– Michelle Obama came to town.
– Another anti-Inslee ad with someone who isn’t a great spokesperson.
– More Italians bought bikes than cars last year. Next year, Washington?
– I like the idea of Olympia as mighty metropolis.
– Richard Conlin makes the case for Surface-Transit-I-5.
– Twitter has really given people the opportunity to pack so much wrong into so few words.
Okay, so I show up at the Montlake Alehouse and Goldy is sitting here with his daughter but wearing ear buds.
“I can’t be social right now, I’m live slogging the gubernatorial debate.”
So, I decided to do the same thing. Mostly, I’m leaning over, reading Goldy’s screen and writing it here. At least until Goldy catches on.
7:15: Catch the livestream here.
7:16: I’m jumping in on the middle of things and I hear McKenna trying to claim that failure of immigration reform is not a partisan issue.
RIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGHHH!
7:17: McKenna doesn’t want undocumented persons to have drivers licenses because it serves as an ID, too. Why wouldn’t we want undocumented persons to have ID?? I’ve never understood that. Shouldn’t they be able to show their landlord a picture ID like anyone else?
7:18: To carry Inslee’s point a bit further: Isn’t it better to document otherwise undocumented people so that when anyone interacts with them they have a valid way of knowing they are really interacting with who they think they are interacting with?
7:24: Inslee gets cut off by the moderator and McKenna complains that Inslee didn’t give specific examples. And then McKenna doesn’t give examples. Nice.
7:25: McKenna claims that the Inslee Plan is to raise taxes and give pay raises to his biggest donors. Yeah…that’s grounded in reality.
7:27: Inslee, twice now, suggests that McKenna is the (property) tax raiser he is the candidate who will not raise taxes. True or not, I’m not sure how credible the whole thing comes off as.
7:29: McKenna, “Drive by shooting!” Ooooh…scary. Rob tries a little “scare ’em into voting for you strategy, a la George W. Bush.
7:31: McKenna seems to be spending more time doing “meta-analysis” of what Inslee is saying than he is actually presenting his own positions. “Notice what my opponent is doing…making false accusations and….”
734: Both Goldy and I are streaming the debate on our computers. But the TV in the Alehouse has the baseball game on. Seattle is up on the Angels one to nothing.
7:35: Goldy seems to be taking this VERY seriously. I guess that’s what happens when you are actually paid to blog.
7:39: I briefly lost my feed, and now Goldy’s feed is like a minute ahead of mine! Damnation.
7:40: McKenna is on a first name basis with Mr. Blethen.
7:41: On I-1185, Inslee’s argument is weak…he should just point out that the fucking initiative is unfuckingconstitutional.
7:45: Other than a pro-environmental statement by Inslee, I can’t really find a difference between the candidates on the coal trains. (FWIW, I am pro-Coltrane, but undecided on coal train.)
7:56: It’s over. Inslee wasn’t, what I’d call, daring. He was sticking with his talking points. Since his is clearly up in the polls, that is a reasonable (if unsatisfying) strategy.
McKenna, on the other hand, came off as whining way too much. As I said, he whined about Inslee more than he actually answered questions. To me, it came off as rather pathetic.
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’s DL tonight? There are other Washington state chapters of DL meeting over the next week. The Tri-Cities chapter also meets tonight. The Spokane chapter and Drinking Liberally Tacoma meet this Thursday.
With 232 chapters of Living Liberally, including thirteen in Washington state four in Oregon and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter that meets near you.
A new Survey USA poll in the Washington gubernatorial race has been released by KING 5. The poll of 540 Washington state likely voters (4.3% MOE) found that former Rep. Jay Inlsee leads Washington AG Rob McKenna by 48% to 42%. The polling dates were not given but were probably the last few days of September.
This makes the sixth consecutive poll in which Inslee has come out ahead of McKenna.
A Monte Carlo analysis using a million simulated elections using only data from the new poll found Inslee winning 846,579 times and McKenna winning 145,776 times. In other words, if the electiion was held today, we would expect Inslee to win with an 85.3% probability. By standard statistical inference, we would call that “within the margin of error.”
Here is the distribution of outcomes from the simulated elections:
The previous poll in this race was just a few days ago. It showed Inslee ahead in the race 46% to 45% from a poll taken in the 26th of September. Given how close the polls are to each other, we can pool them and jointly analyze the results of both polls. The pooled polls gives a pool of 1,040 “voters” of which 941 voted for one or the other candidate. Inslee leads in the weighted average by 47% to McKenna’s 43.5%.
Now after a million simulated elections Inslee wins 800,838 times, and McKenna wins 193,071 times. Our hypothetical election held now would go to Inslee with an 80.6% probability:
Here is what the polling has done in this race:
Clearly, the race turned around sometime in July from a small lead for McKenna to a small lead for Inslee.
One would think something like Inslee’s proposal for an Economic Competitiveness and Development office would be the sort of thing that Rob McKenna would mostly ignore because it’s bland and obvious: the government should do more to help grow the economy, especially in areas where we can press our advantages. It’s, in short not the issue you’d think McKenna would want to draw a distinction. But:
A TV ad from Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna features a small business owner mocking Democrat Jay Inslee for part of his jobs plan: a new government office dedicated to helping businesses
Hmm. Well, I think that would backfire on its merits. Again, the government might help small businesses isn’t exactly a monster under the bed type story. But, it turns out that this particular small business owner had help from the government.
But elsewhere Bresheare has had great praise for one government office that helped her business, along with many others. She’s featured on the website of the Small Business Development Center at Western Washington University, complimenting the advice she’s received there (a fact pointed out by the Inslee campaign).
Those small-business centers are a partnership of the federal Small Business Administration and the state, and they offer services such as aid in writing a business plan or obtaining financing. The services are publicly funded and provided at no charge to small business owners.
Look, of course there’s room for debate about what are the best programs to help grow the economy and individual businesses. And, yes, sometimes the best thing the government can do is get out of the way. Still, the facts remain: very often government at all levels helps businesses.
Holy balls on toast, you guys. If we elect Obama some terrible things will happen. Iraq will be overwhelmed and Christians won’t be able to say a prayer even before school. Massive tax increases for the middle class. The Boy Scouts will shut down and by October 2012 we’ll — wait 2012?
Oh, I see. That was predictions from the last time Obama was on the ballot. None of them came true.
Look, I get that it’s difficult to make predictions. Especially when you’re up your own ass with a right wing ideology. But if you’re not good at making predictions then, um, don’t make predictions.
Until the end of the conventions, it was not uncommon to see a media article about how close the presidential race was at the time. If anything, the articles were based on national head-to-head polls, and generally showed Obama a point or two ahead of Romney.
Since the conventions, Obama has been gaining ground in the national polls. In fact, the last such poll that wasn’t Rasmussen that showed Romney with a lead was this Gallup Tracking poll from late August.
If you’ve followed my, or almost anyone else’s, analyses of state head-to-head polls it is no secret that Romney is in deep trouble. No matter what the national polls say, it is the electoral college (and, in a tie, the House…and, you know, sometimes the Supreme Court) that elects the President. The simulated electoral college contest has Romney losing consistently and badly this entire election season.
The reason appears to be that Obama is polling stronger in swing states. Credit for this has been attributed to a better-than-average economy in particular swing states, and to the Obama campaign’s early advertising blitz that started defining Romney even before he was the party’s nominee (and with a little help from Romney’s Republican opponents).
The other explanation, which is more of an amusement than a real explanation, is that the polls are all skewed! It’s attributed to the polling this year being “the worst it’s ever been” by political pundit and lower phalange fetishist Dick Morris.
Alternatively, it is a vast left wing media conspiracy!!!1!1! Politico has a nice write-up about Teh Great Polling Conspiracy of 2012. I think Josh Marshall summarized it best:
…having been through several of these cycles, if you’re theory is based on systemic error on the part of basically all pollsters, you’re in for a long election night.
So the following information can be read in two ways. If you think the polls, when taken en masse come out about right, on average, then I will present to you a measure of just how badly Romney is losing. If you are a Poll Truther, the following information provides solid evidence of just how skewed the polls are (if you presume Romney is really leading).
Here’s what I did. I took the results of last night’s analyses (umm…after the correction). And I reran the analysis, adding a bias in Romney’s favor to each poll included in the analysis. The bias (or skew) was a fixed percentage. I began an 0% and stepped up by 1% at a time through 10%. Here is a summary of the results for Obama’s median electoral votes with 95% confidence intervals:
The graph is clear…to eke out a win, Romney has to move the electorate across the board by a remarkable 6%. That is, he is 6% behind in the polling now. That is a larger margin than the 3.5% margin in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls. That’s because the math of the electoral college places more importance on certain states—and Romney need to do more to win those states.
To win with at least a 95% probability, Romney needs to shift things by 8%. To have the kind of lead that Obama now enjoys—with a solid 100% probability of winning—Romney needs a 10% shift.
Of course, this model is a bit simplified—I skew every poll for all states. It isn’t all states that have to be moved; rather it’s just a handful of “important states” that need moving. I mean, skewing Utah and Mississippi doesn’t really accomplish anything for Romney, and Massachusetts and D.C. aren’t going to be swung over no way, no how.
Here is the electoral map of a Romney victory scenario—presuming he moves voters in his favor by 6%:
Ohio and Pennsylvania plain gone—the polling now suggests they are out of reach for Romney even in this most extreme scenario where he shifts everything by 6%. Instead, a “Romeny + 6%” victory includes Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Iowa, Colorado, New Hampshire, and New Mexico. Oh…and Nebraska-2, which is tied when we remove the skew.
I’m not suggesting the election is over. But it looks like Romney has an almost insurmountable task ahead of him if he is to leave the rolls of the unemployed.
– The forest fires in Central and Eastern Washington are keeping students inside.
– I know in a few months we’ll look back at this and think how quaint it was. But Dreams of my Real Father feels like maybe peak wingnut.
– Unfortunately, these sort of things have real world consequences.
– Metro System Maps! [h/t]
– Sexy liberals came to Seattle.
– I’ve always said babies are smarter than Republicans.
– FYI, the Open Threads are going to be Monday-Wednesday-Friday for a while.
| Obama | Romney |
| 100.0% probability of winning | 0.0% probability of winning |
| Mean of 344 electoral votes | Mean of 194 electoral votes |
Even Newer Update: There is a real North Dakota poll that has just been released. It shows Romney leading in N.D. by 51% to 39%. The poll fails my inclusion criteria because it was conducted on behalf of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL State Party. But there you have it.
Newer Update: Okay…stuff should be fixed now.
Update: OOPS! As was pointed out in the comment thread, I accidentally “invented” a new poll that turned N.D. blue! Alas, it was an Ohio poll that got entered for the wrong state (and then entered again for Ohio). I’ll do a new analysis soon.
The analysis a few days ago showed President Barack Obama leading Governor Mitt Romney by, on average, 345 to 193 electoral votes. Since then, we’ve had a plethora of new polls released, and the result is a small gain for Obama Romney.
Here are the new polls:
| start | end | sample | % | % | % | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| st | poll | date | date | size | MOE | O | R | diff |
| AZ | Moore | 25-Sep | 26-Sep | 500 | 4.0 | 42 | 46 | R+4 |
| IA | Iowa Poll | 23-Sep | 26-Sep | 650 | 3.8 | 49 | 45 | O+4 |
| IA | VCR | 23-Sep | 25-Sep | 500 | 4.4 | 46 | 47 | R+1 |
| ME | Rasmussen | 25-Sep | 25-Sep | 500 | 4.5 | 52 | 40 | O+12 |
| MA | Boston Globe | 21-Sep | 27-Sep | 502 | 4.4 | 57 | 30 | O+27 |
| MI | Gravis Marketing | 21-Sep | 22-Sep | 804 | 3.3 | 50.0 | 46.2 | O+3.8 |
| MI | PPP | 17-Sep | 19-Sep | 2386 | 2.0 | 51 | 42 | O+9 |
| NV | Marist | 23-Sep | 25-Sep | 984 | 3.1 | 49 | 47 | O+2 |
| NH | ARG | 25-Sep | 27-Sep | 600 | 4.0 | 50 | 45 | O+5 |
| NH | Marist | 23-Sep | 25-Sep | 1012 | 3.1 | 51 | 44 | O+7 |
| NM | PPP | 17-Sep | 20-Sep | 3111 | 1.8 | 52 | 43 | O+9 |
| NC | Marist | 23-Sep | 25-Sep | 1035 | 3.1 | 48 | 46 | O+2 |
| OH | Columbus Dispatch | 19-Sep | 29-Sep | 1662 | 2.2 | 51 | 42 | O+9 |
| OH | PPP | 14-Sep | 18-Sep | 2890 | 1.8 | 50 | 44 | O+6 |
| PA | Muhlenberg | 22-Sep | 26-Sep | 427 | 5.0 | 49 | 42 | O+7 |
| PA | PPP | 17-Sep | 18-Sep | 2051 | 2.2 | 52 | 40 | O+12 |
| VA | ARG | 24-Sep | 27-Sep | 600 | 4.0 | 49 | 47 | O+2 |
| VA | Suffolk | 24-Sep | 26-Sep | 600 | 4.0 | 45.7 | 44.0 | O+1.7 |
| VA | PPP | 17-Sep | 19-Sep | 2770 | 1.9 | 49 | 43 | O+6 |
| WA | Rasmussen | 26-Sep | 26-Sep | 500 | 4.5 | 52 | 41 | O+11 |
Romney continues to out poll Obama in Arizona. The three current polls, taken together, has Romney with a 95% probability of winning the state.
In Iowa, Obama leads by +4% in one poll and trails by -1% in another. Still, there are six Iowa polls taken in the past three weeks—Obama leads in four. Together they put Obama’s probability of taking the state (now) at 98%. Here is the last three months of polling:
Maine has Obama leading by +12% in the new poll. There is also a newly released Critical Insights poll that is a couple weeks old and has Obama up by +16. I didn’t see the poll until after the analyses were running; it’ll be included in subsequent analyses.
Obama hangs on to a small +3.8% in one new Michigan poll. Even so, Obama pulls over 50%. Another huge, but somewhat older, Michigan poll has Obama up by +9. With Obama leading in all eight current polls, by double digits in three of them, Obama is looking unbeatable in this state.
In Nevada, Obama’s lead is just +2% in the current poll. Romney hasn’t won any of the six current polls, and Obama would be expected to win the state now with a 95% probability.
Two new New Hampshire polls have Obama up by +5% and +7%. These are Obama’s strongest showing, now giving him three of the four current polls. Romney’s chances in the state have shrunk to about 10%.
Another North Carolina poll goes Obama’s way, but by only a +2% edge. Obama now has a streak of four consecutive polls in his favor, and he takes four of the five current polls for the state. Here is what the last three months of polling look like graphically:
Two more Ohio polls go to Obama, who leads in all 12 of the polls taken over the past three weeks. In 2008, Obama won Ohio by +4.6%. If the election was held now, we’d expect Obama to win by more than a +6% margin! Here’s the recent trend:
Pennsylvania shows, once again, that it isn’t a swing state. Obama’s +7% and +12% in the new polls fall in line with the rest of the ten current polls.
In Virginia, Obama has a puny +2% lead in two polls and a +6% lead in another. These polls make eleven taken in the past three weeks and Obama leads in every one of them. The analysis suggests Obama would win the hypothetical election now with certainty, even if by a smallish margin. The polling trend makes this apparent:
Last, but not least, we get a new Rasmussen poll in Washington, where Obama leads Romney by a solid +11%, and takes 52% of the vote. All three current polls are double digit leads for Obama…this new poll is the smallest lead.
Now, after a Monte Carlo analysis using 100,000 simulated elections, Obama receives (on average) 347 (+2) 344 (-1) to Romney’s 191 (-2) 194 (+1) electoral votes. Obama won all 100,000 of the simulated elections, suggesting he would certainly win a hypothetical election held now.
We can view the long term trend of this race from a series of elections simulated every seven days using polls from 30 Sep 2011 to 30 Sep 2012, and including polls from the preceding 21 days (FAQ).
Looking at the media electoral vote line (purple), we see that Obama’s position is stronger than at any time in the past year tied with his strongest position over the past year (median of 347 electoral votes).
Here is the distribution of electoral votes [FAQ] from the simulations:
[Read more…]
Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was the town of Sierra Blanca, TX, where Fiona Apple was arrested by a “border” patrol for possession of hash.
This week’s contest is a random location somewhere on earth, good luck!
[HA Bible Study is on hiatus through the November election as we honor Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney by studying the scriptures of his Mormon religion.]
Doctrine and Covenants 130:12
I prophesy, in the name of the Lord God, that the commencement of the difficulties which will cause much bloodshed previous to the coming of the Son of Man will be in South Carolina.
Discuss.
1:02: I’m on the Rapid Ride going from Downtown to West Seattle. It smells like a new car, but stronger. I’ve smelled worse smells on the bus. I’m still downtown and so far it feels pretty much like any other ride. Maybe it’s because the Orca Card reader at my stop wasn’t up yet. Maybe it’s because the display for how many more minutes there are to go wasn’t up yet. In any event, I’m using the bus’s WiFi, so here goes.
1:05: All the doors open, although, as I say, the card reader wasn’t working yet, so it doesn’t feel like that’s an advantage.
1:06: And I’ve had my first random dude speaking to the driver through the light. Fuck you that guy.
1:11: I just typed something about how we’re on the Viaduct now, and got an error message. Lovely. Switching to ClearWire.
1:15: The views on the Viaduct and the West Seattle Bridge are quite nice. When it’s a Saturday, this is quite Rapid for real. Of course the real test will be Rush Hour on Monday and beyond.
1:19: First stop in West Seattle. I didn’t take the 54 enough to compare, but it feels better than the circuitous route it used to be.
1:24: The junction. 22 minutes feels about the same as before, maybe a bit quicker.
1:27: The person next to me says I shouldn’t use my wireless, because it’s really fast on the bus. I told him I got an error earlier, and he didn’t believe it. I don’t have to justify my WiFi device to you, random guy.
1:30: Morgan Junction.
1:31: I realized I’ve got used to the smell of the bus. Usually when it smells of homeless person piss, that’s something you can be thankful and maybe a bit worried about. With new bus small, I guess the same.
1:36: Ferry terminal. Whenever I go to Vashon via the bus, it feels like a crapshoot as to if the bus and the boat are well timed. With more frequent bus trips, I imagine it’ll feel like a crapshoot with better odds.
1:41: Westwood village. So fine route, but it doesn’t feel like that much of an improvement over the old. People who take it more often than I do will probably have a better sense of it.
Young Turks: on that Allen West ad.
In his own words:
The Professor and Senator Brown:
Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.
The Pollster-Liberal-Media-Industrial Complex Conspiracy:
MockTV: Eastwoodin’:
Jon on FAUX News’ hypocritical coverage of school lunch changes.
Latinos for Obama.
Thom: More of the Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly.
Good ‘ol Tommy Thompson promises to ‘Do away with Medicare and Medicaid’ (via Crooks and Liars).
Willard!
Thom with even more Good, Bad and Very, Very Ugly.
Pap: Republicans crippled by fear.
Obama mask dance.
Crazy Akin:
Cenk predicts Obama will win.
Jon on The Labor Dispute (via Crooks and Liars).
Obama with some straight talk:
Mock the Vote:
White House: West Wing Week.
Young Turks: Rep. Gohmert’s bizarre Ottoman Empire conspiracy theory.
Sharpton: The G.O.P.’s new idea…Obama lies.
SlateTV: Social media and the Presidential debates.
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
I’m just got off my last free ride I’ll ever take on Metro (provided there isn’t another policy change, and I don’t start sneaking on). For me as a supporter of the elimination of the free ride area, and a Puget Pass holder, it’ll hopefully be fine. And I think it’ll be good for the county too. But it will probably take some getting used to.
So, it’ll probably be a bit longer in the mornings, at least for a while, while drivers and passengers sort it out. But 3rd Ave will still be nice. And for the rest of the county, not having to figure out if it’s pay as you enter or leave will be good.
Rasmussen Reports released a new poll today that shows former Rep. Jay Inslee (D) barely leading Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna (R) in the Washington state Governor’s race. The poll of 500 people (4.5 M.O.E), taken on Wednesday, has Inslee up 46% to 45%.
Inslee has now led in the last four consecutive polls. The last time McKenna led was in a SurveyUSA poll from mid-July.
In the two previous September polls, Inslee has led by 44% to 41% and 49% to 44%. The current poll might signal that the race is tightened…alternatively, the variability we see is simply sampling error.
To assess the state of the race, I performed a Monte Carlo analysis using a million simulated elections using the sample size and proportions found only in today’s Rasmussen poll. Inslee won 558,701 times and McKenna won 428,130 times. This suggests that, if the race was held today, we could expect Inslee to win with a 56.6% probability. Here is the distribution of electoral votes:
If you believe the race has been stable over the past couple of weeks, we can combine the last two September polls. Now, Inslee takes 761,308 wins to McKenna’s 231,884 wins. The evidence from the past two weeks suggests that Inslee would have a 76.7% probability of coming out ahead in an election held now:
In other polling news, Survey USA released a new poll in Washington’s 6th district. The poll of 628 likely voters taken last Friday through Sunday finds Derek Kilmer (D) leading Bill Driscoll (R) by 52% to 37%.
The seat is currently held by Rep. Norman Dicks (D) who is retiring at the end of this term.
Eager to share our brilliant political commentary and blunt media criticism, but too genteel to link to horsesass.org? Well, good news, ladies: we also answer to HASeattle.com, because, you know, whatever. You're welcome!