I imagine most of you are techies, and will appreciate this

[veer]

Obama campaign was just one step ahead.. kudos to brains behind it.

[Crookbond]

Well yea, this was good but not as good as Nate Silver's prediction. He called all 50 states correctly - yes you heard that right, all 50 states. It's pure genius if anyone knows even an iota about prediction. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/author/nate-silver/

[Brainfade]

Well yea, this was good but not as good as Nate Silver's prediction. He called all 50 states correctly - yes you heard that right, all 50 states. It's pure genius if anyone knows even an iota about prediction. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/author/nate-silver/

Not to take anything away from Nate, but you and I could've called 46/50. The only ones in doubt in my mind were OH, FL, CO and VA. And even OH was a long shot for R-R.

[The Outsider]

Not to take anything away from Nate' date=' but you and I could've called 46/50. The only ones in doubt in my mind were OH, FL, CO and VA. And even OH was a long shot for R-R.[/quote'] True. I would even add CO to OH. For me the only surprise was FL. So, yeah I got 49/50 right and Nate after spending countless hours got 50/50.

[Ram]

True. I would even add CO to OH. For me the only surprise was FL. So' date=' yeah I got 49/50 right and Nate after spending countless hours got 50/50.[/quote'] Being a math guy yourself, I am surprised that you have this opinion. Its not the fault of Nate's model that out of the 50 states, 42-43 are outright red/blue. The thing is, if all the 50 of the states were battleground/toss-ups, his model would have still predicted the outcomes with remarkable accuracy. I followed the 538 blog almost daily for the 4 weeks before the election and it quite impressive how he had tagged Florida to go Republican right until the last week of campaigning. It was only 3-4 days before the election when he switched Fl. to 'slightly blue' with a 50.3% chance of an Obama win. And lo behold, Fl. was the most closely fought race with fractional victory margin (apprx 50,000 votes).

[Ram]

Well yea, this was good but not as good as Nate Silver's prediction. He called all 50 states correctly - yes you heard that right, all 50 states. It's pure genius if anyone knows even an iota about prediction. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/author/nate-silver/

I dont think I will use the word 'genius'. Impressive is probably more in the ball-park.

[The Outsider]

Being a math guy yourself' date=' I am surprised that you have this opinion. Its not the fault of Nate's model that out of the 50 states, 42-43 are outright red/blue. [b']The thing is, if all the 50 of the states were battleground/toss-ups, his model would have still predicted the outcomes with remarkable accuracy.

What makes you so confident of that? He could not get 50/50 in 2008 and you are confident that he would have got 50/50 even if all states were toss ups

[Crookbond]

I dont think I will use the word 'genius'. Impressive is probably more in the ball-park.

Fine - agreed.

[Ram]

What makes you so confident of that? He could not get 50/50 in 2008 and you are confident that he would have got 50/50 even if all states were toss ups?

That is why I used the adjective 'remarkable accuracy' as opposed to 'total accuracy'. If all 50 states were toss-ups and if he even got 47-48 of them right, that is still very impressive in my view. Plus - Look at his record in the past 2 elections. Assuming that you are in agreement that, out of the total of 50, 8-9 can be fairly termed as toss-ups, in the two election cycles so far, he got 17 out of 18 battle ground states predictions right (the only miss being Indiana in 2008). That is a near 95% accuracy rate, which is why I am saying even if all the 50 were toss-ups, he'd still get a significant proportion of them right. Also, as the polling becomes more scientific and less error-prone due to advances in data collection and processing methods, his model can only get more accurate as time progresses.

[triam]

I didn't want to go there on this day of celebration, but since you brought it up :-) .... here are some poignant quotes attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville. We're not sure if he himself actually said/wrote them, but they are worth reading nontheless. More to your point - I have wondered about a few other things: OH and WI have fiscally conservative Governors; heck, WI brought Walker back in a landslide. But, both states went blue in the Presidential. I have heard a couple of explanations: (1) The youth/Hispanic/women vote: that these demographics just don't bother voting in the gubernatorials. Even if they were on the same ballot paper (like in NC), they just fill in the Presidential one and leave. Counting rhe number of votes cast would give an answer, but I am too lazy to look it up. (2) Folks prefer federal govt that keeps on giving, but a governor who can manage that (and state revenues) effectively. Any thoughts? Finally, back to the OP - credit where credit's due. His campaigns have been cutting-edge. He knows where the soft spots are and goes hard at them. Hats off.

CA, i think it is disingeneous at best and condescending at worst, what you stated. People are people and they have always been the same, the white majority wanted different stuff and elected the leaders who would 'give' them that stuff, the minorities (latinos, african americans and asaians) want different stuff and elect the leaders who would 'give' them those stuff. No difference, the underlying tone from the republican talking heads and what you stated somehow makes this wrong, that the white majority always voted for righteous stuff and the new demographics vote for free stuff is not going to help the party at all. before GW I was a supporter of republicans economic model, and considered dems who are good at heart but clueless with the big picture, they have alienated me and so many others like me with their social policies and more worse having a very confused vision of the economic model too. If GOP wants to win me over they have to alienate the social right wingers from the party first and foremost, back science and offer me a vision for their economic plan (and no trickle down economics is not what I mean by this). The majority of people would vote for a party which is fair and has concrete steps to move towards a goal.

[Brainfade]

CA, i think it is disingeneous at best and condescending at worst, what you stated. People are people and they have always been the same, the white majority wanted different stuff and elected the leaders who would 'give' them that stuff, the minorities (latinos, african americans and asaians) want different stuff and elect the leaders who would 'give' them those stuff. No difference, the underlying tone from the republican talking heads and what you stated somehow makes this wrong, that the white majority always voted for righteous stuff and the new demographics vote for free stuff is not going to help the party at all. before GW I was a supporter of republicans economic model, and considered dems who are good at heart but clueless with the big picture, they have alienated me and so many others like me with their social policies and more worse having a very confused vision of the economic model too. If GOP wants to win me over they have to alienate the social right wingers from the party first and foremost, back science and offer me a vision for their economic plan (and no trickle down economics is not what I mean by this). The majority of people would vote for a party which is fair and has concrete steps to move towards a goal.

triam, the 2 points in my post are two possible, but **independent**, explanations for how a state can vote for a fiscally conservative governor while electing a tax-and-spend democrat as President - in the same election cycle! Explanation 1: Many people who show up on election day vote only in the "big one," but don't bother voting for governor or other local races. And given that the big difference in votes for President Obama came from the youth and minority vote, it is plausible that it is these demographics who did not think it was important to vote in the gubernatorial - giving the governorship to a conservative. Explanation 2: This had nothing to do with demographics. It raises the possibility that folks (= all people in a state) would like for their state to get as much money from the Federal coffers as possible. So, vote for a President who is more likely to part with federal $, but have a governor who can get all that money from the feds and manage them well. Nothing wrong with that. Given the extreme rhetoric coming from the Republican side regarding "makers" and "takers," I can see how you may link that to what I am saying. I request that you take those glasses off when you read the points I made. Thank you for your substantive, civil arguments. FWIW, I think #1 is the more plausible explanation.

[triam]

triam, the 2 points in my post are two possible, but **independent**, explanations for how a state can vote for a fiscally conservative governor while electing a tax-and-spend democrat as President - in the same election cycle! Explanation 1: Many people who show up on election day vote only in the "big one," but don't bother voting for governor or other local races. And given that the big difference in votes for President Obama came from the youth and minority vote, it is plausible that it is these demographics who did not think it was important to vote in the gubernatorial - giving the governorship to a conservative. Explanation 2: This had nothing to do with demographics. It raises the possibility that folks (= all people in a state) would like for their state to get as much money from the Federal coffers as possible. So, vote for a President who is more likely to part with federal $, but have a governor who can get all that money from the feds and manage them well. Nothing wrong with that. Given the extreme rhetoric coming from the Republican side regarding "makers" and "takers," I can see how you may link that to what I am saying. I request that you take those glasses off when you read the points I made. Thank you for your substantive, civil arguments. FWIW, I think #1 is the more plausible explanation.

Sorry for mistinterpreting your original post, was just frustrated with the repub talking heads and the 'Santa Claus' crap floating around. I dont know if the general electorate is smart enough or rather impartial enough to think logically like you explained in your explanation 2, if they are I will be glad to hear that. The situation is definitely for the worse where partisanship is pretty high not only among the fringe groups but pretty much in the mainstream supporters, as a relative noob to US politics (have read about old politicians etc, started following only from GWB times), dont know if this is how i was always or changed to this in the recent past,

[Brainfade]

In the meantime, this is what the Romney campaign came up with: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/11/project-orcas-failure-not-romney-game-changer-1.html

Remember Project Orca? On Monday we reported on the Romney campaign's massive high-tech get-out-the-vote plan after visiting its Election Day headquarters in Boston. The secret weapon utilized some 34,000 volunteers armed with mobile apps to identify which of their committed supporters had voted -- and then corral those who hadn't -- in key battleground states. But it turns out -- according to conservative bloggers and some volunteers -- the ambitious plan didn't live up to its billing. In fact far from it. Romney Communications Director Gail Gitcho on Monday described the undertaking with great excitement. "This has never been done before. So it'll be interesting to see, it's kind of a brand new model. The Obama campaign likes to brag about their ground operation, but it's nothing compared to this," she said. Quite a different picture has been painted since Tuesday by the likes of conservative columnist Byron York and the Breitbart.com website, which said "Romney's massive technology effort ... failed completely" One volunteer penned an angry blog, describing his frustrations over everything from inadequate training of the volunteers to myriad problems with the much-touted "app" itself. "The end result was that 30,000-plus of the most active and fired-up volunteers were wandering around confused and frustrated when they could have been doing anything else to help," John Ekdahl wrote Thursday on the conservative website Ace of Spades. When we reached Ekdahl, a web developer in Florida, today he explained: "The reason I decided to write [my account] is just because as I spoke to a lot of people I saw that they were having a lot of similar issues. And [i'm] just furious because I was set up to work the polls for over 12 hours that day and because of the circumstances of how they rolled this project out I couldn't even do the job." Zac Moffat, the Romney campaign's digital director (who was not in charge of the project) told me today that the Orca system went down late Tuesday morning. "There was a technical glitch in late morning, when the technology infrastructure thought all that data coming in was some kind of cyber attack. So it took the system off line for 90 minutes," he said. "Volunteers thought it was down. A lot of the frustration came from that." But after it went back online, he said, "You just have to look at the end result. Ultimately 91 percent of our counties in target states reported in. We had 14.3 million people tagged in the system as having voted." Moffat also disputed the criticism that the 34,000 volunteers could have been put to better use on traditional get-out-the-vote efforts, saying, "We do not feel that because of the problems that occurred with this, if we'd used the resources differently, it would have changed the outcome of the election."

[coffee_rules]

^Don't they have a test run with a mock election day. It's comical even a small product gets tested so much before a launch.