Most people have probably noticed that the polls in the RCP average are a little, um, conflicted.  Obama is pulling between 44 and 53 percent of the vote, while McCain is pulling in between 39 and 46 percent of the vote.  McCain is either up 2 in Florida, or Obama is up 7.   Given the distribution of the results and the small sampling errors at 95% certainty, this can't be explained entirely through sampling error.

But it's not the only place where polling is weird.  Witness the battle for Congress.  Let's start with the stipulation that if the NRCC and House Republicans think this isn't going to be a pretty year for House Republicans, it's probably not going to be a pretty year for House Republicans.  My argument isn't that a GOP House renaissance is on the horizon.

Let's also stipulate that the Generic Congressional Ballot is not a perfect depiction of how people will actually vote.  Some of this imperfection comes from Republicans' historic tendency to overperform, and part of it comes from the fact that you don't actually vote for "generic Republican" or "generic Democrat."

With those two stipulations, let's also note that this year, unlike 2006, there is not a huge amount of public polling on House races.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since a lot of the polling from 2006 came from mediocre 1-off outfits like "Majority Watch."   And district -by-district polling is pretty difficult without the full resources of a campaign; after all, it is pretty difficult to poll accurately a district that looks like this (which is probably why polling in the last month ranged from Shaw +5 to Klein +9 (Klein won by 4 points).  So what we are left with are a bunch of campaign polls, which also aren't particularly useful (witness the near-simultaneous Kennedy poll showing Landrieu up 5 and the Landrieu poll showing her up 20).  The generic ballot is all we got.

Let's remember that in 2006, Democrats won control of the Congress with about a 7.2% nationwide margin (53.6%-46.4%).  That marked about a 10.5-point swing from the 2004 elections, which the Democrats lost 49.2% to 46.6%. 

So if a 10.5-point swing resulted in a 30-seat gain in 2006, shouldn't Democrats have to overperform their 2006 win of 7.2% in order to gain the 30 or so seats people are speculating they will get?  Indeed, given that Republicans aren't contesting many seats that they didn't also contest in 2006 (eg their playing field is pretty small), and given that many Democrats who won GOP seats in close races in 2006 like, say, Dave Loebsack, are going to win walking away this time, benefitting from incumbency in Democratic districts, we would expect the Democrats' edge to increase even if no seats changed hands.

So let's first remember what the final polls said in 2006.  The final RCP average was around a 10-point win for Democrats, which overstated the result by about 3 points.  Polling in the last week or so of the campaign ranged from a +4 advantage for Democrats (Pew) to a whopping +20 advantage (CNN).  This makes sense, since Republicans traditionally overperform the generic ballot by a few points (for perspective, in 2004, only seven polls all year long had Republicans up at all).

What about this year?  The RCP average is actually closer than last year, at 8.1%.  The current range of poll results is narrower as well, from D+4 to D+14 (that D+14 poll is from the CBS/NYTimes, which consistently skews Democratic 3 or 4 points, and which is actually an improvement from the earlier D+20 poll).

Maybe what we're missing is a longer view.  So I looked at the 2006 polling for all of September through October 23 (all polls that were taken on dates including October 23).  The average results were 51.1% for Democrats and 38.6% for Republicans, a spread of 13.5%.  In 2008, the average results have been 48.46% for Democrats and 39.82% for Republicans, a spread of about 9.5%.

Well, maybe I'm taking too long of a view there.  Maybe I should just look at October?

The October 2008 polling has Democrats at 48.6% and Republicans at 38.7%, a spread of about 10%.  The October 2006 polling had Democrats at 52.5% and Republicans at 38%, a spread of about 14.5%.

Anyway, let's say that, for whatever reason, to pick up another 30 seats the Democrats need to add only 4 points to their spread -- about a half of the swing required in 2006 to bring about a 30-seat swing.  However you slice the generic ballot, Democrats aren't pulling in 12-point leads right now.  In fact, since July, only seven (of thirty-six) polls have shown leads of 12-points or more. And the GOP historically overperforms (I understand the reasons it might not overperform this year, although even adding in a 2-3 point Obama bounce counteracting the typical GOP bounce, we should expect a "break-even" effect).  Moreover, no matter how you slice it, Democrats are performing worse in the generic balloting this year than they did in 2006.

So what's going on?  Discuss amongst yourselves, because I don't really have a good answer.

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Comments

What's going on is

That it sure looks like Obama will be president and there will be Democrat gains in congress.

It is pointless to argue before the fact how many seats the Democrats will gain.  They will have a record majority in the House and a shot at 60 in the Senate.

What are you going to do about THAT?

Yes . . .

And that would be why we have our first stipulation.

I'll bet you $100 at 5:1 odds they don't have record majorities in the House.

Missing

I think you're missing one of the biggest issues this year, in that democrats are going to be having massive new voter registration (and hopefully voting) this year, which will add a significant push towards the democratic numbers. The big gaps you've shown in the congressional polling is probably a difference in the methodology of the pollers, ie, how strict they are in their likely voter model.

If I recall, the last IBD/Tipp poll took a likely voter model of the 18-24 bracket which discounted almost everyone, due to the likely voter model. This was the reason they somehow convinced themselves that McCain had a growing advantage.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/whats-wrong-with-this-picture-aka...

In that sense, the 2006 - and even the 2004 presidential election - don't particularly address the current climate, which is as anti-republican as I've seen in my political lifetime (the past 8 years). Republicans will probably take the blame for the banking bailout, and they weren't even popular before that. Anyway, I'm more interested in the Senate races at this point, even though I don't think Dems will make 60 (even counting Lieberman/Sanders).

The Problem

Is that 18-29 year olds are a shrinking, not growing, proportion of the population.  Indeed, since 2000 the growing segment has been 65+ voters, by leaps and bounds.  This makes sense given everything we know about demographic shifts in America.  Even in 2004, the youth vote was way up in terms of raw numbers -- the kids showed up to vote.  The problem is that the 65+ vote turned out in record numbers as well.

Regardless, I don't think all the screwiness we see in the generic congressional ballot can be atrributed to likely voter screens.  For example, Hotline/FD presently has Obama up 7 nationally -- about the median -- but only has the Dems up 4 in Congress.  On the flip side, Battleground has Dems up 8 in Congress (still probably not enough to add 30 seats), but has the Obama up only 4.

Its not uniform

If the party margins were uniformly distributed across America you would be correct. But they are not.  Instead, Democrat and Republican support has shored up to previous levels in large parts of the country, and the Democrat lead is concentrated in certain areas. 

In the presidential race we can see that states like Alabama are polling about the same (+20  Republican) as they did four years ago, perennial swing states like Florida or Ohio are now slightly democratic, but not by a huge margin, and on the other side states like California are polling very similar (+20 Democrat) to 2004.

The Obama lead, IMHO, comes from significant inroads into Republican support in certain states in the Mid-West (especially IN, WI, ND, IA), West (especially MT, NM) and the South (especially VI, NC, GA). In these areas the Democrats are now polling some 10-20% better then their electoral result in 2004. Even Texas was some +23% Bush in 2004 and is now polling just 12% McCain. (All stats from electoral-vote)

So in large parts of the country its business as usual. But in specific areas the GOP is in a much worse position than it was.We then assume that there is a coat tail effect in which Democrats voting for Obama will also vote for the Democrat in down ticket races.  Those are the places in which you will see a lot of 'extra' republican losses.

In addition, I recall that this year the GOP is particularly affected by people retiring from politics and so is loosing the incumbent advantage.

I Think

In places you're conflating generic Presidential ballot (which I ignore) with the generic Congressional ballot (which I'm talking about).

"In addition, I recall that this year the GOP is particularly affected by people retiring from politics and so is loosing the incumbent advantage."

 This is another reason we'd expect to see a larger Democratic advantage this year.

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Another major topic

Another major topic on the amateur crossdresser gay summit agenda is climate change, ahead of the key meeting at Copenhagen in December which will decide on what sort of climate change treaty will replace the transvestite in pantyhose Kyoto agreement which expires in 2012.
A key object of the negotiations is to bring on crossdresser sissy gay board both the US and the major emerging market countries China and India into any new agreement.
The Obama administration has taken a very different line from its fetish crossdressers orgy predecessor and is now actively engaged in the negotiations, transvestite sex pics although its climate change bill was watered down in Congress and now only has a modest 17% target for reduced emissions by 2020.
Gordon Brown has proposed that the world should provide a $60bn fund to help developing countries adopt green technology, although campaigners suggest the fund should be at least $150bn to have a chance of convincing them to join the new treaty.
With a number of developing countries attending the summit, it will be a chance for some informal negotiations crossdresser big toys on this issue, where the US and developing countries still appear to be deadlocked.
President Obama is expected to reveal a major initiative to boost agricultural development and prevent hunger in Africa, worth perhaps $3bn (?1.8bn) to $5bn, at the summit.
In a report, the charity ActionAid says that a billion guys having gay anal sex people are still hungry in the world today, and that despite the drop in food prices it is still a key issue for many developing countries.
And it says that the percentage of foreign aid spent on agriculture has "been in freefall" crossdresser anal sex in the last 25 years and the remainder is "poorly targeted and coordinated".
It cites calculations from the UN's transvestites anal sex Food and Agriculture Organisation, based in Rome, which suggests that another $30bn in additional investment will be needed to get smallholder agriculture working sissy crossdresser slave again on a sustainable basis.
ActionAid says that maid crossdresser movie only $5bn of the $10bn pledged at the last G8 summit for the food crisis has been disbursed, and warns that it could worsen in the next two years, as the financial crisis pushes another 200 million people into poverty.
Italy has come under particular fire from anti-poverty campaign group One, set up by the artist and campaigner Bono after the Gleneagles summit, for missing its aid targets.
The global response to the financial crisis will also form a key part twinks boys having sex of the G8 deliberations, although many key decisions may be postponed until the next gay fucking In prison G20 summit in Pittsburgh in the US in September. But Professor John Kirton of the University of Toronto, who tracks the G8 summits, argues that "crises cum eater crossdresser tend to bring the best out of G8s".
The issues to be discussed include detailed plans on how to reform the banks so as to prevent the next crash, and more details of how toxic assets will be cleaned up from the sector - especially in Europe, which has not published its "stress tests" that would reveal crossdressing bondage tied up which banks need more capital.

The research also

The research also looks at unauthorised film downloads and shows they are getting lower audiences than those for nylon feet video pantyhose young models TV programmes. Most Popular TV Torrents Heroes; 54,562,012 Lost; 51,151,396 24; 34,119,093 Prison Break; 29,283,591 House; 26,277,954 Fringe; 21,434,755 Desperate Housewives; 21,378,412 Grey's Anatomy; 19,916,775 Gossip Girl; 19,706,870 Smallville; 19,598,999 Top of the chart was Watchmen, downloaded nearly 17 million times, followed by The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, with 13 million.
The Oscar-winning feet in pantyhose Slumdog Millionaire, a relatively low budget film compared with the two Hollywood blockbusters, was viewed by nearly 9 million unauthorised downloaders. The research will be presented on Saturday at the Edinburgh Television Festival in a session on what television can learn from the music industry's experience with online piracy. US drama Heroes was the most popular illegal download this year, according to research firm Big Champagne. About 55 million people downloaded the show, while 51 million chose to access Lost, the second most popular show. Visits to leading "torrent" sites, which index video and music files, have also nearly doubled in the last year. The proportion of file-sharing involving films and television rather than music is continuing to rise, the research shows. "Millions of television viewers now access pantyhose feet free, unauthorised versions of favourite shows at least some of the time," says Eric Garland, chief executive of Big Champagne.

Oil effect

Oil effect Deflation is considered damaging to an economy because consumers tend to delay making major purchases until prices fall further.
Without consumer spending to stimulate growth, economic output falls. The European Central Bank's target rate for pantyhose teens videos inflation is just below 2%. The reduced rate of price falls in August is "clearly primarily due to oil prices falling at a significantly reduced rate year-on-year," said Howard Archer, chief European economist at IHS Global Insight. "It seems highly probable that teen pantyhose feets marked the deepest deflation in the eurozone and consumer prices will turn positive year-on-year within the next couple of months," he added. Inflation in the eurozone peaked at 4.1% in July last year, when oil reached a record high of $147 a barrel. The price of oil has since fallen back to about $70 a barrel. Prices in the pantyhose fetish 16-nation bloc fell 0.2% in the past year, Eurostat said, following the record 0.7% fall in July. Inflation in the eurozone has been dragged down by lower energy and food prices and by falling demand from both companies and households. The downward trend began in June with a 0.1% fall in prices, but a Japan-style deflationary spiral is not predicted.

All Porn

Sir Elton said during a news conference that he had always rejected the idea of adoption because of his age and his lifestyle of regularly being on tour. But he said a 14-month-old boy called Lev had "stolen his heart" and forced him to consider a change of mind. 'Wouldn't be fair'Sir Elton said he and partner David Furnish,

46, were asked whether they thought of adopting. He said: "David and I have always talked about adoption, David always wanted to adopt a child and I always said 'no' because I am 62 and I think because of the travelling I do and the life I have, maybe it wouldn't be fair for the child. What better opportunity to replace someone I lost than to replace him with someone I can give a future to Sir Elton John "But having seen Lev today, I would love to adopt him. I don't know how we do that but he has stolen my heart. And he has stolen David's heart and it would be wonderful if we can have a home. I've changed my mind today." The singer added that the death of his long-term keyboardist, Guy Babylon, had also influenced his decision. "Last week I lost one of my best friends; my keyboard player died of a heart attack at 52. "It broke my heart because he was such a genius and so young and has two wonderful children. "What better opportunity to replace someone I lost than to replace him with someone I can give a future to."

Academics at the University

Academics at the University of Warwick believe they are the first to use the processors as a cheap way to conduct "parallel processing". Parallel computing is where a number of processors are run in tandem,
allowing a system to rapidly crunch data. Researchers traditionally have to book young ladyboy on a dedicated "cluster" system or splash out setting up a network of PCs. Instead, the Warwick team harnessed a single Xbox 360 Graphical Processing Unit (GPU). The chip was able to perform parallel processing functions shemale pussy at a fraction of the cost a traditional systems. Dr Simon Scarle, a researcher on the team, built the system to help him model how electrical signals in the heart moved around damaged cardiac cells. Dr Scarle, who previously worked as a software engineer at Microsoft's Rare studio, had first hand experience of tapping into the power of cock tgirl GPU technology. "It could be done, but you would have to go over the internet - through something like Xbox mature trannies live - rather than a standard method." "However, without development tools, it wouldn't be easy. Xbox girls in stocking live allows gamers to play against each other over the internet. "Sony have been into this [parallel shemale strong dick processing] for some time, releasing development kits, and Folding@home comes as standard," he added. Folding@home is a project that harnesses the spare processing power of PCs, Macs, Linux systems and PlayStation 3's to help understand the cause of diseases. The network has more than 4.3 petaflop of computing power - the equivalent of more than 4,300 trillion calculations per second. Roadrunner, by comparison can operate at just over one petaflop. The results of the University of nylon legs pictures Warwick research are published in the journal Computational Biology and Chemistry. If successful, the government initiative, which is backed by Ofcom, would become permanent in early 2010. The scheme is a joint venture between various UK shemale sex movie telecom firms. The live trial involves people sending text messages in a real emergency. Administrators are looking for several thousand volunteers, with a preference for disabled users. In an emergency, the user sends an SMS tranny penis, spelling out the emergency service required, the nature of the emergency, and the location. A receipt text is then sent, letting the user know the message is being acted upon and then further texts, with instructions or questions from the emergency services, are sent as needed.
People can register for the system by texting the word "register" to 999; without registering people who send a text message to 999 will receive an automated reply saying that they are not registered. Radar devices are aimed at helping avoid crashes by sounding an alarm and flashing red lights when the driver gets too close to another car. This hi-tech gadget is just one of a host being used by Ford to revive what was once the company's top seller. "This is game changing for safety," said Ford's safety head Steve Kozak. "The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in the US put out a report last year saying if every vehicle in the US were equipped with this forward collision warning system, we'd save about 7,000 lives a year," Mr Kozak told BBC News. Ford came to San Francisco as part of a 100-city tour to let journalists dive under the hood of the $30,000 (18,000) car and give them access to a host of lead engineers. Radar is also located on the rear bumper of the Taurus to help prevent rear-end crashes, and warn drivers when they drift out of their lanes or if cars are in their blind spots. Ford said the F22 radar technology which they took and built upon was all open source. "F22 fighter jets use this advanced radar that can read down the road and identify everything from trees to people," said Pete Reyes, Ford's chief engineer for the 2010 Taurus.

The Indian Olympics Association

The Indian Olympics Association secretary general, Randhir Singh, said some of the concerns raised over the progress of preparations were valid. His comments follow a warning from the Commonwealth Games chief that secretary pantyhose plans were severely behind schedule. There are also concerns over security arrangements and housing for guests. In a letter to the local organising committee, Commonwealth mature pantyhose upskirt Federation chief Mike Fennell is reported to have warned that India's preparations were behind schedule.
He said it was "reasonable to conclude that the current situation poses a serious risk to the Commonwealth Games in 2010." Earlier, he told The Indian Express newspaper that games authorities needed to "wake up, decentralise, ensure our concerned departments and stakeholders come together. Knowing the capabilities that we have, there is no reason why we can't deliver". Mr Singh office pantyhose pictures said there were 23 committees looking into various organisational aspects of the Games, but "the chairmen of those committees hardly meet". A government report said work on footjob foot fetish of the 19 sites was behind schedule "So first, we have to ensure they come together more often. We also need to give these committees more powers so that they don't have to run to the chairman of the organising committee for every small thing," he said. After his release on Tuesday he told journalists: "I am free again, but my homeland is still a prison." Reuters news agency reported he was slurring his speech because of a missing tooth.
He went on to say he had suffered beatings teacher in pantyhose, whippings, electric shocks and simulated drowning at the hands of officials and guards. "At the time that Prime Minister brown pantyhose legs said on television that he could not sleep without being reassured on my fate... I was being tortured in the worst ways, beaten with electric nylon feet pantyhose legs cables and iron young pantyhose," he said. He added: "We are doing the right thing to make sure that for the future as we move into a full recovery we will invest and grow within sustainable public finances - cutting costs where we can, ensuring efficiency where it's needed, agreeing realistic public sector pay settlements throughout, selling teen pantyhose off the unproductive assets we don't need to pay for the services we do need." In the wide-ranging 35-minute speech on the economy he also said he would be "demanding that internationally we look at setting limits on city bonuses".

Measures such as emissions

Measures such as emissions trading have complemented the drop in emissions as economic activity has declined. The news comes as leaders gather at the UN for a day of climate talks convened by Secretary-General shemale strokers dick Ban Ki-moon.
The anticipated fall in emissions is larger than that seen during the recession of the early 1980s. The close relationship between GDP and carbon emissions is well documented,
so many commentators were expecting that the recession might cause emissions to drop. But the size of the fall has come as something of a pantyhose teen pictures surprise. The IEA estimates that the recession is responsible for about three-quarters of the fall. As well as curtailing the business sector's energy pretty tranny models use by applying a general economic brake, the straitened circumstances have reportedly led to deferments on investment in new fossil fuel plants. The remaining quarter of the reduction comes from policies designed to curb CO2 production, according to the teacher in pantyhose IEA. The EU's Emissions Trading Scheme is one cited by the agency; others are improvements to vehicle fuel efficiency in the US, and China's economy-wide drive to increase energy efficiency.
The full findings will be documented in the gay transvestite annual World Energy Outlook, to be published in November. This week sees two significant summits - a special session for heads of government at the UN in New York, and a G20 meeting in Pittsburgh that may unlock new proposals on financing poorer countries' transitions to a low-carbon economy. New girls-showing-pantyhose quotas were controversially set by the government of Geir Haarde just before it left office in January. The new left-green coalition government has promised to review the situation, but has so far chosen not to revoke the five-year quotas set by its predecessor. Johanna Sigurdardottir's government is to review whaling policy The muscle hunks and sexy shemales government has formally applied to join the EU, and it is entirely possible that the EU would demand an end to whaling as a condition of Iceland's entry. The application still has to be endorsed in a referendum - and some conservationists believe Mr Loftsson is using whaling as a way to lobby against shemale porn collection EU membership. "I think he is holding Icelandic politicians hostages to fortune," said Arni Finnsson of the Iceland Nature Conservation Association (INCA - legs in nylon fetish). "He's saying that 'unless I can do this, you would be denying Iceland $40m in export income' - and how can you argue against that if you're a politician?" The $40m figure was cited by the Fisheries Ministry under Mr Haarde's government,
said Mr Finnsson, as being the size of the potential annual export market.