I never watched Fox News. I followed the runup to this election less closely than in the past as I was leaving the country on Nov. 3.
MarcC":2h4uc52p said:
You're completely ignoring the near total alienation by Romney and the American Taliban of women, Latinos, African-Americans, and anyone who desires a candidate who actually has positions that s/he maintains and believes in....
I'm not arguing those points and I think the Bruce Bartlett article is quite illuminating. But were those points less true 9 days before the election when long standing reputable national polls said the race was even? Those same polls said Obama led by 4 going into the election and the actual margin was 3.42%.
I agree with rfarren that the "90% of counties" argument is a complete red herring. Nonetheless Obama's 3.42% margin of victory is not impressive. Bush Jr's margin in 2004 was 2.46%. Carter/Ford was 2.06%. The 3 under 1% margin elections since WWII were 1960, 1968 and 2000, with 1960 being far the closest at 0.15%. The next closest elections after the 5 above were Truman 1948 at 4.48% and Clinton 1992 at 5.56%. So the reality is that the most similar margin of victory to 2012 was 2004.
Nonetheless the fact that Obama won at all (plus the Senate results) with the economy of the past 4 years
should be a big wake-up call to the Republicans for the reasons many of us have mentioned.
rfarren":2h4uc52p said:
It would be foolish and overly simplistic to say: since, Obama won with 53% of the vote, he would hypothetically win the election only 53% of the time.
Neither Harold or I ever said that. Harold's contention is that the race was even 9 days before the election and moved 4 points toward Obama after that, a contention supported by the national polls.
rfarren":2h4uc52p said:
It sounds to me that Tony's friend Harold is allowing emotion and out of date analysis to cloud his judgment (national polls vs. state polls, new available data, etc)....I see that as no different than a retired political consultant speaking from experience from his war chest days, when commenting on modern electioneering.
Harold may be fairly conservative, but he's definitely "reality based" and would agree with many points in the Bruce Bartlett piece. If you think I'm a numbers geek, Harold is on a completely different level and his knowledge of American political history is encyclopedic.
rfarren":2h4uc52p said:
I disagree with Tony strongly as far as Nate Silver is concerned....The proof is in the pudding, just look at Mr. Silver's results in the past 3 elections. His results have only improved with each passing cycle.
That's a very small sample size. One reason for Harold's suspicions about Silver is that he has made statements about past elections that were not true. The 2008 and 2012 elections were not that hard to call, especially the electoral vote with the current level of political polarization. The Washington Post just ran a piece about an 8th grader who called all 50 states. I have not analyzed Silver's work like Harold has, but I can say from other stuff I have done that 3 election cycles is way too short a time frame to be anointing someone as the definitive authority in the business.
Part of Harold's historical perspective is that he shares the unease about political polarization. In the close elections of 1960, 1968 and 1976 there were lots of close states, so campaigning was more broad based across the country. One reason Nixon looked like crap in those debates with Kennedy is that he pledged to campaign in all 50 states. When Romney wins 23 states by 9 points or more, it pretty much guarantees those states and their counterparts on the Democratic side will continue to be ignored in future national presidential campaigns.