I like polls. During the first presidential election that I and the Internet were both old enough to follow (though I don’t remember if it was 2000 or 2004), I remember being impressed at the way every single “solid” state turned out exactly as predicted. Time after time, polls generally seem to be accurate, and when you learn a bit about statistics and polling methodology, it makes sense.

Of course, there will always be specific situations where the polls are wrong, and a lot of right-wingers think that is happening today. Nate Silver gives Obama a 75%+ chance of winning, and apparently a lot of conservatives are attacking him and/or the polls for having a liberal bias. Sonic Charmer finds himself an unlikely defender of Silver’s analysis by quickly reproducing a crude version of it in a spreadsheet.

I generally agree with Sonic here, but I haven’t seen the liberal opponents in the media and blogosphere respond (though I haven’t really been looking for it) to one of the primary conservative poll complaints brought forth by folks like @NumbersMuncher, who say that the pro-Obama polls are hopelessly overestimating Democrat turnout to be equal to or even greater than 2008 levels. Here is one tweet that made the rounds yesterday:

Continue reading Polling and Turnout and Crosstabs… Oh Sigh.

I see the pundits are already beginning to trot out their incredible insight about who is definitely going to win the election in a week and a half, and exactly why this is going to happen and exactly what it means. If you’re a pundit and you haven’t written your piece yet, I’m going to give you a template to help you with your writing. If you’re a reader and you haven’t read any pundit’s pieces yet, you can also read the template to save time reading all the pieces later. All you have to do is randomly circle words in the brackets below:

Why [Romney/ Obama] Will [Win / Lose] The Election

Continue reading Pundit Guide to the 2012 Election

There were several poor questions in Tuesday night’s second presidential debate, but this might have been the worst:

In what new ways do you intend to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females making only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn?

The statistical gap between average female and male earnings is a favorite talking point of the left, which believes it is evidence that business owners are greedy jerks. Obama talked about a law he passed to fix the gender gap, and Romney talked about how he went out of his way to hire women when he was governor.

Continue reading The Gender Gap Myth and Obama’s War on Women