I just read the following campaign intel from James Pethokoukis, “I just talked to one of my best Team Romney sources who told me that heading into today all the key battleground polls were moving hard and fast in their direction. The source, hardly a perma-optimist, thinks it will be a long night, but thatRomney is going to win.”

Actually, that’s not what it said. If that’s what it said, I wouldn’t be quoting it here. This is because such information is everywhere right now. Steve Schmidt was promoting this same bullshit line over at MSNBC last night. George Will predicted that Romney would win with 321 electoral votes. As best I can tell, he means that Romney will win Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Virginia. And Minnesota. And Oregon, Nevada, and New Mexico. This would be a surprise, to say the least. But the point of all these confident proclamations is that the election is somehow moving in Romney’s direction.

That’s why the quote above is so telling. It was written on 4 November 2008 about John McCain. I just changed “McCain” to “Romney.” Here’s the actual quote:

You may recall, that even though Pethokoukis’ source may not be a perma-optimist, he was a that-day-optimist. McCain lost big. Obama got 365 electoral votes to McCain’s 173.

I think it is interesting that all the liberals I read are predicting modest Obama victories. David Atkins over at Hullabaloo predicts an Obama win 294-244. But he does note that Obama could win Colorado and bring the total up to 303-235. Ezra Klein is predicting only 290 electoral votes for Obama (which means he also thinks that Obama will lose New Hampshire). This contrasts starkly with the Republican landslide fantasies. Romney may well win, but he will eke out a narrow victory if he does.

My only thought is that the only way that Republicans can argue that Romney will win is to assume that the polls are systematically wrong or that undecideds will break heavily for Romney. One can’t assume voters are going to break hard for Romney in Ohio but not in Oregon. Thus you end up with something like the Unskewed Polls prediction of a Romney 359-179 victory. The liberal approach is to assume the polls are basically right, the undecideds will break the way they always do, and that Republican voter suppression (and just bad luck because liberals are pessimists) will lead Obama to lose the close ones: Florida, Colorado, and New Hampshire.

My best guess is still that Obama will win 332-206. However, that does not mean I think that is the most likely outcome. That is just the most likely single outcome. I think it is slightly more likely than 303-235. But I would lay even odds that Obama will win 294, 303, or 332 electoral votes. Nate Silver gives the odds of that happening at roughly 35%. But he also gives the odds of a 345 vote Obama victory an 11% chance. That would require Obama winning North Carolina. I just don’t see this happening, but maybe 11% is about right.

The main thing is that it is pretty hard to see how Romney wins this race unless the polls are completely wrong. Check out this great interactive battleground state tool over at the LA Times. Start by giving Obama Ohio. If that happens, it is almost impossible for Romney to win. So tomorrow night, it really does all come down to Ohio. If Florida goes for Obama, it will be a blowout. Otherwise, it will be relatively close regardless of who wins.

I just saw Steve Schmidt on The Rachel Maddow Show. They were talking about the internals of the campaign. Mostly, I thought it was a lot of nonsense. Schmidt claims to know a lot of things that I don’t think he does. But I can give him the benefit of the doubt.

Then they discussed the polls. Schmidt claimed that the Romney campaign really believes they are going to win on Tuesday. This is a ridiculous claim. If Romney felt he was really going to win on Tuesday, he wouldn’t be changing his whole campaign strategy with two days until the election to try for a long shot win in Pennsylvania where Obama is consistently up by 3% to 8%.

Watching the show, all I could think was, “This guy is an MSNBC analyst?!” Because he wasn’t acting like an analyst. He was acting like a Romney surrogate. I’ve noticed over the last year that the closer we get to the election, the more Schmidt has become indistinguishable from an RNC lackey.

See if you agree. I think MSNBC needs to find someone new. At the moment, Michael Steele is a more insightful commentator than Steve Schmidt.

About two weeks ago, I wrote about how it seemed that Intrade was being gamed by Republicans. The Intrade Exchange Operations Manager, Carl Wolfenden, commented that I was wrong about a particular trade that had looked fishy. It turned out to be a statistical fluke that worked itself out. Still, I had questions.

And I still do.

Right now, Intrade gives President Obama a 65.0% chance of re-election. This is much lower than the polls would indicate. But more important, this is significantly less than the other betting markets. PredictWise reports that Betfair gives Obama a 77.8% change of re-election. And further, IEM (Iowa Electronic Markets) gives Obama a 77.3% chance of winning the popular vote (which polls suggest he should have a smaller chance of winning).

What is going on here? Intrade gives Obama 12 percentage points less a chance of winning re-election than the other betting markets. This just doesn’t make sense. If it were the case that betters at Intrade knew something that others don’t know, they could make more money by moving to Betfair or IEM.

Again I ask: are Republicans gaming Intrade?

Update (6 November 2012 8:37 am)

Intrade has moved a lot since I wrote this. They are now giving Obama a 72.5% chance of winning—much closer to the other firms.

This is shocking. But maybe it shouldn’t be. Politico is a pathetic publication.

Digby (who either reads 3000 words per minute or has some kind of magical power) directed me to Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen’s new article, Lessons learned from 2012. Not everything they have to say is wrong, much less shocking. They note that the Republicans really need to start running more reasonable candidates. The Tea Party types may make the base feel good, but they scare away everyone else. That’s true, but hardly the kind of “first to publish this stuff” material that Politico is known for (and the main reason they suck so much of the time).

They also note that “white men” is not enough of a coalition in a two party system. But I guess this is supposed to mean that Obama too doesn’t represent the country. They write:

Currently, white men make up 36% of the electorate and Obama is likely to win about a third of them. I don’t see how doing poorly with one demographic group that is shrinking means that Obama does not have a broad mandate. But maybe there is something else going on here.

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen are two white male reporters. I think that perhaps their white maleness is causing them to over-value their own demographic group.

Casey Mulligan has a new book out, The Redistribution Recession: How Labor Market Distortions Contracted the Economy. It is another attempt by a “Chicago Bubble” economist to explain that we shouldn’t pay attention to any of the economic data about this recession. You see, Mulligan has a model so perfect that it can make economics transcend reality.

Earlier this week, he wrote an article on the New York Times Economix Blog, A Keynesian Blind Spot. Basically, it is Mulligan’s attack on Paul Krugman’s very good End This Depression Now! which I’ve written about before. His argument: great unemployment and food stamp benefits have made workers lazy. And more: knowing that great unemployment and food stamp benefits were available, caused Job Creators to lay off people and then not to hire people again.

I swear I am not making this up. Go and read his article. As I said, Mulligan is a “Chicago Bubble” economist. These guys are less connected to the real world than Franciscan monks. They have their models and their ideology and they don’t need anything more. Unfortunately, no one has yet gotten them to take vows of silence.

Rather than discus Mulligan myself, let me present to you a few of the many excellent comments on the blog. First up is Doctor Gonzo:

Ross Williams:

This one by Stan gets at a typical bit of conservative economic hypocrisy. Liberals never claim that tax cuts on the rich don’t stimulate the economy—only that such incentives are not as effective as others. But conservatives really do claim that tax cuts for the rich grow the economy but spending on social programs do not. It’s amazing.

And finally, Larry:

The Chicago economists have to break out of their bubble. If they do that, they might find they have something to offer society. Until then, it is just ideology—not science.

Let me tell you something. I may be the only person in America, but I am far more enthusiastic about President Obama this time than I was four years ago.

(Thanks to PoliticalWire.)

As everyone knows, this election will all come down to the independent voter. So I decided to do a poll of the most independent voters in New York. Well, the most independent voter: Donald Trump. We know he’s independent because sometimes he’s a Republican, sometimes a third party candidate, and even a Democrat on occasion.

In this election, Trump is breaking hard for Mitt Romney. Extrapolating from this poll, I predict New York will go for Romney. As with the predictions of Unskewed Polls, this result will likely surprise a lot of people. But should it, really? You know the old saying: as goes Trump, so goes America. President Obama will rue the day he passed up Trump’s $5 million offer; that might have turned the independent vote to Obama. Ah, lost opportunities!

People will counter this result by claiming that there aren’t nearly enough undecided voters in New York to change the election. I have two responses to this. First, I’m talking about independent voters, not undecided voters. New Yorkers are very independent, especially the 61% of them who say they will vote for President Obama. My second response is, “La, la, la. I can’t hear you!”

Others will claim that my sample size is too small. This is ridiculous. Donald Trump is a very big sample size. Also: “La, la, la. I can’t hear you!”

So when Tuesday night comes and Fox News announces that Romney has won New York: I told you so. And you will owe me (and to a lesser extent, Dean Chambers) a big apology.

I don’t normally write about David Brooks. He just makes me too angry. He is Paul Ryan in a Bill Clinton mask. In today’s column, The Upside of Opportunism, he compares an Obama second term to a Romney first term. Spoiler: Romney’s term rocks and Obama’s sucks!

What Brooks proposes is Romney’s main way to election: convince the masses that he really is a moderate and that once he becomes president, he will govern that way. Remember George W. Bush and compassionate conservatism? Remember what a moderate he was going to be? How did that work out? Oh, I remember! Tax cuts for the wealthy. A totally unjust and unfunded war. A huge giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry. You know: compassion!

But this is not what Brooks is worried about. He’s worried about our debt. “The mounting debt is ruinous.” Oh, really? This bit of ridiculousness is thoroughly debunked by Dean Baker today, David Brooks Is Upset that the Interest Burden of the Debt Is Near a Post-War Low.

But let’s suppose for a moment that the debt is a problem we want to deal with. Should we elect Romney to take care of it? The answer is: yes, but only if we are complete idiots who have the memory of a gnat. The only substantial reduction in the federal deficit over the last 30 years was under democratic presidents: Clinton and—Wait for it!—Obama. I know that Fox News and others push this idea that Obama has exploded the deficit, but he has actually brought it down substantially. When he took office, it was $1.7 trillion and it is now $1.1 trillion; that is a 35% reduction in the deficit. Don’t believe me? This is from the conservative website usgovernmentdebt.us:

This graph is a little deceptive. They do not stop their graph where the data ends, so it makes it look like that last peak was due to Obama. In fact, that peak is the beginning of 2009—Bush’s budget.

What I want everyone to understand about this is that Republicans always claim that they will reduce the deficit and they never do. (Well, Bush Sr did reduce the deficit a bit, but you will remember that he is reviled by conservatives for doing the unthinkable: he raised taxes.)

But there are more reasons to believe that Romney will increase the deficit. Step one of his budget balance plan is to cut taxes by $5 trillion dollars. This is not what you do when you want to balance a budget. And anyone who thinks that Romney will choose a balanced budget over tax cuts is a fool.

So David Brooks is trumping up a non-problem (at least in the short term while our economy is depressed). And then, he is calling for the worst candidate possible to solve that problem. I don’t know how it is David Brooks got his jobs at the New York Times. It must be more affirmative action for conservatives.

Update (30 October 2012 12:33 pm)

Ezra Klein sees David Brooks’ column in the context of all the Romney endorsements: vote for Romney because the Republican House will work with him. But Klein calls this out for the nonsense it is:

I’m not sure what those good reasons to endorse Romney are, but you understand his point.

If you don’t know about The Ballot, you should really check it out. While I think that reelecting Obama is very important, the stuff further down the ballot is also really important. Here is California, there a number of important ballot initiatives, of example. The Ballot takes you address and creates a ballot that is specific to you with information that people have provided. I’m sure the system will get much better in the future. Personally, I think it ought to have nonpartisan information and stuff like that. But I nonetheless found it very useful.

The big news is that Obama’s poll numbers keep improving. On October 4, Nate Silver predicted that Obama had an 87.1% chance of winning the electoral college vote. This was his highest chance during the campaign because the first presidential debate happened on October 3. (Actually, the causality is not so clear; it looks like Romney was improving before the debate.) That was the start of the liberal freak out, where Silver’s prediction went down steadily until reaching its nadir on October 12 with a 61.1% chance of winning. I’m sure you remember that week: it was a dark time for us all.

But since then, things have turned around. Obama has steadily increased his chances of winning. As of yesterday, Silver gives Obama a 74.4% chance of winning the electoral college. The popular vote is much tighter, but we see the same dynamic. On October 4, Obama was predicted to win 51.6% of the popular vote. This number dropped to 49.8% on October 12. Note: even on that day, Romney was only predicted to win 49.1% of the vote. So even at his lowest point, Obama was still looking okay. And it has only gotten better. Nate Silver now predicts that Obama will win 50.3% of the popular vote.

None of this means that Obama will win reelection. The race could change in the next 10 days. And Republican voter suppression efforts could be highly effective. And the Frankenstorm could upset everything. And Silver’s model could be all wrong. Perhaps he doesn’t have sufficient height and weight to accurately predict elections. (See below.) But right now, the Obama campaign has to be a lot happier than the Romney campaign.

Undecideds

Last month I wrote about undecided voters and how they will vote. Whoever is winning always claims that this group will break heavily toward them. I’ve been in this situation many time. But in my experience, they generally go pretty much as the decided voters. It is pretty much never the case that the undecided votes are anything other than a fifty-fifty split.

John Sides over at The Monkey Cage looks at this question quantitatively, How Will the Undecideds Break? He finds that they will go 50.1% for Obama. However, looking only at those who claim they will definitely vote, they skew toward Romney with 56%. But even with this, it would add only 0.4% to Romney’s total. The final prediction is that this will not be enough to give Romney the popular vote.

Bizarro World

You probably don’t know who Dean Chambers is, but I’d bet you know about him. He’s a little brain who decided that all the bad polling for Romney before the first debate was one vast left-wing conspiracy. So to counter it, he started the website UnSkewed Polls. Even though I feel pretty good about the polls going into this election, I’m willing to admit that it could go either way. The polls are indeed all over the map. But not according to Mr. Chambers. Using his unskewing procedure every poll now shows Romney with a handsome lead over Obama. This morning, his poll average is Romney +5%.

According to Chambers, it isn’t just the polling that has been skewed. The election models are in on the conspiracy. Yesterday at Examiner.com (more or less the dreadful San Francisco Examiner), he wrote an article attacking Nate Silver and his model. Remember that if anything, Nate Silver is far more bullish on Mitt Romney than all the other models. But that doesn’t matter to Chambers. Chambers knows Silver’s model is wrong. How? Because Nate Silver is short and skinny:

Mostly, the article is just a proclamation that Nate Silver must be wrong because Dean Chambers doesn’t like his results. In particular, he complains that Silver’s model weights some polls higher than others. This is true. For example, he weights Rasmussen rather lightly because they have been shown year after year to be wrong. Apparently, Chambers doesn’t understand the difference between weighting data according to their value and weighting them just because you don’t like what they’re telling you.

Chambers ends his article with another unsubstantiated claim:

It isn’t clear what exactly it would mean for Nate Silver to be right about this election, given that he is just providing probabilities. But let’s suppose that Romney wins by a sizable margin. I’m sure this will cause Silver to go back and change his model. On the other hand, if his model turns out to be right and Obama wins by a comfortable margin, will Chambers admit that he was wrong? If I know conservatives, he will not. In 2016, he will still be predicting ridiculous Republican wins.

Update (28 October 2012 8:54 pm)

Yesterday, Obama went down (73.6%) in Nate Silver’s model, but he’s back up today (74.6%). His predicted popular vote total is also up: 50.4%. Virginia is now even more likely to go for Obama than Colorado. One thing I didn’t talk about is Florida: Romney’s chance of winning the state keeps dropping. It is now down to 62.5%. That is still a good number for him, but the state could go for Obama. And that would be totally awesome!

[1] Note: I fixed about 5 grammar errors in the sections I quoted from Chamber’s article. The awkward syntax was left in. I did this rather than throw in a bunch of sic’s. I understand this is the internet, but he’s writing for kind of real publication. Geez!