If you were a bookie... Polls and bets on the 2004 elections

By how much, any surprises in the margins?

Is there a thread to analyse / discuss election results in yet?

I was just thinking about that. Where are we going to talk about this? I hate when it gets all spread out on several threads.

Want to do the honors, nimh?

Here you are ... people, we're moving! ;-)

Pennsylvania for Kerry, (CNN).

So far, no state has changed hands since 2000.

Still bad news for Bush. Why?

Kerry looks like he gets New Hampshire this time. 4 electoral votes.

If it works like that, Kerry is president.

Bush wins popular vote by nearly 4 million.

Bush wins electoral vote with comfortable margin.

Senate Minority Leader Daschle defeated.

GOP gains seats in House.

GOP gains margin in Senate.

Do ya think the Dems may one day figure out that a campaign based solely on the imagined negatives of the opponent will never be a winner?

Kerry concedes; Bush re-elected

And it's about bloody time. Take your rightful place in history with your peers, John Kerry.

First time since '88 a president has been elected with a clear majority, not a mere plurality. Democrats lost House and Senate seats and picked up no Governorships while giving up yet more ground in state legislatures. No Republican incumbent in over a century has increased legislative control coincident with his re-election. Daschle is deeply saddened.


And still, The Democrats appear disinclined to accept the simple fact that they're doin' it wrong. The empitome of stupidity is to continue the same failed course of action in expectation of improved results.

Hey Timber, Tico started this one as a go ahead and gloat place. :wink:

You people know we'll be checking off your current posts with pre-election assertions on how you were not going to gloat, right? ;-)

Check away, my friend. There's no shame in my game. :wink:

Anyway, what can I say?

<throws hands up>

It sucks. Record turnout is good news I guess. Most of the new voters going to Kerry. Any expansion of the democratic process is good. But it wasnt enough.

One point I want to pick up on tho:


True.

However, he won by a margin of 3%. That margin is smaller than the margins with which Clinton won in 96 and 92, the margin Bush won with in 88, and the margins Reagan won in either of his victories.

In short, Bush has now been elected to 8 years of presidency with the two smallest margins of victory since 1976. Of the five narrowest margins of victory in Presidential elections since WW1, Bush has two (the others being Carter, Nixon '68 and Kennedy).

A nation split down the middle.

He's also the first guy to expand help in the houses at the same time since the earth cooled. I'm considering it a mandate. I hope Kim Jong Il is too.

You are questioning whether Kim Jong Il has a mandate? I don't Kim has any doubt.

It was an OCCOM BILL landslide:

He got the Packers to beat the Redskins on the Sunday previous to election day AND Bush to beat Kerry.

Heh ;-)

Ack - I'm having trouble separating my threads. Sorry for the cross-posts. But I just posted this on the results-thread in re: to some remarks by Fox about the value (or purported loss of value) of exit polls. But since it is s all about exit polls, I guess it belongs better here.




Incompetent because the data was leaked or incompetent because of the numbers they came up with?

The numbers weren't actually so bad. I mean, the final exit poll numbers as I'm looking at them now aren't very off-target. Pretty much on-target, in fact.

The ones that came in during the day, through Slate, compiled incrementally, were sometimes further off - so you have a good point about leaking data thats still incomplete and unreliable. But not even that far off.

The problem is that they only needed to be, say, 3% off in order to end up calling the winner wrong in a bunch of races - thats what you get with a close race.

But click that link above, for example, and find what the complete exit poll data says:

National: Bush 50, Kerry 49. Real results: Bush 51 Kerry 48. Thats close enough.
Florida: Bush 51 Kerry 49. Real results: Bush 52 Kerry 47. Close enough.
Ohio: Bush 51 Kerry 49. Real results: Bush 51 Kerry 49. On-spot.
Iowa: Bush 50 Kerry 49. Real results: Bush 51 Kerry 49. On-spot.
Nevada: Bush 50 Kerry 48. Real results: same.
New Mexico: Bush 50, Kerry 49. Real results: same.

I mean, I get your point: I've seen the numbers come in here via Slate too as election day progressed. Florida and Ohio triumphantically announced here as both going to Kerry 51/49. Iowa going to Kerry 50/49. Nevada going to Kerry 49/48. New Mexico going to Kerry 50/48.

All wrongly called winners.

Yet even looking at those data, the actual percentage points weren't far off. In all of these cases (just checking the closest races that were called wrong), even those preliminary exit polls weren't off more than 2% on each candidate's percentage.

In fact <checks some more states>, even those preliminary exit poll data ebrown posted from Slate, they got both candidates at 2% or less from their actual score in 12 out of 16 states. Only in Michigan (3% off on Bush), Colorado (3% off on both candidates), New York (4% off on both candidates) and New Hampshire (completely FUBAR) was it worse. And that was the preliminary data; as said, the complete exit poll data has all those data practically spot-on.

So the lesson here is:

- Don't trust a preliminary exit poll to tell you the right winner when the race is within a 5% margin
- But trust it to be within 2-3% on each candidate's numbers 4 out of 5 times
- And trust the complete exit poll data to give you a pretty-near complete reflection of what people actually voted. Which makes these exit polls still by far the best assessment we have of voter breakdowns and motivations.


Can't cherry-pick which of the questions in one and the same exit poll you deem to be reliable and which "suspect" - you gotta buy 'em for what they are (see above) - and they come together.

Can too. Even a clock that is stopped is right twice a day.

Of course Kim has one. I'm hoping that Kim recognizes Bush's mandate. Ultimately, that was the deciding factor in my choosing Bush. (Just clarifying, not arguing.)


Yes, it's been a good week!