Quoting William F. Buckley, I see!

Posted at July 8, 2008 1:01 PM in response to Tankard is a troll: Discuss

Good question. I have my opinions (that PUMA power is vastly overstated), but I'm quite possibly wrong - and I have no evidence either way to back it up.

In a "rational" world, PUMA makes almost no sense: given their stands on the issues, pretty much all Hillary supporters would be far better off backing Obama than McCain. The sole exception would be those who backed Hillary because of her votes for AUMF and Kyl-Lieberman, not despite them, and then only if:
1. The "war on terror" was a more important issue to such people than health care, pro-choice, etc.
2. The recent McCain framing of Obama (that he's now essentially adopting the McCain position on the war by "moving" to the center) is wrong. My gut says that should be a very small group.

But human beings aren't nearly as rational as we like to believe (and I mean this as no particular slur against former Hillary supporters; had she won the close nomination by "stealing" it via superdelegate coup from Obama, certainly some former Obama supporters would either sit out or back McCain). Emotions, and the desire for revenge, are quite powerful in spurring people's actions, so it's possible, perhaps even likely, that at least some PUMA voters would exist.

The relevance to Webb as a potential VP is what marginal impact he might have on them. If the PUMA group is quite small, which I'd expect, then it really makes no difference in terms of election strategy. Likewise if the group, even if it is large, is already decided against Obama, picking Webb wouldn't hurt. Where it would matter is if there's a moderately large PUMA group that is "reachable", but for whom picking Webb would keep them from coming back into the fold.

How big a movement is PUMA? I have no idea. But I do think picking someone with Webb's paper trail doesn't help in attracting their votes. Yes, the inflammatory part of that paper trail is 15 or more years old, but it doesn't sit well with lots of us who would assuredly vote for Obama no matter who his running mate is.

Posted at July 8, 2008 7:14 AM in response to Webb: "Under No Circumstances Will I Be A Candidate For Vice President"

Jim Webb -- the perfect on-paper Vice President for Obama...

I suppose this assessment depends on which papers you read. His paper trail isn't exactly the most feminist-friendly there is, having argued against coeducation in service academies and made some interesting comments about the Tailhook investigations. He does bring military experience to the ticket, but if anything that might signal that Obama believes he needs to bolstered there, buying into the GOP framing. Webb is not the best VP candidate to calm down the PUMA crowd.

Posted at July 7, 2008 3:54 PM in response to Webb: "Under No Circumstances Will I Be A Candidate For Vice President"

The Chevy is cool because it connects with the important NASCAR Dad demographic - at least those not fans of Ford, Dodge or (gasp!) Toyota drivers.

Seriously, thanks for the question, Julian. The simulations add value because they take into account not only who is ahead in each state, but also how big the lead is. The If you're leading a lot of states by a small amount, but your opponent's leads are all pretty big, then the Votemaster's maps would overstate how strong you appear. When a poll lead is small, it's much more likely either that the poll is wrong, and the other candidate is really ahead, or that opinion can shift enough so that the other candidate would win. So how big your leads are matters.

Electoral-vote.com does count "strong", "weak" and "barely" electoral vote totals for each candidate, giving some idea of whose support may be softer, but by reporting just the totals, his map implies the person with the higher total is more likely to win, which may not always be the case.

Indeed this was true when I first started doing these simulations in April: at that time Clinton had a small lead over McCain, while Obama trailed him slightly, but Obama actually won the simulated elections more often than McCain, and McCain beat Clinton more often, because many of Clinton's state leads were small, whereas relatively few of Obama's were. Random chance implied Obama might win some of McCain's states, while McCain might win some of Clinton's.

With current polling, Obama's lead is big enough that none of this matters - for now. I've only been running these simulations for a little over two months, and already the polling landscape has changed quite a bit. Note that these aren't predictions per se; at best it's a snapshot of the current opinions of the electorate. But if you want to get where you're going, it helps to know where you are. And right now, Obama is clearly in the driver's seat.

Posted at July 6, 2008 5:55 PM in response to Election Poll Simulations

I decided on supporting Obama after he won Iowa. The more I listened to his speeches, the more I liked him and believed he could actually win. I was expecting some candidate to emerge as the primary challenger to Senator Clinton, and after Iowa it seemed clear to me that Obama was that candidate.

He was right about the war, and the more I heard from him the more I respected his intelligence. That he was raising so much money over the internet showed he could be a viable candidate - or at least that money problems wouldn't force him out of the race.

One thing that did resonate with me early on was his comments about Ronald Reagan, that were misconstrued by many as approval of Reagan's policies. They showed me that Obama fully understands the value of the presidency as a bully pulpit, and as tool to change public opinion.

In general, I've been quite impressed by Obama's campaign, although I have been disappointed by his flip-flop on FISA. Yet I'm still more inspired by Obama than by any candidate since I've been old enough to vote, and I strongly support his candidacy.

Posted at July 5, 2008 7:32 PM in response to Open Post... When and Why did you start to support Barack Obama?

D'oh... there I go again... Americans like their politicians to have faith. In something.

Posted at July 3, 2008 11:23 AM in response to Obama is NOT sympathetic to atheists/secularists

Ah for an edit function... I meant to say "more likely not to consider voting for an atheist".

Actually, the whole sentence is awkward. I'll just link to this Gallup poll from 2007. It's one sample, but it does show that Americans like their Americans at least to have the appearance of some religious belief. Ronald Reagan was not even an irregular church goer, not that service attendance is a requirement for belief.

Posted at July 3, 2008 11:22 AM in response to Obama is NOT sympathetic to atheists/secularists

Know any elected atheists in the Federal government? There aren't any, or at least none that admit to it.

Genghis - Your link is out of date. California congressman Pete Stark came out of the closet as an atheist last fall, albeit a few months after the link you posted.

But that's really the exception that proves the rule (for now) - public opinion polls regularly show that Americans are more likely not consider voting for atheists than many other demographic groups, including women, African-Americans, homosexuals, Hispanics, and Mormons. America still likes its politicians at least to appear to have faith.

But it's also interesting to note that Karl Rove is an atheist, or, as he once put it, he has "not been blessed with the gift of faith."

Posted at July 3, 2008 11:16 AM in response to Obama is NOT sympathetic to atheists/secularists

An agnostic is an athiest without the guts to deny the existence of God.

Posted at July 3, 2008 11:05 AM in response to Obama is NOT sympathetic to atheists/secularists

Most likely CNN's reporters just don't understand statistics very well.

The margin of error is a 95% confidence interval around the candidates' percentages. In a two candidate race, then it also essentially is a 95% confidence interval around the spread between the candidates (you're assuming any votes lost by candidate X go to candidate Y, so the spread really is just another way of looking at the one independent variable).

But note that "margin of error" only reflects random sampling error: that is, assuming you've picked a truly unbiased random sample of the population, then 95% of the time a candidate's true polling in the full population would be within the margin of error. As it happens, this range is determined only by the size of your polling sample, and is independent of the size of the population. Real polls, however, do probably have subtle biases (although polling firms do their best to minimuze them), and they're still just a snapshot of current opinion. And opinion will, of course, change between now and election day.

But the bottom line is that if your lead in a 2-candidate race is more than the poll's margin of error, then it's pretty safe to say you're actually ahead right now. So CNN's headline is misleading.

Posted at July 2, 2008 11:11 AM in response to Twisting The Truth: A Statistical Dead Heat? I don't think so