red Hot Chili Peppers Rock for Barack.

Thom: LA GOP spiral into chaos.

Slatester: Supreme Court now has it’s very own bad approval rating.

Alyona’s Happy Hour: Did Obama make a blow job joke?

Maddow: Going after Hillary Clinton.

Jen: Mitt’s donut gaffe.

Ann Telnaes: Whittling away health-care costs.

Why have Romney’s favorability numbers rebounded so fast? (Via TalkingPointsMemo.)

Greenman: Among the deniers at Denia-Palooza:

Slatester: Jeb Bush isn’t sticking to the script.

Maddow: One caught, Romney has no interest in correcting lies.

It’s up to you.

Thom: Organized Money beats Organized Labor.

Ann Telnaes: GOP solutions for health-care reform.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

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Electoral Pundit Contest

by Darryl — Friday, 6/8/12, 10:54 am

It happens almost every election season: the return of the Poll Analysis Concern Trolls. Well…they’re baaaaaaaak!!!

This season we have HA’s newest amateur right-wing propagandist, “Bob”, who is vewy, vewy concerned about the methods and polls I use for the election analyses. And we have the return our most esteemed amateur right-wing propagandist (to put it kindly), currently under the name, “Smilin'” (before that, ironically self-named, “GetFactsFirst”) . If you are interested, you can follow some of their election analysis concern trolling here, here and here.

I don’t want to totally belittle our Concern Trolls. The do play some useful roles here, like contributing to the raucous back-and-forth in the comment threads. And, for me, providing new opportunities to pontificate about polls, probabilities, statistics, simulations, bias, etc—topics that I enjoy in my professional life as well as in my hobby of collecting and analyzing electoral polls.

I also want to acknowledge them for inspiring a new occasional feature for this election season: The Electoral Pundit Contest. It is sort of like Lee’s Birds Eye View contest, but dealing with polls and stuff. The challenge is given below, but first allow me to pontificate….

This first contest was inspired by Bob and Smilin’s discussion of “outliers” in polls. It really bothers them that I don’t assess whether polls are “outliers.” And their latest “target” is a new Pennsylvania poll from Franklin and Marshall college (also known as The Keystone Poll). It shows Obama leading Romney 48% to 36% with 17% selecting neither.

What triggers their “concern” is the partisan make-up of the poll: “Respondents 50% D, 37% R, 10% I.”

Smilin’ puts it:

Why would Darryl include a poll that uses 50% Dems? Seems like there are several “outlier” polls like this that have zero credibility because of their underlying assumptions.

Is this poll an outlier? We could approach this from a probabilistic point of view by asking the question: if the sample of 412 registered voters was truly a random sample of PA voters, what is the probability of drawing a result as “extreme” as 50% Ds and 37% Rs and 10% I?

To make this easier, let’s ignore the “I” category, so the question becomes: if the sample of [207 Ds + 154 Rs =] 361 registered “partisan” voters was truly a random sample of PA voters, what is the probability of drawing a result as “extreme” as [50%/(50% + 37%) =] 57.5% Ds and [37%/(50% + 37%) =] 42.5% Rs?

A proper test would require us to know the “truth” about the probability of drawing a D versus an R in the population. Suppose the “true” probability is 54% for drawing a Democrat and 46% for drawing a Republican (ignoring folks who are Independent). We could then ask: for a sample of 361 partisans and a true probability of 54%, how probable is it to draw at least 207 Ds?

There is an exact answer to this question that can be found from the Binomial Distribution. The answer is about 11%.

In other words, if we did a bunch of polls with truly random samples of 361 registered voters each (assuming truthful answers, etc.) and with the true proportion of Democrats of 54%, we would, just by chance, draw a Democratic sample of 57.5% or greater about one out of every nine such polls. Hence, this particular evidence is not very strong, under our assumptions, that the poll is an outlier.

Whether partisan make-up or whether we look at the percentage “voting” for each candidate, there isn’t usually strong evidence for outliers. For example, let’s look at all polls for PA in the 2012 Obama—Romney race:

ObamaRomney08May12-08Jun12Pennsylvania

The vertical lines show the plausible range of “true” proportions, given the poll proportion and the sample size.

Two points. First, the plausible range of the most recent Franklin and Marshall poll largely overlaps all recent polls. The best evidence of an outlier comes from the previous Franklin and Marshall poll that just barely overlaps a Susquehanna poll (yellow). But both polls plausibly overlap their neighbors. So…which one should go? Or are they both perfectly valid, but happened to legitimately draw samples at each end of the spectrum? The rule for my analysis is to assume the difference is sampling variability, and include both polls. Since the election analyses typically have 60 or more polls, this sampling variability will, more or less, cancel out.

The second point is that the most variable polls are the smallest polls. The most current Franklin and Marshall poll is tiny. (In fact, you can get a rough idea of the sample sizes of polls from the plausible range—the Quinnipiac polls (cyan) all have samples over 1,100.) Because of the mechanics of the simulation analyses, larger polls (with smaller sampling error) have greater influence on the analysis.

Contest: There are three parts.

(1) In the above discussion, I had used 54% as an example for the “true” proportion of Ds versus Rs in Pennsylvania. Your task is to provide your best estimate of the true proportion of Democratic, Republican and “independent” (or other) voters in Pennsylvania. Use any resource and estimation technique you wish. Since partisan composition could change daily, let’s pin it down to June 4th (the last day of the Franklin and Marshall poll) as our target day.

(2) Assess the difference between your best estimate (part 1) and the partisan composition of the Franklin and Marshall poll (this is simple subtraction). The difference may be surprising.

(3) What is the cause for the “surprising” difference?

Good luck!

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Poll Analysis: Romney gains a bit on Obama

by Darryl — Wednesday, 6/6/12, 12:05 am


Obama Romney
99.4% probability of winning 0.6% probability of winning
Mean of 321 electoral votes Mean of 217 electoral votes

The previous analysis showed President Barack Obama leading Mitt Romney by 326 electoral votes to 212, and with a 99.9% probability of winning in an election held then.

Since then, twelve new state head-to-head polls have been released:

start end sample % % %
st poll date date size MOE O R diff
CA SurveyUSA 27-May 29-May 1575 2.5 57.4 35.6 O+21.8
CA Field Poll 21-May 29-May 710 3.8 48 32 O+16
CO Marist 22-May 24-May 1030 3.0 44 42 O+2
FL PPP 31-May 03-Jun 642 3.9 50 46 O+4
IA Marist 22-May 24-May 1106 3.0 41 41 tie
MA WNEU 29-May 31-May 504 4.4 56 34 O+22
MA U NH 25-May 31-May 651 3.8 46 34 O+12
NV Marist 22-May 24-May 1040 3.0 46 44 O+2
NM PNA 16-May 21-May 502 4.4 48 35 O+13
NY Quinnipiac 22-May 28-May 1504 2.5 56 31 O+25
OH Rasmussen 29-May 29-May 500 4.5 44 46 R+2
VA Rasmussen 03-Jun 03-Jun 500 4.5 47 47 tie

I don’t think we need to really comment on California (+21.8% and +16% for Obama), Massachusetts (+22% and +12% for Obama), and New York (+25% for Obama).

The new Florida poll puts Obama over Romney by a +4%. Even so, the aggregate of the four current Florida polls gives Romney a tiny edge (49.7% Obama to 50.3% Romney).

Ohio offers Romney a +2% edge over Obama, the first lead Romney has held since February:ObamaRomney05May12-05Jun12Ohio

The Southwest smiles upon Obama with New Mexico giving him a +13% lead, Colorado giving Obama a +2% edge, and Nevada going +2% for Obama. Do you doubt that Nevada belongs in Obama’s column? Take a look at this:

ObamaRomney05May12-05Jun12Nevada

That’s quite a streak for Obama!

Finally, we find ties in both Iowa and Virginia:

ObamaRomney05May12-05Jun12Virginia

ObamaRomney05May12-05Jun12Iowa

After 100,000 simulated elections that incorporate the new polls, Obama wins 99,442 times and Romney wins 558 times (including the 102 ties). Obama receives (on average) 321 (-5) to Romney’s 217 (+5) electoral votes. In an election held now, Obama would have as 99.4% (-0.5%) probability of beating Romney.

Electoral College Map

Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Lousiana Maine Maryland Massachusettes Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia D.C. Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

Electoral College Map

Georgia Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Delaware Connecticut Florida Mississippi Alabama Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia D.C. Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

Here is the distribution of electoral votes [FAQ] from the simulations:

[Read more…]

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HyperTuesday open thread

by Darryl — Tuesday, 6/5/12, 5:42 pm

The constellation of elections taking place tonight make this Tuesday, arguably, far more important than SuperTuesday. In the previous post, I mentioned many of the elections going on today. There are even more recall elections going on…for a total of 17:

  • Six in Wisconsin
  • Three in Fullerton, California (with at least superficial relevance to Seattle)
  • Three in Greenfield, California
  • Five in Hermiston, Oregon

We’ll mostly focus on Wisconsin, but recall elections frequently have high drama and close votes tagging along. So grab a beer and popcorn, tune in to your media source of choice, and try to be entertained….

6:00: This page has a couple of sites livestreaming results tonight. However, I’m hearing something about the moon….

6:06: Dead heat in the exit polls…

6:18: With almost no precincts reporting…Walker leads Barrett 54% to 45%.

7:01: CNN projects a Walker victory.

7:20: Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch keeps her job. Which means, of course, that when Walker is indicted, Wisconsin will be left in the shitty hands….

7:29: On the bright side, it seems possible that Birfer-queen Orly Taitz will get the Republican nomination to challenge Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D)

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Drinking Liberally — Seattle

by Darryl — Tuesday, 6/5/12, 1:45 pm

DLBottle

Please join us tonight for an evening of electoral politics and conversation over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally. Tonight, of course, is recall night in Wisconsin, a race that could make Gov. Scott Walker (R) the third governor in U.S. history to be recalled.

The latest polls showing Walker leading Mayor Tom Barrett (D-Milwaukee) with a small to modest lead. There are five other recall races going on in Wisconsin, as well.

Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (R) faces a challenge from Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin President Mahlon Mitchell (D). The latest poll show Kleefisch with a small lead.

Three Republican state Senators are facing recall elections, and Democrats need to win a single seat to take control of the Senate. State Sen. Terry Moulton (R-Chippewa Falls) is being challenged by Rep. Kristin Dexter (D). State Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) is being challenged by former state Sen. John Lehman. Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Clyman) is being challenged by Lori Compas (D). The first two of these races are considered competitive.

Finally, an open Senate seat is up for grabs after state Sen. Pam Galloway (R-Wausau) resigned in the face of a recall election. The contest for the seat is between state Rep. Donna Seidel (D) and state Rep. Jerry Petrowski (R).

Wisconsin polls close at 6 pm (PT).

There are also elections tonight in New Jersey (5 pm PT), South Dakota (6 pm PT), New Mexico (6 pm PT), Montana (7 pm PT) and California (8 pm PT).

Drinking Liberally Seattle meet every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm, but show up early to watch the returns….

I’ll be live-blogging the elections from DL.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? There are other DL meetings this week. The Tri-Cities chapter of Drinking liberally meets every Tuesday night. Drinking Liberally Tacoma meets this Thursday.

With 230 chapters of Living Liberally, including twelve in Washington state and three more in Oregon, chances are excellent there’s a chapter near you.

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Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

by Darryl — Friday, 6/1/12, 11:57 pm

Ann Telnaes: SuperPAC influence.

Thom with The Good, the Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Darcy Burner and Gen. Paul Eaton (ret): Responsible plan to end the war in Afghanistan:

Ann Telnaes: Memorial Day, 2012.

Illinois Rep. has a hissy fit over something or another.

Thom: Anti-Obama ad written and produced by FAUX “GOP TV” News?

Mr. Romney’s Run:

  • Liberal Viewer: Should Romney’s irrational religion be a campaign issue?
  • Mitt Romney: Little to like.
  • Jen’s Roundtable: Talking Mitt
  • Two Republican nominees.
  • Actual Audio: Romney’s first day in office.
  • Young Turks: Romney surrogate Donald Trump’s crazy birfer rant
  • Romney’s economic record.
  • Sam Seder: Amercia’s sinking ship.
  • Buzz60: Mitt Romney’s app typo
  • Bain Capital: We’re not so bad.
  • Thom: Is Romney a unicorn?
  • Steny Hoyer: Romney’s business record is fair game in campaign.
  • Romney’s Massachusetts “record”.

Obama celebrates Pride Month.

Maddow: Boehner playing politics instead of working on jobs.

WA State Republicans: “We’ve been Pfluged!

Stephanie Miller with Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA): Checking in on the Affordable Health Care Act:

Baby Congress.

Wisconsin:

  • Maddow: Will stars align for Wisconsin unions?
  • Newsy: Clinton heads to Wisconsin.
  • Stephanie Miller: WI Recall political litmus test.
  • Young Turks: Win or lose, good chance Gov. Walker will be indicted in the next couple of months.
  • Maddow: Republicans see success in War on Unions.

Jon does First Lady Michelle Obama.

President Obama honors Robert Allen Zimmerman (a.k.a. Bob Dylan) and some other folks.

Pulling out of Iraq.

Liberal Viewer: Sheriff scams Sacramento out of jail money.

Mark Fiore: Too big to fail.

Alyona’s Tool Time Award: MO Rep. Todd Akkin says voters shouldn’t pick Senators.

Sam Seder: Rush’s clueless food rant.

DOMA

  • Stephanie Miller: Boston DOMA ruling’s future impact
  • Thom: Pastor Knapp, get your bedroom and virginity police.
  • Newsy: Court strikes down key parts of DOMA
  • Young Turks: Pastor Curtis Knapp wants to kill gays.
  • Thom: DOMA is unconstitutional II.
  • Sam Seder: DOMA ruled unconstitutional.
  • Young Turks: Pastor wants to kill teh gays!

Alyona’s Tool Time Award: Will GOP let NC Sink?

Ann Telnaes: Protecting U.S. babies.

Music Video: Obama was Foreign Born:

White House: West Wing Week.

Young Turks: Bizarre Republican violence.

Thom: Something rotten in Michigan.

Jon on NY soda ban.

Newsy: George Zimmerman’s bond revoked.

Florida is Up to Its Tricks Again:

  • Alyona: Florida could keep thousands from voting.
  • Sam Seder: The voter suppression begins in Florida.
  • Ed and Pap: Eric Holder should prosecute Rick Scott over voter purge.
  • Thom: The Florida election fix is happening.
  • Sam Seder: Rick Scott slapped by DOJ and federal courts.
  • Ed and Pap: DOJ stops FL
  • Alyona’s Fireside Chat: Flordia’s war on voters.

Maddow: Montana is the best chance of saving US democracy from ‘Citizens United’.

Young Turks: Teabagger Rep. Joe Walsh says crazy, racist things.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

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Poll in the First

by Darryl — Friday, 6/1/12, 2:35 pm

Survey USA released a new poll for the new WA first congressional district today. The poll of 456 voters likely to vote in the August primary, and 661 registered voters (for a general election match-up), was taken on the 29th and 30th of May, surveys the open congressional seat and more.

For the Washington primary, the top two winners are Republican John Koster and Democrat Darcy Burner. Burner leads the crowded Democratic field by +10%:

  • John Koster (R) 46%
  • Darcy Burner (D) 19%
  • Undecided 16%
  • Laura Ruderman (D) 6%
  • Suzan DelBene (D) 4%
  • Steve Hobbs (D) 4%
  • Larry Ishmael (I) 4%
  • Darshan Rauniyar (D) 1%

The sample size for the primary poll is rather small. Nevertheless, we can make some inference about who will be Koster’s opponent in November. Darcy Burner has a little over 1/2 the “votes” (88 of 173) among those who chose someone other than Koster. A Monte Carlo analyses gives Burner a 56.3% probability of advancing to the general election. There is a 43.7% chance that Ruderman, DelBene, Hobbs, Ishmael or Rauniyar will advance instead of Burner.

The not-so-good news for Democrats comes from the head-to-head results of each Democrat against Koster:

  • Koster leads Burner 48% to 37%
  • Koster leads DelBene 49% to 32%
  • Koster leads Ruderman 49% to 32%
  • Koster leads Hobbs 47% to 31%
  • Koster leads Rauniyar 50% to 28%

In all cases, the poll results suggest that Koster has something over a 95% probability of winning. And that is not good news for Democrats.

There were a couple of other races that shed light on this poll. Mitt Romney leads President Obama in the district 45% to 44%. And Rob McKenna leads Jay Inslee in the district 52% to 38%. Wow…this is the same 1st district that I live in?!?

In fact, these numbers are so surprising that the election sleuths at Kos Elections (formerly Swing State Project) find the poll results implausible:

If you read a little further down, though, the poll’s credibility takes a major hit, when you see the presidential numbers: Romney leads Obama 45-44. This is a district that, adjusted for the new boundaries, went for Obama 56-42 over McCain. This is also the state’s median district (Obama went 57% in all of Washington in ’08), so Rob McKenna should probably be leading by a couple points in the gubernatorial race, but instead he’s up 52-38 over Jay Inslee. Either this sample is way off, or else Obama and Inslee are finding some way to get, say, 120% of the vote in WA-07 in statewide polls to compensate for such a steep falloff in Dem fortunes in the new 1st.

These are all good points. But I’d sure like to see some more independent polling for the district before I chalk this one up to being an outlier….

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