the politics of sad

if you're feeling sad (romantically that is, not due to hurricanes or disasters)

where's the justice and where's the sense, when all the pain is on my side of the fence

 

prince wrote it but this is the extraordinary version

another cover.  joy division fans won't admit it, but this slow version is how the song was meant to be sung

so many fine versions to pick from . . .  except the one I really wanted

john gorka live

by the way how is my heart, I haven't seen it since you left.  I'm almost sure it followed you, could you sometime send it back.  I'll buy the ticket

no one does sad better than Zevon

gotta stop at two though

need a little country sound too,  two angels, one bad end

the amazing rhythm aces live version isn't out there . . .  no amount of money could ever take away the pain of loving you

so I throw this one on to get some aces

johnny mars was warming up in the studio and billy bragg recorded it and added new lyrics  I went home and thought about the two of them together til the bath water went cold around me.  I thought about her eyes and the curve of her breasts and the point where their bodies met

of course some willie

a little silly but great lyrics

 I didn't know how sad this was until Liliana told me

thought I'd throw in something recorded after 2000

bitter and sad

I used it in another post and its more Zevon but you can't help but have Zevon here

how you gonna make your way in this world woman when you weren't cut out for working

 every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

from blood on the tracks, bob's divorce album  (since we started with Richard's)

he was dying when he sung this.  you can hear it in his voice

my results

So, how did I do?

I said 303, maybe more.  Looks like 332 - Florida will go to Obama


In looking at voting, in Indiana, in Marion-Lake-Allen, Obama dropped to a margin of around 115,000; he'll lose the state by 250,000 - 275,000 but much better than Gore/Kerry and will also win.  I count that as correct.  Smaller margin than 2008, but still enough to show that he would win nationwide.

Of course, these counties were slow in reporting, so by the time that they were done, it was reasonably clear that Obama would win.

Polk County Iowa on the other hand is always fast in reporting.  Obama maintained his advantage there, and it was obvious that he would win in Iowa by 9:10 (far in advance of the national calls))

Florida and Virginia were close - decided by northern VA and southern FL (not all the votes are in, but essentially the remaining votes are from Dade).  And Obama won in the Tampa region,

Ohio was amusing in that Karl Rove held a melt-down.  Black Knight in Monte Python "Holy Grail" if you know what I mean.  Cleveland was coming in at 70%, clearly Obama victory numbers though.

I'll mention the US Senate races still open:  ND, where Heidi Heitkamp should win.  A few scattered precincts left, but in looking at them, they won't move the race.  At roughly 95% of the vote now, even if they all broke for Rick Berg, he'd still lose, but I don't think that will happen.  The smaller western precincts break for him, and the eastern precincts break for her.  He gets a few more votes, but she wins by 3,000.

In Montana, where a lot more counties/precincts are left, Jon Tester should win.  He will apparently win Billings (Yellowstone County) by a small margin, and he's got a few good American Indian counties/liberal mountain hippie/labor miner counties left.  The Libertarian in the race really killed "Gentleman Rancher" Denny Rehberg ("GR's" are the kind of ranchers who are hoping to be close enough to a city to sell most of the land for development but keep a few acres for horses and such).  Tester has kept a lead of 15,000 or so most of the night.  He's got enough votes left to keep that margin, even though Rehberg should roll up some good numbers in a lot of the (mostly) smaller counties left.  Interesting race though.  Normally, in a one-seat state, the sitting Representative has an advantage over a Senator (the Representative runs statewide every two years.)

I'm not going to try and look at what's left in the Nevada Senate seat.  It's closer than what people expected, but Dean Heller was expected to win, and is leading.  If the votes not counted are in Clark County, he might lose; if the votes not counted are in other places, he wins.

watching tonight's election

I had planned to do a more detailed post on how to watch the election results.  Life intrudes though.

Perhaps a very short version

7 (Eastern Time)

Indiana:  Obama won in 2008 by 30,000 votes; typically, Democrats have lost by large margins (Gore by 350,000, Kerry by 500,000).  Obama is not expected to win the state, but how close he runs will give a reasonable indicator of national results.  Three counties that Obama carried by 172,000:  Lake (Gary, generally very Democratic); Marion (Indianapolis, usually competitive, but Obama won by 100,000 votes); Allen (Ft Wayne, usually Republican, but Obama ran close).  As a comparison, Kerry and Gore won this three counties by 13,000 votes. Winning big in Indiana is a positive for Romney, but not fatal for Obama as he has stayed out of the state.  Losing Indiana for Romney means the race is over.

Virginia:  Obama needs to win northern Virginia in order to win.  Tim Kaine winning is a good sign for Obama. Romney needs to win Florida, and at least 2 of these 3 states (North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia)

7:30  (Eastern)
Ohio:  Obama needs to 2/3 of the votes in Cleveland, needs to win in  Toledo and Columbus and probably Dayton and needs to run even (or better) in Cincinnati.

North Carolina:  NC has leaned towards Romney.  More than 62% in Charlotte is a good number for Obama.  Less than that is likely a Romney victory

At this point, if Obama is winning in Ohio, and one of these other states, the race is over and you can stop watching.  If Obama is only winning in Ohio, the race is probably over, but Romney could still pull out a victory.  A win in NC or VA without Ohio favors Obama, but doesn't clinch the race. 

In short, we may know early if Obama has won.  We will likely not know until late if Romney has won (and Obama can still win in a late night)

8:00 (Eastern)
Florida:  Romney must win Florida.  If he loses Florida, the race is over.  Obama needs big margins in Miami and Orlando.  Romney needs to win the panhandle by a big margin.  If either can win in Tampa with a decent margin, that could determine the race.

New Hampshire:  NH is important if Obama loses Ohio.  If he wins VA or NC without Ohio, then adding NH makes up for it.  If Romney wins Ohio-VA-NC-FL, then Obama will need to win NH and run the table on the swing states.

If Romney wins all of the swing states prior to Colorado, he is very likely to win (though it's unlikely that those states will all be called by 9 Eastern for Romney)

9:00 (Eastern)
Wisconsin:  Romney is unlikely to win Wisconsin.  If he does, it probably means that Paul Ryan should have been on the top of the ticket.  It really only matters, if he has done well in the previous states, losing no more than 18 electoral votes of the earlier states.  (FL: 29; OH: 18; NC: 15; VA: 13; NH: 4)
Colorado:  The Hispanic vote has been shifting Colorado towards the Democrats.  A win in CO would at the least offset the loss of Wisconsin.  With OH-NC-VA, it will be enough for Obama to win.

If Romney has won everything up until now (except NH), then CO is probably vital for Obama.



10 (Eastern)

The race may not be called at this point, though it may be trending to one candidate or the other, The last two swing states are Nevada and Iowa.  Nevada is more like Indiana than a true swing state, in that Obama has consistently led for the entire year.  It's why the loss of Ohio, or VA/NC + NH is so troubling for Romney. Given either one of those previous scenarios, it will likely push Obama over the top. 

Iowa:  Iowa has been closer, but is fundamentally a Democratic state in presidential elections.  Polk County, which posts results online fairly rapidly, will give a good read:  Obama won the county by more than 30,000 votes.  Anything close is likely an Obama victory.  A margin of 10,000 - 12,000 will be a close race; under 10,000 means that Obama will likely lose Iowa.

An interesting state to watch will be Arizona.  There is a small reason to believe that some Hispanic voters (those who speak English but prefer to use Spanish) are underrepresented and that they could turn the state for Obama.  This is unlikely, but if it happens, is a real problem going forward for Republicans.  It also means that Obama has a slight chance even if he hasn't achieved one of the earlier scenarios.  AZ has one advantage for Obama - he only needs NV-IA (not NH) to win. The difference between AZ and WI is this.   WI is almost certainly going to vote for Obama and AZ is almost certainly going to vote for Romney, but while WI is not trending Republican, AZ is trending Democratic.  It's just possible that it is getting there eight years earlier than we expect.

Here are the Obama victory conditions

FL

Ohio + one of (VA-NC-IA-NV-CO)

NC + Ohio or VA or CO or two of (CO-NH-IA-NV)

VA+ Ohio or NC or two of (CO-NH-IA-NV)

CO-NH-IA-NV

Likely to be 303 for Obama; could go as high as 347.



From electoral-vote.com  Folks, you gotta go where the data takes you, not your heart.  These are people who are going to look foolish in the morning (Rove is understandable because he's making millions off backing a Republican, but the others are supposed to be more knowledgeable about these things

Pundit	Obama	Romney
Dick Morris	213	325
George Will	217	321
Michael Barone	223	315
Dean Chambers	227	311
Andrew Beyer	254	284
Karl Rove	259	279
Ben Domenech	260	278
Leslie Sanchez	263	275

A football team has a 79% chance of winning when it starts the 4th quarter with a 3-point lead.  So says the redoubtable Nate Silver, and I have no reason to question the accuracy of that claim.  However, the continuation:  Obama has a 79% chance of winning, in Silver's model, so it's like Obama is a field goal ahead at the start of the 4th quarter - is wrong..

The crucial difference between the two situations is that at any given moment, we know the score of a football game.  Zut Alors!  football scores are not subject to he Heisenberg uncertainty principle. We can know the score, and know how much time is left in the game!  There's no margin of error, no press conference at the end of the game:  "well, I thought we were three points ahead, but it turns out we were one point behind."

Election polls, like modern physics, are creatures of statistical methods, and thus have some uncertainty.  Why are Barack Obama's chances of winning only 80%?  It's not because Mitt Romney has a 20% chance of marching the team down the field for the winning touchdown as time is running out.  It's because the imprecision of polling is such that he might actually be ahead - that's what the 20% represents.  

If we use the football analogy, Mitt Romney is only one great play from seizing the lead.  Football games are often won on the last play; sometimes controversial (the Seattle Seahawks' victory over the Green Bay Packers this year), sometimes comically (the Cal band play; sometimes bizarrely (the fumble recovery by Herm Edwards for the Eagles against the Giants, for which Joe Pisarcik gets unfairly blamed.  Mr Pisarcik is still in the New Jersey area, so if you ever read this sir, we hope that you have survived Sandy without too much damage).  It's where the analogy fails though.  There isn't a miracle ad that will flip a million votes at the last second to any candidate.  Yes, a small number of voters might change their mind before Tuesday.  And yes, in down ballot races where voters are less familiar with the candidates, it may be possible to mount a come from behind win.  But our uncertainty as to who will win the presidential races is not because of the possibility of a dramatic comeback but because in 2012, we have a much greater uncertainty as to who is ahead.

To really strain the football analogy:

It's not likely that Mitt Romney is down by a six points, deep in his own territory, with time left for one play,  

 and the chance to win with a touchdown.  The difference with four years ago, is that in that game, you left early to beat the traffic.  You got home in time to see McCain score a late touchdown, but you knew it didn't matter even though you didn't know the exact score because McCain was 24 points behind when you left.

This year though, you left the stadium because your kid was sick, and the last touchdown might matter.  You aren't sure:  Maybe Mitt was down six points when he scored.  Maybe he was down ten.  Of course, in modern sports production, the score is always on the screen, so you always know.

We are overjoyed when our team wins due to an incredible play at the end of the game.  People remember the  touchdown on the last play by Seattle as the "game-winner", and have already forgotten the equally necessary earlier touchdown.  We like drama, and we create it when we can.  Thus the analogy that starts this post:  Mitt is close enough to make a dramatic comeback and win.  No, he's not.  There is some possibility he is ahead right now even though the polls don't show it, due to the possibility of pollster error and the imprecision of polling,  Of course, that is the problem of modeling a presidential election, or any single event.  Obama will not win 80% of the time; Romney will not win 20% of the time.  One of those two men will once, that is to say, 100% of the time.  You can't land on a fraction, as Dennis Hopper tells us.

The Cal band play

And of course, the fumble

the 2012 presidential race

A short note, and then a long note.  I have not blogged in a month; how then have things changed in the presidential race?  In September, President Obama was trending to run close to his 2008 numbers, perhaps a point or two behind and winning somewhere between 332 and 347 electoral votes, in essence, one less state than 2008 (Indiana).  Over at 538, Nate Silver notes that the race has returned to where it was in July; I suppose it is possible that the race has moved back and forth since then, with Obama moving forward on his convention bounce and Mitt Romney’s remarks on the 47%, and then back down again after his Denver performance.  Perhaps it’s also possible that the race hasn’t moved at all.

Pollsters, like political reporters, want political horse races to be dynamic and exciting.  Sure, Secretariat’s great win in the Belmont would still be remembered, just as Nixon’s victory in 1972, but if the win in the Belmont had not been for the Triple Crown, it would be far less famous.  Beyond the interest that in polling and stories that comes from an exciting race - and that interest does result in money; the effect is not trivial - beyond that though, people who pay for polls are far more interested in polls that show movement.  Every poll has a margin of error.  It is to be expected that two polls on the same race will diverge and that several polls are needed to establish a baseline with confidence.  And while I am skeptical about the number of undecideds in a presidential race, most political races do have a capacity for movement, even late in the race.  It is a kind of Pascal’s wager:  a poll that (correctly) damps down the swings of enthusiasm and shows a steady lead is more valuable than a sensitive poll that shows somewhat improbably swings in enthusiasm.  The damped-down polling might be fine in a presidential race where things really are unlikely to change, but in a senatorial race, the consequence of polling that fails to spot a trend against you is an unexpected loss; the consequence of a too-excitable poll is sleepless nights and extra campaign work.

That the Obama lead largely disappeared after the first debate, seemingly due to  Obama’s disastrous performance but perhaps due to an expected decline, at least according to economic forecasters.  His lead though, however much smaller, is still a lead.  The results, at least by some pollsters, showing a national lead for Romney, are interesting but as likely to be wrong as they are irrelevant.

A victory in the national popular vote is irrelevant in that the presidential race is decided by the Electoral College and unlikely in that the Electoral College does respond to changes in the popular vote.  It is dragged along, so to speak, and not completely disconnected.  Obama has consistently maintained a lead in the Electoral College in the last month, sometimes dipping below 280 votes, sometimes creeping back over 300.  I think that an Obama victory in the popular vote of 2% to 4% ought to translate to 303 electoral votes; between 4% and 6% should add Florida.  Ohio and Nevada, with 24 electoral votes, seem to his surest route to victory, even if he barely wins the popular vote.  Iowa and New Hampshire are likely very close as well, with Colorado and following next.  In 2008, Obama won by more than 7% and won in states that no one expected him to win six or eight months before.  His popular vote numbers have consistently polled lower in 2012; if that holds up, then his election totals are likely to be down in most states.  In a state like California, that means a win by smaller margins.  In a state like Indiana, that means he loses a state that he previously won.  That several national tracking polls have shown leads of several points for Romney is improbable because Obama has consistently lead in Electoral College projections, and on sites that project every (or most) states, usually exceeded 270.  Why do I say that the state polls showing electoral victory are likely to be more accurate than national polls?  Simply the number and general consistency of those polls:  that after all is one the principles of statistical analysis, that confidence grows as population size grows. 

And I’m not even going to try to get in pollster bias.

Updated:  a link as to the math behind preferring the state polls

for September 7, 2003

nine years; funny how nine years seems like forever when you're young and nothing when you get older.

I went  down to the dew drop inn and played some of that dead man's songs for the locals.  hope they liked it.

a fine live cover by Jordan Zevon.  the song is off Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School, Zevon's third album, with Linda Ronstadt singing the descant, one of those songs that should have gotten more airplay but never did.

here is another video of the same song, with some nice images from Star Trek: Enterprise

three years

three years.  139 profile views.  it's been awhile.

where to start, where to start.

hmm, how about the presidential election?  Romney, I read over at Andrew Sullivan's blog, is still the favorite.

No he's not. He has clearly and consistently trailed Obama in the projections for the electoral college, projections based straightforwardly on real data about voter preferences and not theoretical projections based on economic data.

This race will almost certainly be closer than 2008;  Obama seems likely to lose IN and the NE 2nd Congressional district, though the loss in Nebraska is as more due to changes in the district (more Republican Omaha suburbs, fewer Democrats and minority voters.)  If the election were today, he probably loses NC in a close race, but Obama still wins after losing FL, VA & OH - and Obama is slightly ahead or very close in all those states.

Since 1992, over the last five elections, every Democrat has won has won 18 states (CA, CT, DE, HI, IL,  MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, NJ, NY, OR, RI, PA, VT, WA, WI) and DC, currently worth 242 electoral votes.  Obama won all of those states by more than 10 points.  Put those states in the bag for a moment:  Obama thus needs to find 28 more electoral votes.  NM (5 votes, 3 out of 5) is trending away from Republicans due to Hispanic voters; Obama won by more than 15%.  CO (9 votes, 2 out of 5) and NV (6 votes, 3 our of 5) are also moving away, due both to Hispanic populations and population shifts from other states.  Mitt isn't likely to find enough LDS voters to overcome the Hispanic advantage - the reason that we have Senator Harry Reid and Senator Mike Bennett.  NV was plus 11%; CO was close to 9%.   Romney has never been popular in Iowa.  Christian conservatives might vote for him, but it's like the Man's Prayer that ends  The Red Greeen Show that Iowans love so much (the Iowa paraphrase:  "I'm a Republican, but I can nominate Mitt Romney, if I have to, I guess").  Iowa (4 out of 5) was plus 9%:  add those 6 electoral votes in.  NH (4 out of 5) was almost 9% as well, and with those 4 electoral votes, Barack Obama is at 272. 

He may be the second incumbent to be re-elected to a second term while doing worse in the electoral college.  Wilson is the other, and of course benefited from TR running as a third-party candidate in 1912, Wilson's first win.  I'm not counting FDR, who slumped a little in his third and fourth term from his second term, or Harry Truman, who was on the 1944 ticket as the VP but dropped off in electoral votes when he headed the ticket.  It would be wrong though to predict that Obama will lose if he loses IN and NC.  If nothing else, the population of events in this metric is too small for us to have a lot of confidence in the reliability of its predictive power. In that same way, the economic forecasting models used to predict a Romney victory rely on even fewer events to  regarded as reliable predictors. If you follow the various sites that predict the presidential election (538, the poll-averaging sites, the market-based sites), you'll see a general consensus of an Obama victory for most of this year.  Theories are fine, but to the extent we have real data, the data makes different predictions than the theories. Einstein famously said that he would have felt sorry for the Lord had physical evidence contradicted his theory because his theory was correct. Most of us aren't Einstein though, and its best to follow the data and not the theory when the two diverge.

Obama is ahead. Has been for months. He could still lose, but a victory isn't going to be a "come from behind" victory.