He still has a three in four chance of winning the EC. Is Nate bored?

Romney needs to commit major election fraud and/or vote suppression in only a few states.

A 74% chance sure is a nail biter.

either. only going to get worse for the Mittster

He's not going to apologize, he's not going to release the rest of his taxes, he's stiffened the resolve of Democrats and horrified independents, and even though shady pollsters will try like hell to apply their old "likely voter" filters to the polling results as long as they can, the shift will be swift and permanent, and won't be easily concealed for long.

It's time for the President and all of the rest of us to move on to the House. Who is your Representative in Congress? How can you support that person with your time and effort, rather than money? The other guys have all the money, but none of the interpersonal skills, none of the facts, and none of the honesty.

Here's the guy who is going after my district's julep-sipping Old Boy. He's going to need a lot of help, so if you're from a safe district, consider seeing what you can do for Andy Schmookler.

http://andyschmooklerforcongress.com

our chances of winning. This morning I was channel hopping and got MSNBC and Chuck Todd was being his usual self. I do not know if he is being blackmailed about his employment or not but he had another know-nothing (Chris Cilliza) on with someone from Politico. Their performances made my stomach upset. The two of them are neither reporters or journalists. Both are toadies. Their paychecks have taken over their tongues.

about Obama's "clinging to God and gun's" comment, but they are REALLY giving Romney a pass on this one. I am actually a little shocked but I don't know why. I guess I foolishly got my hopes up for a minute or two that the media was actually going to do its job. Silly me.

of Ohio, Florida, Pa., etc. This why it is very important.

If Obama wins: I told you he was favorite!
If Obama loses: I told you the electoral college was a problem for him!

Hid disastrous 2010 predictions made him hypercautious.

until the election. If he has a post that says, "well, folks, it's really all over; there is no electoral path to the presidency for Romney," he's writing himself out of readership for the next two months.

It's sad but true that all those who participate in the media fall victim to the need to keep people on the edge of their seats so that they will get the requisite number of readers/viewers to preserve their own jobs.

2010 wasnt disastrous . He got most of the races right

Admittedly, as an English major, my relationship with math is pretty spotty. But from what I read from Nate (rounding the numbers off a tad), Obama has a 76 percent chance of winning the popular vote and a 75 percent chance of winning the Electoral College.
And this should be considered a cautionary tale?
Really?
As I prepare to go to work, it should be noted that I have a 99.9 percent chance of making it there alive, but only a 98.9 percent chance of making it there uninjured.
I better find some bubble wrap before getting in the car.

In other news, a dollar is still more money than 99 cents.

While the odds still favor Obama, he is not going to win by 20% or even 10%. That's just the reality of the way elections work in this country. It's not possible to win by those sorts of margins.

And I think too many Democrats right now are assuming this is in the bag and don't notice that it's actually still close in a number of states. There's a lot of work yet to do, particularly in the Senate and House.

there is no such thing as the popular vote, I don't even know why people talk about it.

If he wins 280 to 255, that's still a 10% victory margin.

(Like the reference to Jesse Ventura's book, btw.)

between 255 and 280 - roughly 10%. I personally couldn't care less what the popular vote numbers are, or what national polls show. We don't have a mechanism for legally recognizing those votes at all yet.

Ventura's book? I don't know what you mean. I've been using this handle for probably 9 or 10 years, just decided to join the DU today.

And you can bet that if Obama only narrowly beats Romney in the popular vote it will be mentioned by the media.

Popular vote, while not determining the outcome of the election as we tragically learned when the 2000 election was stolen, nevertheless confers some legitimacy on the winner of it. By beating your opponent in the popular vote, particularly when you get over 50%, it gives you more strength in claiming a mandate. In 2008, Obama was the first Democrat since Carter to get over 50% of the vote.

Remember too that in 1992, the Republicans claimed that because it was a 3-way race in which Clinton got "only 42% of the popular vote", they didn't have to respect his mandate. (He increased it to 49% in 1996.)

Btw, the title of Jesse Ventura's new book is called "Democrips vs. Rebloodlicans". He was on CNN last night.

It does matters in theory. I just don't understand why people track it so much like it's an indication of winning the EC. 53-47 doesn't prove anything to me because a large percentage of those people could easily be from large segments of the country where states have no impact. I prefer to read polls about swing states specifically.

Ah, yeah I think I saw him on Piers Morgan when I was flipping channels.

If memory serves I heard someone use it during the Bush/Gore or 02 elections, and I thought it was a good name for political forums.

It's happened before.

In 1824, Andrew Jackson won the electoral vote AND the popular vote, but lost the election.

Why?

Because even though he got the most electoral votes, it wasn't a majority. So the election was decided by the House, which gave it to Adams.

The whole point is "conventional wisdom has it that Obama is more likely to win the electoral college than the popular vote, but really, it's about a 75% chance for both." He took, like, 12 paragraphs to say that and he (or someone else) added an attention grabbing headline to make it seem like something worth saying.

So I think he's trying to be fair & objective and cover all angles, just in case.

If you check his Twitter account, he received a lot of hostile comments from Republicans earlier this week. A writer from The Weekly Standard accused him of being an Obama shill or something last night on Twitter.

"Go ahead and toss the insults. When you find someone who can crunch numbers and literally predict the outcome of the presidential race, then call me"