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Poll-Based System Predicts U.S. Election Results For President, Senate
An anonymous reader writes "Election Analytics is a website developed by Dr. Sheldon Jacobson at the University of Illinois designed to predict the outcomes of the U.S. presidential and senatorial elections, based on reported polling data. From the site: 'The mathematical model employs Bayesian estimators that use available state poll results (at present, this is being taken from Rasmussen, Survey USA, and Quinnipiac, among others) to determine the probability that each presidential candidate will win each of the states (or the probability that each political party will win the Senate race in each state). These state-by-state probabilities are then used in a dynamic programming algorithm to determine a probability distribution for the number of Electoral College votes that each candidate will win in the 2012 presidential election. In the case of the Senate races, the individual state probabilities are used to determine the number of seats that each party will control.'" You can tweak the site by selecting a skew toward the Republican or Democratic tickets, and whether it's mild or strong. Right now, this tool shows the odds favor another four years for Obama, even with a strong swing for the Republicans.
Fox news tells me that Romney will win 59 states and sweep Obama and his extreme socialism away forever.
Meanwhile, 13 out of 10 slashdotters are supporting Ron Paul, so clearly he is the only possible winner.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Isn't that called an election?
"Right now, this tool shows the odds favor another four years for Obama, even with a strong swing for the Republicans."
I'm not surprised since the incumbent has a strong advantage and we have a weak opponent on the Republican ticket. It is next election when the Republicans will logically field a strong candidate as they'll have far better odds of winning.
Guess I wont even bother voting since its already been decided!
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Then again there is this one http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/23/university-of-colorado-prediction-model-points-to-big-romney-win/ that has been correct every time since 1980 that says Romney will win big.
I know I'm not supposed to RTFA, but can someone take a website seriously that has a hit counter on the bottom?
MSNBC told me that 2+2=4! That's biased towards those dam socialist mathematicians and scientists. Every good free-thinkin' fam'ly values-lovin' 'Mur'kin knows that 2+2=5!
It's renown among serious pollsters as a paid-for propaganda site.
Ignore models that have proven results, there's not way that a brand new system based on biased poll inputs could possibly result in anything but a totally neutral and correct result.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You probably should go to intrade... yeah yeah yeah... I know it's pretty obvious to everybody here, but... what the hell
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Obama is going to lose...............
It's worth noting that this analysis includes data from Rasmussen, a pollster whose track record at predicting election outcomes is marred by a persistent, consistent bias. Not that they're faking the results (as some overtly partisan pollsters do), but their methodology appears to over-represent demographics that are more likely to vote Republican. According to one analysis, they overestimated votes for Republicans by 3.9%. Andrew Tanenbam's web site has a concise explanation of what's wrong with Rasmussen's numbers, and why he maintains a separate map that omits them from his own Electoral College projections. So if a system that includes Rasmussen data projects that a Democrat is going to win the presidency... that's a pretty strong indicator of which way the wind is blowing.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
It's an interesting model, but feeding a poll aggregate into a statistical prediction algorithm has been standard practice for years now. On the internet, fivethirtyeight is probably the first prominent site to have done so (originally as an independent site, before the NYTimes bought them).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I predict that our next president will be an asshole.
And the one after that, too.
And the one after that.
The reps have been harpooning themselves left and right this time around with their extremism and lies. Women and abortions, everyone in the bottom 80%, healthcare. They seem to be trying very hard to piss off a lot of people. Anyone who doesn't think this is going to be a landslide for Obama is kidding themselves. And I'm a republican (note: not neo-con).
So aside from being a visual disaster and not providing all of the background numbers, how is this different from what Nate Silver has been doing for the last four years? Okay, it allows you to assign a swing, but it's a lot more opaque and seems a lot less robust than what Silver has been doing over at fivethirtyeight.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
crap out... you decide.
I took two classes with Professor Jacobson while at UIUC. He's one of the best lecturers I had while there even if his research means he isn't as involved in other aspects of his courses.
Don't blame me, I'm a non voting felon.
Convicted felons can vote in most states if not currently on probation or parole.
No, he was not the only one. Here is a quick list off the top of my head:
Carter - Lost to Reagan
Ford - Lost to Carter
Taft - Lost to Wilson
There are more but I can't be assed to look them up right now.
is that he just said he doesn't think the troops are important and somehow he's still in the running. That's the kinda gaff that should've broke him. It's amazing what unlimited funds can do. Thanks Citizens United.
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I think the only POTUS to not win re-election was the first George Bush
Carter, Hoover, Taft, and Buchanan to name a few.
Really. How about Ford and Carter, then?
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One shows Romney by 1 and the other shows Obama by 3. The state breakdown is the most telling to me. The fact Romney has to win most all the swing states to win makes it a tough road for him. All Obama needs to win is Florida or there are several two state combos that make it an Obama win. It's going to be close but unless Trump digs up that mythical African birth certificate then it's likely an Obama win. The joke is the Congressional elections are far more important. If the Republicans win the house again it's likely 4 more years of gridlock. If they win both houses then Obama gets spoon fed Republican plans. The outlook is bleak no matter the results.
Question:
(In theUSA) Did the candidate who spent more than the other candidate on their election campaign ever lose the election?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Ford is an unusual case though - he was never elected to the office in the first place so he was running for election not re-election.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Nate Silver at five-thirty-eight uses a similar approach. While Silver is openly biased to the Democratic side, his poll weightings seem fair. Currently he is showing about 75% probability of an Obama win.
The Republican problem is that a very successful Southern strategy has hurt them badly in New England as well as among minority voters. I won't argue whether the auto bailout was wise or even successful, I do argue that the bailout is popular in Michigan and Ohio. In fact, Romney has apparently given up on Michigan but perhaps he can salvage Ohio.
> You can tweak the site by selecting a skew toward the Republican or Democratic tickets, and whether it's mild or strong.
I can do that without any mathematical model at all.
Blah biddy blabiddy blah. The election will be over. This model will be wrong. Nobody will remember it.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I was all for Newt, and things were looking fairly good. Then he called out Romney for being "elitist" which I agreed with. Then all the elites dumped support for Newt and went all-in for Romney. So now the republicans are being funded by a small bunch of elitists who all want handouts (er tax cuts) and the dems are out of control with spending and mandated Obamacare. What's a guy to do?
Plot summary
In the future, the United States has converted to an "electronic democracy" where the computer Multivac selects a single person to answer a number of questions. Multivac will then use the answers and other data to determine what the results of an election would be, avoiding the need for an actual election to be held.
The story centers around Norman Muller, the man chosen as "Voter of the Year" in 2008. Although the law requires him to accept the dubious honour, he is not sure that he wants the responsibility of representing the entire electorate, worrying that the result will be unfavorable and he will be blamed.
However, after 'voting', he is very proud that the citizens of the United States had, through him, "exercised once again their free, untrammeled franchise" - a statement that is somewhat ironic as the citizens didn't actually get to vote.
The idea of a computer predicting whom the electorate would vote for instead of actually holding an election was probably inspired by the UNIVAC I's correct prediction of the result of the 1952 election.
Polling data is notoriously inaccurate. In election polling, just asking questions of registered voters (and not likely voters) skews the results. Also since this appears to be a close election the uncertainty of polling data automatically makes any conclusions drawn today highly suspect.
Who cares what site it's on. It's actual video of Romney talking. That's about as solid as it gets for knowing what someone says. Oh, the AC trolls are here tonight.
Did they predict all of those elections ahead of time? I'm guessing not, otherwise we would have heard about it sometime around 1992. If not, the fact that it produced the correct output for every election is actually a huge red flag. Elections are complicated things with many factors that are unique to a given election. You'd expect any model that can be written down on paper to be wrong at least some of the time because there's no way to account for everything.
Likely they just went data-dredging until they found a set of variables that correlate with the election winner. Problem is, there's usually *some* set of variables that correlate with the outcome for spurious reasons. The meal preferences of an octopus, for example.
that Walter Mondale is about to lose his place in history?
Pretty sure you meant 58 states, Mr Obama
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And just how do the pollsters know that people are telling the truth about who they'd vote for?
Lie to polls!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Polls are usually wrong by enough to matter in a close election. This is a close election and the margin of error is too great for the polls to predict anything except that we get to choose between a douche bag and a turd sandwich. That being said, I'm going with the turd sandwich who hasn't had a chance to mess things up yet.
I don't see how you can claim Obama is a clear winner. Look between the conventions - Obama gave a re-run, with no plan at all on how he plans to help anyone do anything. Just a lot of vague numbers like he has always given.
Romney meanwhile, actually laid out a five point plan:
(1) Aggressively promote domestic energy development, especially fossil fuels (Obama has delayed this at every turn, instead propping up failed green energy companies run by big donors).
(2) Expand the market for U.S. goods overseas by negotiating new trade agreements and standing up to China on intellectual-property and currency issues.
(3) Improve workforce skills by transferring job-training programs to the states and going after teachers' unions, which, he says, stand in the way of school choice and better instruction. (When has Obama gone after ANY union?)
(4) Attack the deficit through budget cuts, not tax increases. (Obama clearly has the opposite idea here).
(5), reshape the regulatory climate to "encourage and promote small business" rather than swamp it. (We have a metric ton more regulations now than when Obama entered office).
You may not like some of Romney's plans but at least HE HAS ONE. At this point I'll be happy to vote for someone who just picks a direction and goes there. Democrats had four years, two of which they could have clearly driven direction with zero intervention by anyone and instead they just sat, apparently befuddled. Well screw that, the debt is too high to keep playing around.
Realistically we'll need to raise some taxes AND reduce spending heavily. I have a lot more faith we'll see some tax increases under a Republican administration than we'll see anything like the massive cuts required to keep the U.S. solvent under the Democrats. After all, we've just had four years of Democrats trying to fix things and are four trillion in the hole for the effort.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A weak President (D) and a strong Congress (R). At least there is the impeachment hearings to look forward to. Republicans just finally get their wet dream of impeaching a democratic President. It's ok though. It works out for both parties. Republicans will validate their belief that Democrats are pro-crime and Democrats will validate their belief that Republicans are racist. You see, the problem is that you can't make TV for smart people anymore. Smart people find out too fast how to watch it for free. So you only get TV for dumb people. Impeachment hearing will cost tv studios zilch. Aah... I just love it when there is fun to be had.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Do we plan on using cryogenic preservation to make this GOP/LP ticket possible?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Rather than saying, well I like this plan or that plan or whatever, you have chosen to claim "Obama will win, look at these numbers that change substantially over time telling us so".
So then, I guess you like having no plan with more spending? Difficult to tell your take on what you would prefer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
None of those items are more plausible than closing Guantanamo.
Consider only the first one. All you have to do is get out of the way, OK things like the pipeline. That's all it takes for item (1) to happen and bring us a lot of home-brewed energy very quickly.
Closing Guantanamo should have been simple but it's not when you have to figure out where to put those guys and are not willing to kill them. It was pretty easy to forsee not one state would welcome housing them.
Making promises you can actually keep is a big part of being a leader.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And yet there are other models that predict the opposite.
Yes I read the thread on this link below, Nate Silver has no reason to be more accurate than those models.
I don't trust either, because this election is way trickier to predict than most past elections. I ESPECIALLY do not trust any model claiming a blowout one way or the other.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You know, even a monkey could follow the link to the real source.
Are you as smart as a monkey?
Nice spin, but in the end what you cannot spin are real unemployment numbers, which suck (8.3% with a ton of people out of the labor force as they gave up looking).
It doesn't do you any good to create jobs if they are destroyed at a far greater rate. It really doesn't do you any good to create jobs that have no hope of growing the economy (government jobs only pull from the economy).
The sad thing is the worst hit are the young, it is a bitch now to find a job out of college and they stupidly piled on a massive amount of debt to finish. Well it wasn't really stupid OF them as they were told it was a good idea. Instead they are trapped in the middle, and will now be paying for student loans for so long social security will be garnished (as is happening today for some people).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nate Silver's 538 blog (http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/) is much more interesting. His model takes into account polls (which he adjusts based on past accuracy) as well as economic factors. Nate is currently estimating a probability of an Obama win at 77%. Probably a much more accurate assessment than an estimate of 98%. Nate Silver prediction for the 2008 presidential popular vote percentages was within 0.1% of the actual results.
you fools think there is a shread of difference between the two. both are going to sell our bums down the river. if some sort of color coding scheme realy means anything.
Nate Silver believes that Oregon is in-play. If you look at the actual numbers, a Republican win in Oregon is impossible, unless someone kills all the Democratic voters in Lane, Multnomah, and Washington county.
He also stated that blacks are being underreported because large numbers of them use cellphones as their only phones, which is why his results skew Democratic. No documentation on that factoid either...except that, because Nate Silver said it it must be true.
This is like one fortune teller saying another fortune teller's methodology is crap. All you can do is look at the data and say, WTF is this person thinking?
Voter ID being a reasonable idea has nothing to do with it's SOLE PURPOSE of bringing back poll taxes, intimidation and intelligence tests. Naturally, plenty of lying is being done by the Republicans and those who want to believe the lies are fine with looking the other way. The problem is the Democrats have easily identifiable demographics like Blacks, youth, and minorities and the Republicans do not have any easily identifiable demographic. (white men? nope. both sides have them. wealthy? nope. there are only a few of them. but they could be stopped from buying elections... )
Voter ID LAWS are creating poll taxes or forcing a bureaucratic intelligence and patience test to get that free ID. They place locations strategically to make it difficult and a TON of other things you can find. Regulations involving the use of the ID make it extremely difficult for certain people. For example, closing the polls during SUNDAY except for the military because black people vote more on Sunday and the military lean Republican (I'm not making this up it is being attempted for THIS election.)
The excuse they use? Dead people voting. It is rather easy to look up the death numbers between election day and when the voter roles are made. It does not amount to that many possible votes; not to mention the paper trails which could have been investigated and turned into a scandal but never are because there is no scandal. Even if it was a minor case it would provide political cover for the GOP. Yes, anti-immigrant talk is always heavily used but that is a typical inflammatory rhetoric used all the time; it is not a big problem (perhaps in some backward states it might be but not in my state; however, that doesn't stop the hype despite it being idiotic to use it in many states.)
The group which rarely votes leans strongly to the Democrats and have for a century. I've heard many times over decades of GOP staff admitting low turn out helps them so they'll even publicly say they wish for RAIN on election day and strongly oppose more polling hours. Many also openly wish that "lower class" people shouldn't be allowed to vote; which is more likely economic prejudice than their anti-democracy strategies.
If you want real democracy you must have the courage to risk undermining your power. That especially goes to both parties who prevent real debates, intelligent voting systems, or big reforms like ideas from parliamentary systems.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Especially not in Florida. hah! But yeah, whether votes are manipulated or the media blacklists certain candidates, it surely is rigged.
That model is far too simple. It only uses the economy and it only works since 1980. All the model says is "in bad economic times, people tend to vote out presidents." So, yeah, that model alone predicts a Romney landslide. However, in some bad economic times people tend to keep presidents, FDR for example, which is why they have to limit the poll to 1980. The polls alone show that that model is not currently a good fit for the current situation.
Most statistics of this election predict an Obama win. If the race would be held today this is what it would look like and if you look back, the math has been relatively stable. For Romney to win he'd have to pick up Florida, Ohio, Virginia and then another state besides that. Obama has had a fairly good if small lead in most Ohio polling and has been slightly ahead in Florida and Virginia. Also, your model has Romney losing Pennsylvania, which I think is pretty much not going to happen. The FiveThirtyEight model linked to gives Obama a 78.1% chance of winning currently and on Intrade Obama futures have given a roughly 60% chance. I think these are much more realistic models than your totally-base-the-election-on-one-thing model.
Every year since 1980 means the model has worked 8 times. In statistics 8 is a pretty lousy sample size.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Since PopeRatzo seems like such an informed guy, I guess using that word was intentional. Clever too, since others get to throw the hand grenades of truth.
I totally agree with you. At times I feel like he is treating it like a video game. He doesn't really seem to care about what he has to do, as long as he can get the President of the United States Achievement unlocked. It's the total lack of empathy that I sense from him that really freaks me out. That's where I get that uncanny valley feeling from him — not because of his wooden delivery (which doesn't help).
Seeing as how it's already been decided-- what's the point?
...small business owners and it just makes sense that policies favoring a few over the many just aren't going to fly. The whole system, at least from my vantage point, has been jury rigged to favor those who seek to profit from others as far as I can tell. There is very little reward nowadays for those who want to share with others.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
he had a democrat congress for at least a year or more.
You should really check this oft repeated mendacious claim. Obama used his very small window of opportunity to pass health-care reform. You should also look at some of the details of the bill yourself, instead of getting 3rd hand information from "four-legs-good, democrats bad" pundits.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Romney has been skyrocketing in terms of female popularity lately...
Keep up with the wishful thinking.
< You can't win with so much of the electorate unhappy with your policies.
I presume you're talking about 0bama? heh
You already sound impervious to any contrary evidence. And hence, it is because of "red-meat" partisan ideologues like you that political discourse resembles children fighting. Sad fact is: propaganda works. You are an exemplar.
"It is easier to fool a man than convince him he has been fooled" -- Twain.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
It is so interesting that wall street is so thoroughly behind the GOP. That Citizens United gave the GOP an advantage in fund raising. The typical GOPer thinks of the democrats as encouraging crony capitalism, and seem quite forgiving to the long list of corporate shills who call themselves GOP senators. The Dems are beholden to corps as well -- fund-raising is just too important -- but it just isn't the same ballpark as the GOP.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Because the whole thing is a farce.
Are you being ignorant or dishonest here? Obama's energy policy is indistinguishable from Bush/Cheney's: "all of the above". Record new amounts of land and sea opened for drilling. Billions for nuclear power and perpetual motion machines, I mean, "clean coal". The eastern seaboard and coast near ANWR have been opened for drilling, something not even Bush tried to do.
I ask again: are you speaking out of ignorance or dishonesty? Obama has approved the bottom half of the pipeline, which means he approves of the top half of the pipeline. The only "blocking" was a slight of hand for his liberal base, which of course was eaten up at DailySheep. They pointed to Obama's action as if he was blocking the pipeline, when his only disagreement was with the route. Same as when they hailed his veto thread of the NDAA and pretended that Obama was against military detention of American citizens, when he was of course demanding that power.
Obama has signed three new trade agreements just like NAFTA.
What the fuck is increasing supply (qualified workers) going to do to solve the actual problem (a lack of demand)?
Sure, he says that. And he's lying. Where's your "school choice" going to be when Kaplan owns every charter school within a hundred miles of you? Do you conservative geniuses think about what killing teachers unions and public schools is going to do to quality affordable education?
You guys like to whine about lazy students being coddled, but what happens when said lazy student happens to be the son of Upstanding Business Owner and Member of the Community who happens to own a 15% stake in your charter school system and can get his teacher fired at the drop of his hat? How about when that rich kid turns into bully starts kicking the shit out of your kid?
You mean "austerity" which has been a fucking disaster for every country that has tried it? The only entity capable of jump-starting demand in a depression is the government. Slashing government spending is only going to make that depression worse, far more so when your cuts target social social spending before the military-industrial-congressional-contractor-survellance complex.
Slashing spending results in a death spiral of a collapsing economy, which results in less tax revenues, which results in more demands from fools and tools to slash more spending. A vicious cycle that took Grover Norquist decades to perfect.
For the third time: are you speaking out of ignorance or dishonesty? Obama has cut or forestalled regulations, not brought new ones. Oh, and the lie about "small bushiness" don't hunt no more. We know perfectly well that when Republicans talk about "small businesses", what they really mean is a small number of shareholders. Which means Koch Industries is a "small business" because it is owned by the Koch family. Which means when Republ
Where was the I only watched one and not the one with the guy who believes god is a polygamous, and that he has magic underwear.
While the country is engaged and entertained with their undying loyalty to a party favorite they neglect what is happening behind the scenes. How many executive orders were passed over the past 24 years that slowly has changed the face of America? Yet, the Pubs and Dems use words that appeal to the masses that engage them enough to get the passionate juices flowing of the voters. Oh, how easily manipulated the public is. Families are divided and friendships have dissolved over a game controlled by the puppet masters who keep the public's attentions exactly where they want them to be. Then, quietly Executive Orders are passed and agreed upon among the Dems and Pubs across the board. They are published for all to see but the voter has their eyes glued on the TV sets as they feed themselves their daily dose of bitterness as they prepare themselves for battle with family and friends over something fed to them. Sadly, the published Executive Orders are neatly shelved on a government website nobody finds thrilling enough to explore. The President is chosen and the wise and careful voter has something to rejoice about for about a year or complain about for the next four. Yet, the Executive Orders keep getting passed. Elected officials in both parties know it but nobody says a word to the public because that is not how money for the next elections is raised. Good luck America and may God protect this once great nation. Oh, sorry, America, the puppet masters do not want you to have faith in an unseen God so they have bullied you into rejected God so you can only count on Government. Oh, the "once great nation comment", sorry for that as well, the puppet masters have convinced you that America is better now then it was when you actually had all your freedoms in tact and it will even be so much better once all those Executive Orders are in full force against you. I hope your election season is as passionate as the last. This time, please remember that the person you are about to ditch forever is being manipulated just as much as you are. In the end, who will be there for you?
seems like Romney is a shoe in no idiot would vote for obama just look at the numbers you idiots
Democrats claim there are no examples of voter fraud and yet just the other day in CA a previously deported drug trafficking Mexican, Ricardo Lopez-Munguia, plead guilty to many charges including illegally voting in the 2008 election. What are the chances he voted for John McCain?
In Philadelphia, two dozen unregistered people were allowed to vote anyway, 19 others were discovered to not be U.S. citizens and at least seven of those have voted in elections. I'm sure they voted Republican. /s
In North Carolina, American Idol runner up Clay Aiken knowingly, willfully and fraudulently voted outside his county in 2008 with the purpose of effecting the outcome of elections in Wake County. He was only discovered because he was dumb enough to make disparaging statements about new Board of Election members.
It's no surprise Democrat Aiken is against Voter ID because if NC had had Voter ID, Aiken would not have been able to commit voter fraud.
So here was have a multi-millionaire celebrity committing voter fraud, we have foreign citizens committing voter fraud and those are just a couple examples from three corners of this country. Now, tell me again how Voter ID is not important?
Explain to me why photo ID is necessary to get into a NAACP gathering, to get into the DNC convention, to visit an Obama rally but not to ensure only those legally entitled to cast ballots where they live are the only ones who do?
All states with voter ID have a range of acceptable photo IDs, including free voting-only photo ID, to account for nursing homes, the poor, students, etc. A 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court already ruled voter ID is legal.
Does it really suppress minority vote as Democrats claim? Georgia saw an INCREASE in minority turnout after it enacted voter ID.
The pattern is clear: Democrats do not want voter ID laws because they benefit from the voter fraud enabled by having no voter ID law. They use the specter of racism to demagogue the issue to their advantage.
The real mendacious claim here is that the Democrats weren't given and fumbled a huge opportunity on a silver platter.
Look into the claim. Try and find which specific dates the democrats had 60 seats in congress.
Scott Brown was sworn in until a full year into Obama's presidency, and then Ted Kennedy was hospitalized. Al Franken was also not counted until July 7, 2009, because of an electoral dispute. But even then it was 59-40, because Kennedy was in hospital. It wasn't until Sept 24, 2009, when Paul Kirk was sworn in that the democrats had a filibuster proof 60-40, and that lasted until Feb 4, 2010.
That is *FOUR MONTHS*.
Check the facts for yourself.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
With 60 votes, the GOP just filibustered. More time then ever. A lot more. I suppose that is the Dems fault too, right? That the Dems couldn't get anything done because the GOP filibustered constantly?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
But the GOP simply filibustered constantly. Without a filibuster proof 60 votes, the dems couldn't get anything done. The Dems only had 4 months of a filibuster proof congress.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Modern polls take these things into consideration. It's not as if the statistical sciences and algorithmics haven't gotten so advanced that thousands of corporations, trading houses, banks don't use linear and dynamic programming to place billions of dollars of trades each day, in which people are actually "putting their money where their mouth is".
Indeed they do. I've seen the adjustments, they can get very crazy, and one always *hopes* their corrections are, well, correct. But they've gotten to the point that they mostly know what weights to use to mostly correct.
The results from Las Vegas aren't much different giving Obama a 70% chance of being reelected and that's before the dud of the republican convention and the highly successful democratic one.
This might tell you how bad it is. I consider myself a moderate libertarian, and am a registered republican(so I could vote in the primary). I'm seriously favoring voting for Obama, simply because I see Romney being so wrong, and untrustworthy to boot. For one, I want to adjust the tax system so that Romney pays a higher % in taxes than his secretary. Only way to do this is to make capital gains progressive. I haven't heard of doing that even from Obama's camp. My idea - Start at 0% for under $10k/year, max out at like 50% for over $600k. That encourages people to keep up to $200k@5% in investments(as it's tax free), which is generally a heck of a good emergency fund. To even start the 50% tax rate, you'd need over 12M@5%. At which point, like others have pointed out - what else is the dude going to do with the money?
I don't read AC A human right
I want to give some context for the huge dollar numbers so common in political and economic discussions.
It would only cost $200 billion a year to end abject poverty worldwide. (UN, Jeffrey Sachs)
If everyone on earth had food, clothes, shelter and clean water - what would that do for security, innovation, economics, the environment and human rights?
Those are big election issues, right?
Let's compare that $200 billion to some other things that are important in politics, apparently many, many times more important than ending abject poverty if money is our measure. Lets start with tax havens for the top few percent who receive our tax dollars via their ownership of the corporations which are recipients of government contracts, and in particular the military-industrial corporations whose private contractors receive a huge percentage of the military budget. For example prime intelligence contracts worth over $50 billion went over 70% to private contractors and in intelligence there are now more private than public employees.
The ultra rich hide over $20 trillion in offshore tax haven accounts while American minimum wage buys less than it did in 1968 and one in six families in the USA with children are extremely food insecure, lacking adequate nutrition at least once a year. The "job creators" don't use profits to create jobs, pay more or provide more benefits for workers. Instead they buy companies, combine them, and fire the duplicate workers. The ultra rich buy votes in Congress with their vast wealth too. Go see the correlation of Congress member's votes with donations made to their campaigns at maplight.org. Both parties are corrupt. The best analysis I've seen of Romney's economic plan done by MIT shows households making under $250,000 will on average pay $500 more in taxes, but the rich will pay less. Obama isn't much better. Neither candidate will do anything here.
The USA military budget is at least $500 billion a year not counting Iraq, Afghanistan, Veterans benefits, States spending or interest on past wars. It's over $1 trillion if you count that stuff. Private contractors get a huge cut. Americans are out of work, but for every billion dollars we spend on the military we lose from 5,000 to 15,000 jobs compared to spending the money on green jobs, health or education. Even just cutting the military budget and giving the money back to the taxpayers creates more jobs than spending it on the military. That's because the military isn't very labor intensive per dollar compared to other jobs. Go check my numbers, I'm low balling. The jobs numbers are from the Department of Labor, analysis by the PERI Institute. Neither candidate will do anything here.
The fossil fuel companies own over 2,795 GT of carbon assets worth $27 trillion at current market rates, but we can only burn about 565 GT more if we want an 80% chance of staying under 2.0C or 3.6F increase in global mean surface temperature over the next century. The Canadian Alberta Tar Sands contain more than 200 GT. Yet Exxon alone spends $37 billion a year or $100 million dollars a day, looking for more. Neither candidate will do anything here. Again I am low-balling, not counting coal oil or shale oil assets.
Both candidates are pro-torture, pro-warrantless spying, pro-secret prisons, pro-assassinate American citizens without trial, pro-indefinite detention, pro-military-industrial-complex, pro-privatize profits and socialize risk, pro-drone, pro-WTO-WIPO-WorldBank-IMF, anti-poor, anti-labor, anti-drug, anti-free speech (zones?), anti-American motherfuckers. And that's just the start of the list.
Check my numbers using scholar.google.com
Fucking sociopaths.
So what to do? What to do?
For the citizen looking for change, four boxes are available:
soap, ballot, jury and ammo.
Please consider order of use carefully!
Since we're discussing box 1 and 2 here ... what to do? ... google the terms ...
"white box" and "priority voting"
Do you understand the difference between private and public?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Do you understand the difference between private and public?
Sure, there's nothing that pisses people off and motivates them to vote like having someone try to take away your rights.
I didn't say the Republicans were smart, I just said they're trying to suppress votes.
And your evidence for that is...?
"Specter" of racism? Did you hear what happened to the black CNN cameraman at the Republican convention. One of the delegates - the delegates! - was throwing peanuts at this cameraman and shouting, "This is how we feed the animals!".
Specter of racism, my ass. After an African-American took the lead of the Democratic Party, the committed racists had nowhere else to go but to the GOP, who welcomed them with opened sheets.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I mean, come on.... they probably have it hard coded into the systems.
Problem is reality is complex especially when you add politicians. An ID is not about the concept!! It is all about the IMPLEMENTATION, I'm surprised computer people are not immune from falling for these tricks...
You should have a password to secure your computer. Sounds simple, "sure I'm for that!" you say. But how does one store the password? in plain text? How does one enter it? on screen keyboard? showing the text you typed on screen? speaking the password? Should we let anything be a password, like 1 character? Say our design is perfect; but then we have BUGs in the software... IMPLEMENTATION all that really matters.
Politicians use concepts, ideals, smokescreens to HIDE the IMPLEMENTATION which shows their true motives. YOU ARE NAIVE if you think that every implementation problem is just incompetence because you drink that whole "government is incompetent" cool aid - that is their best defense!!! (notice how the ones that preach that the most usually generate more incompetence?? wake up.) Implement horrible policies blame disclosures on incompetence (either for the disclosure or to disavow/distance) and talk about how you are for ideals and a greater utopia etc.
The truth is the republicans are using the fact the democrats have easily identifiable demographic groups to DISCRIMINATE against them and subvert democracy. It is the definition of anti-democratic and should be considered treason in any democracy (it does more harm than leaking a secret or aiding the enemy.) Any lawyer might be fooled by their logic games but a reasonable and informed person can clearly see what they are doing.
There is not a huge number of illegals voting. That claim is unsubstantiated and they've failed in the past when they've tried. But naturally, after they kick out a bunch of legal voters they'll claim the lower numbers are a result of these illegals being stopped - again, without any proof. DEMAND EVIDENCE. don't make policy out of ignorance.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I consider myself a moderate libertarian
You might consider yourself one, but you're not.
At which point, like others have pointed out - what else is the dude going to do with the money?
What's it matter? It's his not yours. If you want to give away a percentage of your money good for you. If I don't want to the government shouldn't use a threat of violence to get me to. That's called extortion.