Posts by David Hood
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Russell Brown,
How much of an impact does being told what’s very probably going to happen, or what everyone else thinks, or what you care about, have on individual choices?
I've never seen any actual evidence on this, but have heard lots of people worry about it- both people worrying that being ahead in the polls will cause complacency for their side and lower turnout, and (sometimes the same people) worry that being behind in the polls will cause apathy and lower turnout for their side.
I would tend to say part of people's calculus of elections is "who is likely to win" as well as "whose policies do I like" and for a lot of people to vote for a candidate they can live with that might actually win needs knowledge of what the rest of the voting population is indicating. -
Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I was almost hoping Romney might win, the reason being that when (as is likely) a major setback occurs to the US, such as a banking crash, the doctrinaire craziness of the right would be exposed.
You mean like the banking crash of 2008 under Bush? All that really lead to was the right doubling down on it's policies.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to John Armstrong,
And further, what does focussing on these questions do for democracy?
Well, from U.S. polling we known that 80% of voters made up their minds more than 60 days before the election and so were unmoved by the debates/Sandy/Trump/etc. I think it would be a good thing for democracy if discussions around the election were grounded in the reality of the situation, rather than rating gaining high-drama narratives.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Russell Brown,
Although … I’m not sure that a future where elections are forgone conclusions is actually all that healthy either.
Based on sports reporting (where the change has already happened), there will be a generational change of pundits informed by their guts to pundits informed by the stats and their guts.
A bit like sports teams vs. sports pundits, both campaigns have been using extensive data analysis for a while but the pundits are a generation behind, though this cycle the republican data (their ORCA project) seems to have been contaminated by the way their volunteers were choosing what data to feed into the system at the start of the process. -
Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
If there are 9 elections where someone is a 92% to win, there’s a greater than 50% chance at least one of those elections will see an upset.
Hence the Heidi Heitkamp result
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
Pick of the bunch:“The fact that there is a concession speech, not widespread violence
[1] Except in Mississippi (Univesity of Mississippi students had a little riot of a few hundred students that burned Obama signs and yelled "racial slurs")
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Obama, master of lowered expectations.
the difference this time is that Obama isn't promising anything that would need congress to cooperated with him.
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When I was young, we used to going camping in Fiordland in alternate years. We had the Cassette tape "Children of Tane : New Zealand birds of the forest" by Radio New Zealand, and playing the robin call would reliably bring the local native robin in close trying to work out where the trespasser was.
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In what is considered a genuine upset, Heidi Heitkamp (Dem) is ahead in the count (50.5%) with 98% counted in a race for a senate seat in North Dakota. 538 had been estimating an 8% chance for her (so about the same as Romney)
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I see the if x wins I'm moving to NZ page got mentioned in the Gaurdian live blog.
