Please join us tonight for an evening of politics and conversation over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally. Tonight there are elections in Colorado, New York, Oklahoma and Utah, but we’ll likely ignore them to talk about other issues: the Governor and AG races in Washington, as well as recent and forthcoming Supreme Court decisions.

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 over the next week. Tonight there are also meetings of the Tri-Cities and Bellingham chapters. The Burien chapter meets on Wednesday, and the Woodinville chapter meets on Thursday. Then on Monday, the Yakima, South Bellevue and Olympia chapters meet.

With 227 chapters of Living Liberally, including eleven in Washington state and four more in Oregon, chances are excellent there’s a chapter near you.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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!

Please 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.

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.

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:

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!

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)

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.