Politics: Midterm elections catch-all thread...

[MattinBama]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

Since this thread is where the most recent American Socialism scare popped up I'll post this here.

 

[sabanball]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

3 in 4 chance Democrats win control of House in 2018

Worst-case scenario for House GOP is 70-seat wipeout

 

[TIDE-HSV]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

3 in 4 chance Democrats win control of House in 2018

Worst-case scenario for House GOP is 70-seat wipeout

Wow! I respect Silver and his crew a lot. They came the closest to figuring out the 2016 election...

 

[CajunCrimson]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

Wow! I respect Silver and his crew a lot. They came the closest to figuring out the 2016 election...

In Georgia’s 6th District, Rep. Karen Handel (R) outperformed Trump by 3.5 percentage points, while well-funded Democrat Jon Ossoff outperformed Clinton by 1.4 points. That wasn’t enough, and Handel won the race.

In a multi-candidate Texas special election earlier this summer, Republicans barely underperformed Trump, while Democrats ran close to Clinton’s totals.

If enough races in the fall stick to those patterns, the GOP is likely to retain its majority and lose only 10 seats or so.

I'd respect him more if he didn't straddle both sides of the prediction fence

 

[Crimson1967]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

Forecasting the House is a crapshoot. The sheer number of seats makes it impossible to study it on a district-by-district basis. Nobody can look at all 435 seats, especially when you have to deal with gerrymandered districts.

Much easier to get a handle on the Senate. They have 33-35 races per cycle (taking into account special elections) and over half of them aren’t worth the trouble of looking at. So you might have a dozen or so that could potentially flip. And polling data is much easier to compile in a statewide race.


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[Bamaro]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

Forecasting the House is a crapshoot. The sheer number of seats makes it impossible to study it on a district-by-district basis. Nobody can look at all 435 seats, especially when you have to deal with gerrymandered districts.

Much easier to get a handle on the Senate. They have 33-35 races per cycle (taking into account special elections) and over half of them aren’t worth the trouble of looking at. So you might have a dozen or so that could potentially flip. And polling data is much easier to compile in a statewide race.

that should make it easier

 

[Bazza]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

More analysis......

 

[92tide]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

More analysis......

if you believe anything coming out of this fool's mouth, i have some seaside property in nebraska for a great price

 

[Bazza]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

We have our local primary election next Tuesday on the 28th.

One each: Circuit Judge, County Judge, County Council, School Board member, Mayor, and (2) City Commissioners for two of our five zones.

You can only vote for the CC in your zone, so for that one and the mayor, I will be voting for the two candidates who have attended more of the city meetings than any of the others. They are also both retired and are not backed by big money - especially from the development/real estate industry.

Hard to stop the machine that is development and real estate - especially here. In some ways, it's already too late....the cow left the barn many years ago. But there's plenty left to fight for and be concerned about.

I haven't made a firm decision on the other choices.

 

[Aledinho]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

if you believe anything coming out of this fool's mouth, i have some seaside property in nebraska for a great price

I have been thinking about this all day and I need clarification:

Are you saying that if you are gullible enough to believe Morris, then you are gullible enough to believe that there is oceanfront property in Nebraska [even though obviously there is none] ?

- or -

Are you saying that if you believe that the republicans keep control of congress, then the ensuing ecological disasters will result in there actually being oceanfront property in Nebraska?

:smile:

 

[MattinBama]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

More "boo hoo" stuff to not be worried about.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/s...-a-state-election-17-not-a-good-hacker-219374

It took me around 10 minutes to crash the upcoming midterm elections. Once I accessed the shockingly simple and vulnerable set of tables that make up the state election board’s database, I was able to shut down the website that would tally the votes, bringing the election to a screeching halt. The data were lost completely. And just like that, tens of thousands of votes vanished into thin air, throwing an entire election, and potentially control of the House or Senate—not to mention our already shaky confidence in the democratic process itself—into even more confusion, doubt, and finger-pointing.

...

The fact that someone as untrained as myself could theoretically bring an election to a screeching halt with nothing but a quick Google search should be a wake-up call. While inflating Gary Johnson’s vote tally to over 90 billion is good for a laugh, a more malicious agent—not to mention a team of well-funded and highly skilled hackers—could do real damage. A close congressional race could be flipped by the addition of a few hundred extra votes, the installation of malware, stolen security credentials, or the shutdown of a website during the final tally, like my escapade last week. The possibility, or even the likelihood, of such an event is precisely why the chief security officer of the Democratic National Committee, Bob Lord, interviewed me and my fellow competition participants to see what kind of defense those without experience could potentially develop.

I didn’t quite know what to expect when I started the competition, but I know it shouldn’t have been that easy. Someone with my skills wouldn’t have stood a chance against a professionally protected website. Anyone with a Wi-Fi-enabled device could theoretically have done what I did to the mock election database.

Unfortunately, the people who have the power to do something about this issue are in denial. But that doesn’t change the facts on the ground. America is supposed to set a world standard for free and open elections—the idea of “one person, one vote” is part of our identity. The failure to address such a widespread and well-documented effort by foreign powers to compromise that principle puts our democracy, and our position of leadership, at risk.

 

[92tide]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

More "boo hoo" stuff to not be worried about.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/s...-a-state-election-17-not-a-good-hacker-219374

one of the folks in charge of this is running for governor of georgia. and his track record isn't very good.

 

[TIDE-HSV]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

I'd respect him more if he didn't straddle both sides of the prediction fence

I've thought about this response quite a bit. What you dislike about Silver is precisely what I like. In my 50+ years of practice, I've come in for my fair share of criticism for giving a "wishy-washy" answer, which is really an answer framed in probabilities, exactly the way Silver predicts. In my own experience, my clients who seem most irritated by the typical "lawyer's answer" are engineers and others who deal in absolutes. Being Huntsville, there are, of course, a lot of those. Silver was, by far and away, the best predictor in the 2008 and 2012 elections. IIRC, he was the one indicating the strongest possibility of an upset by Trump. I've dug into his methods and he's corrected out a number of pitfalls which permeate the other polls. There's no way he cannot be the most accurate...

 

[TIDE-HSV]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

FiveThirtyEight

 

[92tide]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

well, the gop talking points are out. they are trying to define the fall election as being about voting for or against impeachment. i heard some idiot on the radio this morning spinning that crap and then jethrene was pushing that (along with a larger gusher of bs) in this afternoon's press "briefing"

 

[GrayTide]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

f[/IMG]

Jethrine

 

[Crimson1967]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

So what if he’s impeached? Even if the Democrats win every single Senate race, they still only have 58 votes. I don’t see a Barry Goldwater out there to lead a group into the Oval Office to tell him to resign.


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[TIDE-HSV]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

So what if he’s impeached? Even if the Democrats win every single Senate race, they still only have 58 votes. I don’t see a Barry Goldwater out there to lead a group into the Oval Office to tell him to resign.


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For this reason, I'll be surprised if the Democrats impeach him, even if they have the majority. I expect them simply to pay out the rope and wait for him to hang himself. IOW, wait until his behavior, and the evidence, is so bad that enough Republicans have to vote to convict...

 

[selmaborntidefan]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

I'd respect him more if he didn't straddle both sides of the prediction fence

I'm not sure what you mean by straddling the fence. Statistics aren't ironclad laws. Alabama had a 99% chance to win the
2013 Iron Bowl when Griffith lined up for the kick. The fact we lost doesn't mean the data was incorrect.

My beef with Silver has never been with Silver - it's been with the tongue bathing media (sans Faux News) who only made him a star
because they liked what he was telling them. Had his data shown that Romney was going to win then he'd be a Fox News guest
and nobody else would have him on. Anyone who thinks that assessment is rough need only look at the NY Times treatment of him
the moment he said the Senate was likely to go the GOP in 2014. All of a sudden, he went from the infallible Moses to a guy they
couldn't trust.

His work with data is, in one sense impressive, and he's always modifying it, which is good. It's MUCH more difficult to do a House or
Senate race than the White House. As I've said here many times, anyone with a scintilla of historical knowledge will get 40 of the 50
states (plus DC) right in a red/blue map just based on knowing what has happened. Nobody thought for a second that Hillary was
going to win Utah or Kansas any more than they thought Trump would win California. Nate basically says, "Here's the floor, here's
the ceiling, and here's what to expect plus or minus." Plus, he's an admitted liberal (more centrist though) and seems intelligent
enough to figure for his own biases - as any good pollster should. I used to be decent at it, so I envy the guy in one sense for being
able to make a fortune for what I didn't/don't have enough brains to figure out how to get paid for.

Plus, there's things he has no way of knowing. I told my Oregon bud in early 2006, "Democrats are gonna take the House this year and
win 26 seats (they won 31). But they're gonna fall just short in the Senate." But they won the Senate. He asked me about it and I
laughed, "Hey, man, how was I supposed to know George Allen was gonna utter a racial slur?" Things like the page scandal, George
Allen's insult, Duke Cunningham or the Abramoff scandal could torpedo either side at this point, but such a missile in the current
environment favors the Democrat being able to overcome it more so than the GOP.

People think Silver is the kind of guy who can take a poll, put it in a black box, and say, "This is what's gonna happen."

And hey - he gave Trump more of a chance to win the Presidency than anyone - this after he had actually written that Trump could not
win the nomination.

 

[Bamaro]

Re: 2018 midterm elections catch-all thread

f[/IMG]

Jethrine

i'd hit it