Barack Obama - 96.7 percent chance of winning election

Odds are, he knows the score

Chicago statistician Nate Silver has turned from sports to politics, with striking results

By James Janega |Tribune reporter

October 27, 2008

Nate Silver's political rags-to-riches story plays out on a BlackBerry brimming with e-mails and a schedule conspiring to run him into the ground.

Last spring he was a sports statistics savant virtually unknown outside the world of obsessive baseball fans. Now he dreams about hiring a personal assistant. With the election eight days away, the Chicagoan has become one of the most sought-after election analysts in the country, thanks to a computer program he built to blend poll results, demographics and political trends.

Silver boldly predicted a Barack Obama victory months ago. As of Sunday, he's 96.7 percent sure of that. He breaks down the numbers into a dizzying array of scenarios: On Sunday, he sees a 4.75 percent chance of John McCain winning the popular vote. There's a 2.13 percent chance of Obama losing the popular vote but winning the most electoral votes. There's a 0.25 percent chance of a tie in the Electoral College.

Silver earned his baseball credibility in 2005 by predicting the White Sox would win it all. He earned his political stripes during this year's primaries with several smart forecasts, such as picking the Super Tuesday results within 20 delegates out of 1,700.

Now Silver's political Web site, FiveThirtyEight.com, is a must-read for political wonks.

"I don't know who his publicist is, but he's doing a hell of a job," said Charles Franklin, a political scientist and co-founder of the influential site Pollster.com, which gets 1.8 million visitors a week. Silver's gets 700,000 a day.

"I mean that mostly out of jealousy and admiration," Franklin added.

A nose for statistics

Silver has been a partner at sports think tank Baseball Prospectus since 2004. He was a high school debate champ in East Lansing, Mich., and got an economics degree from the University of Chicago. Back when he was a consultant at international tax accounting firm KPMG, a side fixation with baseball statistics led him to create PECOTA, his system to wrestle reliable predictions from raw numbers.

Since he created the computer model that powers FiveThirtyEight.com late last winter—the name refers to the number of votes in the Electoral College—demands on his time have grown.

Fresh numbers drive everything. Silver feeds 30 state polls into his computer model every 24 hours. He weights pollsters by track record and averages state polls, checking them against national polls and similar demographic slices elsewhere in the country. A statistical model allocates undecided voters and simulates the election 10,000 times a day.

Andrew Gelman, a statistician and political scientist at Columbia University, used a similar approach with a colleague from Harvard University in a paper on Sept. 21. Both Gelman's and Silver's models agreed: They gave Obama a convincing lead in the popular vote and more than enough electoral votes to seal the election.

'I don't dabble'

"I'm meticulous," Silver said. "I like getting into details, and when I get into something, I get into it. I don't dabble in a lot of things."

So far, he has also been accurate when it mattered.

On the morning of May 6, he defied conventional pollsters who saw a 5-point lead for Hillary Clinton in Indiana and rapid momentum for her in North Carolina. On May 7, election results bore Silver out by giving Indiana to Clinton by 1 point and North Carolina to Obama by 17. The world came knocking at Silver's door.

A volatile election

Silver wasn't always so confident in his prediction program. He was stunned by a leap for Obama when Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy in September. Markets fell, and so did McCain's chance of victor in Silver's model.

"I got a little bit worried," Silver said. "This isn't the actual condition of the election. Ordinary logic goes out the window."

And so Silver left to finalize a deal that sends text messages of his predictions to readers' cell phones, wondering what would happen to his numbers if emotional voters just changed their minds.

Sarah Palin - scripted robot or an unscripted ignoramus

Palin, Alone Aboard the Bus

......

I’m sympathetic to Eskew and Wallace, and not just because they’re decent people. They’ve held their tongue from leaking what a couple of McCain higher-ups have told me—namely, that Palin simply knew nothing about national and international issues. Which meant, as one such adviser said to me: “Letting Sarah be Sarah may not be such a good thing.” It’s a grim binary choice, but apparently it came down to whether to make Palin look like a scripted robot or an unscripted ignoramus. I was told that Palin chafed at being defined by her discomfiting performances in the Couric, Charlie Gibson, and Sean Hannity interviews. She wanted to get back out there and do more. Well, if you’re Eskew and Wallace, what do you say to that? Your responsibility isn’t the care and feeding of Sarah Palin’s ego; it’s the furtherance of John McCain’s quest for the presidency.

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Click the link above to read more of Robert Draper's blog article.

More fanatical Republican dirty tricks

More morally corrupt Republicans playing dirty tricks. Should we really be surprised how low these fanatical Republicans will go to try to change an election.


Phony flier says Virginian Democrats vote on a different day.

By Julian Walker
The Virginian-Pilot
© October 28, 2008

RICHMOND

A phony State Board of Elections flier advising Republicans to vote on Nov. 4 and Democrats on Nov. 5 is being circulated in several Hampton Roads localities, according to state elections officials.

In fact, Election Day, for voters of all political stripes, remains Nov. 4.

The somewhat official-looking flier - it features the state board logo and the state seal - is dated Oct. 24 and indicates that "an emergency session of the General Assembly has adopted the following (sic) emergency regulations to ease the load on local electoral (sic) precincts and ensure a fair electoral process."

The four-paragraph flier concludes with: "We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause but felt this was the only way to ensure fairness to the complete electoral process."

No emergency action has been taken by the General Assembly. It is not in session and lacks the authority to change the date of a federal election.

State Board of Election officials today said they are aware of the flier but disavowed any connection to it.

"It's not even on our letterhead; they just copied the logo from our Web site," said agency staffer Ryan Enright, noting the flier has been forwarded to State Police for investigation as a possible incident of voter intimidation.

Election officials did not specify in which Hampton Roads localities the flier had been spotted.

State Police are aware of the complaint and are looking into it, said spokeswoman Corinne Geller.

In 2007, the General Assembly passed a law making it a Class 1 misdemeanor to knowingly communicate false information to registered voters about the date, time and place of the election or voters' precincts, polling places or voter registration statuses in order to impede their voting. The measure is one of the few such deceptive voting practice laws in the country, according to the watchdog group Common Cause.

Remembering John McCain - his quotes

"You know that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran? Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran." --breaking into song after being asked at a VFW meeting about whether it was time to send a message to Iran, Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, April 18, 2007 (Watch video clip)

"I was looking at the Sturgis schedule, and noticed that you had a beauty pageant, so I encouraged Cindy to compete. I told her [that] with a little luck, she could be the only woman to serve as both the First Lady and Miss Buffalo Chip." --on the annual Miss Buffalo Chip Pageant, which features topless (and occasionally bottomless) contestants, Sturgis, South Dakota, Aug. 4, 2008 (Watch video clip)

"Make it a hundred...That would be fine with me." --to a questioner who asked if he supported President Bush's vision for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq for 50 years, Derry, New Hampshire, Jan. 3, 2008

"At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c*nt." --to his wife, Cindy, after she playfully twirled his hair and said "You're getting a little thin up there," as reported in the book The Real McCain by Cliff Schecter

"The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should. I've got Greenspan's book." --as quoted in the Boston Globe, Dec. 17, 2007

"Sure. Technically, I don't know." --asked if the U.S. is in a recession, "60 Minutes" interview, Sept. 21, 2008

"I understand the economy. I was chairman of the Commerce Committee that oversights every part of our economy." --ignoring the fact that it is actually the Senate Banking Committee which is responsible for credit, financial services, and housing -- the very areas currently in crisis, CNBC interview, Sept. 16, 2008

"Ma'am, let me say that I don't disagree with anything you said." --after a woman at a town hall meeting said, "If we don't re-enact the draft, I don't think we'll have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell," Las Cruces, N.M., Aug. 20, 2008 (Watch video clip)

"I am a illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get." -after being asked whether us uses a Mac or a PC (Watch video clip)

"The fact is that I have agreed with President Bush far more than I have disagreed. And on the transcendent issues, the most important issues of our day, I've been totally in agreement and support of President Bush. --"Meet the Press" interview, June 19, 2005

"Do we share a common philosophy of the Republican Party? Of course." --on President Bush, "Meet the Pres Interview," Oct. 27, 2008

John McCain admits he doesn't know much about the economy. He is sexist and is known to have angry childlike outbursts. How can someone that wants to be the president not know how to use a computer! He admits he likes war and wants war. He admits he is no Maverick and essentially the same as President George W. Bush. Not really the type of overall persona that people want in a president.

Remembering Sarah Palin - her quotes

"Well, let's see. There's -- of course -- in the great history of America rulings there have been rulings." --Sarah Palin, unable to name a Supreme Court decision she disagreed with other than Roe vs. Wade, interview with Katie Couric, CBS News, Oct. 1, 2008 (Watch video clip)

"All of 'em, any of 'em that have been in front of me over all these years." --Sarah Palin, unable to name a single newspaper or magazine she reads, interview with Katie Couric, CBS News, Oct. 1, 2008 (Watch video clip)

"As for that VP talk all the time, I'll tell you, I still can't answer that question until somebody answers for me what is it exactly that the VP does every day?" --Sarah Palin, interview with CNBC's "Kudlow & Co," July 31, 2008 (Watch video clip)

"As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border." --Sarah Palin, explaining why Alaska's proximity to Russia gives her foreign policy experience, interview with CBS's Katie Couric, Sept. 24, 2008 (Watch video clip)

The American voters should be seeing a recurring set of linguistic challenged ambiguities coming from Palin and Bush. They are the cousins of the "Grammar and Syntax Disaster Group". Check out my previous blog post about George Bush and read the quotes he has made throughout his presidential career.

If you vote for Sarah Palin , you get George Bush reincarnated.

George Bush has admitted through his quotes over the years that he was not articulate, he was against peace and prosperity. He also mentioned that he was the master of low expectations. Do the voters really want to continue this Republican legacy with Sarah Palin and John McCain? President George W. Bush with his best and probably most truthful and revealing quote:

"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

STOP THE REPUBLICAN MADNESS.