With the election rapidly approaching, let’s get all the public figures on record. I’ll present my Electoral College prediction in my column tomorrow. In the meantime, here are a few predictions that I’ve spotted floating around the Internet. Feel free to add more in the comments and I’ll update this accordingly.
Vox Day: Romney 305, Obama 233
Nate Silver: Obama 315, Romney 223 (November 6)
Nate Silver: Obama 307, Romney 231 (November 5)
Nate Silver: Obama 288, Romney 250 (October 22)
Nate Silver: Obama 320, Romney 218 (September 30)
Dick Morris: Romney 351, Obama 187
White House Insider: Romney 300+
Michael Barone: Romney 315, Obama 223
John Scalzi: Obama 294, Romney 244
InTrade: Obama 303, Romney 235
Jim Cramer: Obama 440, Romney 98
As much as I have criticized the cult of Nate Silver, I could not agree with the man more when he writes the following in his column entitled “For Romney to Win, State Polls Must Be Statistically Biased”:
My argument, rather, is this: we’ve about reached the point where if
Mr. Romney wins, it can only be because the polls have been biased
against him. Almost all of the chance that Mr. Romney has in the
FiveThirtyEight forecast, about 16 percent to win the Electoral College,
reflects this possibility.Yes, of course: most of the arguments
that the polls are necessarily biased against Mr. Romney reflect little
more than wishful thinking. Nevertheless, these arguments are
potentially more intellectually coherent than the ones that propose that
the leader in the race is “too close to call.” It isn’t. If the state
polls are right, then Mr. Obama will win the Electoral College. If you
can’t acknowledge that after a day when Mr. Obama leads 19 out of 20
swing-state polls, then you should abandon the pretense that your goal
is to inform rather than entertain the public.But the state polls
may not be right. They could be biased. Based on the historical
reliability of polls, we put the chance that they will be biased enough
to elect Mr. Romney at 16 percent.
That’s the primary difference between Silver’s opinion and mine. He puts a chance of anti-Republican poll bias at 16 percent. Even though I am not a Republican and I do not support Mitt Romney, I think it is closer to 90 percent. That still may not be enough to account for the gap between what the polls are reporting and how I expect events to transpire on Tuesday, but it does explain the difference. So let’s keep that in mind. If Romney does win, the only possible conclusion is that the state polls must be biased.
For those who wish to bring up the 2008 election, I would remind everyone that I was incorrect about Hillary being the Democratic candidate, not about the Democratic candidate winning the general election. It was always obvious that the Republican candidate – I thought it would be Pataki or a senator in the Dole mode – was intended to be a sacrificial lamb. Nor should anyone forget that Silver’s poll-based predictions entirely failed in 2010.