Post Mortem: No Drama Obama, Nate and Me (November 7, 2012)

It wasn’t as close as any channel covering the election made you think.  The fact that the Presidential election was called so early, at about 11:15 PM EST by all the channels (and they are not allowed to call it before 11:00) is testament enough to the lack of real drama.  I had no doubt at all that Obama was going to win, but if I needed any early clue, it was when NBC called Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – Wisconsin! – between 9:00 and 9:30 PM EST.  Three good-sized states that had at one time been (or still were) battlegrounds, and I expected each to be relatively close, a 4 to 5 point margin.  But they were called fast, and their ultimate margin was 5 to 9.  Plus Florida was obviously very, very close from the outset – and that was Romney’s best swing state.  It was really over quite early.  “No Drama Obama” once again…the only drama was manufactured by the coverage.

I’m convinced that pundits view polls with great suspicion, and as a threat to their intuitive so-called genius.  Any number of individual polls can be wrong, of course, and are….the granddaddy of them all, Gallup, had Romney up by 5-6 points just before Sandy hit, which was 4-8 points different from virtually every other poll.  But what Nate Silver is demonstrating is that when you add polls together in some fashion – any fashion -- the margin of error goes way down.  If you sample 1,000 likely voters to represent the 120 million ultimate voters, the margin of error is about +/- 3.  But if you add ten polls together, effectively you are sampling 10,000 people, and the margin of error is +/- 1.

Pundits don’t get this.  I heard even the venerable Tom Brokaw complaining about the number of polls.  But the more polls, the better the forecast.  And this one was called exactly right.  Obama was going to win, if you looked at the polls correctly and believed that Obama’s “ground game” was as good as or better than Romney’s.  And most people believed that.  As did I.

So Nate Silver is today’s hero.  He’s been my hero for awhile!  But, to be a bit immodest, my calls were about 99.9% as good as Nate’s:

• We both correctly picked 49 out of 49 states (plus the District of Columbia).  Florida remains uncalled; I predicted Romney would win by a nose and I will likely be wrong…Nate predicted a toss-up, which I guess is a bit more correct.
• We both picked 31 out of 33 Senate races, and got the same two wrong, in fact the closest two races and the last two that were called.  North Dakota and Montana, where the Democrats registered razor-thin upsets, were both called in the afternoon.
• In predicting the percentage vote in the swing states and close Senate races, Nate’s calls were ever-so-slightly better than mine.  Ohio’s Senate race is an excellent (and representative) example….he said Brown would beat Mandel 52-47, I said 53-47, and the actual was 50-45.  Our differences were even less pronounced in the Presidential swing states
• And Nate did better on the Presidential popular vote:  he said Obama would win 50.8% to 48.3%, while I said 49.8% to 48.7%, and the actual (thus far) is 50.3% to 48.0%.
• Nate did not pick the House races…there are still 8 that are not called; thus far I have picked 410 out of 427.

Nate’s methodology is more sophisticated than mine, a regression-based model that weights different polls in different ways.  I do more or less straight line averages, with the key decision being at what point do you consider a poll to be outdated.  I’m sure Nate’s slightly better precision is a credit to his sophistication, but the differences were immaterial and barely discernible.

My crude model for when the race would be called turned out to be too conservative….instead of Wisconsin pushing Obama over the top at 1:20 AM, as I predicted, it was Ohio at 11:13 PM.  NBC was more aggressive than CNN as best as I could tell, but everyone, including Fox, called it around 11:15 PM.  That is, everyone except Romney, who stubbornly held out for another hour with the hopes of pulling an “inside straight” with the first draw being a reversal of Ohio.  I've got some work to do on this one, but I believe I was the only one who attempted to "call the call"!

Of course I have a chart that summarizes all this.  Check it out, below.

Lots of you have asked what I plan to do with www.obameter2012.com after the election.  My current plan is to scale it way-way back, to maybe a post per month on an item of interest.  And then come back for the mid-terms in 2014, heading right on into the 2016 race thereafter!  In the meantime….maybe I have to think of a new name….

I’ll be back with a few more posts in the coming days before I put the election to bed…comments welcome!

		Tom Gardner	Nate Silver	Actual
PRESIDENCY	Winner
States Called Correctly		49 out of 50 (FL)	49 out of 49
Swing states Called Correctly		7 out of 8 (FL)	7 out of 7
Electoral Vote	Obama	303 - 235	313 - 225	332 - 206 (FL to Ob)
Popular Vote %	Obama	49.8 - 48.7	50.8 - 48.3	50.3 - 48.0
Popular Vote	Obama	62.7MM - 61.4MM	dnp	60.1MM - 57.4MM
Time race is called by NBC		1:20 AM EST	dnp	11:13 PM EST
State that pushes the winner over		Wisconsin	dnp	Ohio
Ohio	Obama	51 - 48	51 - 48	50 - 48
Nevada	Obama	51 - 47	52 - 47	52 - 46
Wisconsin	Obama	52 - 47	52 - 47	53 - 46
Iowa	Obama	50 - 48	51 - 48	52 - 46
Colorado	Obama	50 - 49	51 - 48	51 - 47
Virginia	Obama	51 - 48	51 - 49	51 - 48
New Hampshire	Obama	51 - 48	51 - 48	52 - 46
Florida	Romney	49 - 50	50 - 50	50 - 49 (likely Ob)
SENATE
Senate	Democrats	53 - 47	52.5 - 47.5	55 - 45
Races Called Correctly		31 out of 33	31 out of 33
Close Races Called Correctly		10 out of 12	10 out of 12
Missouri	McCaskill (Dem)	52 - 48	52 - 46	55 - 39
Ohio	S. Brown (Dem)	53 - 47	52 - 47	50 - 45
Connecticut	Murphy (Dem)	54 - 46	53 - 46	55 - 43
Pennsylvania	Casey (Dem)	53 - 47	53 - 45	54 - 45
Wisconsin	Baldwin (Dem)	51 - 49	51 - 49	51 - 46
Virginia	Kaine (Dem)	51 - 49	51 - 48	52 - 48
Massachusetts	Warren (Dem)	52 - 48	52 - 47	54 - 46
Indiana	Donnelley (Dem)	54 - 46	50 - 48	50 - 44
Arizona	Flake (Rep)	47 - 53	47 - 52	45 - 50
Montana	Rehberg (Rep)	49 - 51	48 - 50	49 - 45
North Dakota	Berg (Rep)	48 - 52	47 - 53	50 - 50
Nevada	Heller (Rep)	47 - 53	48 - 50	45 - 46
HOUSE
House	Republicans	196 - 239	dnp	194 - 233 (8 tbd)
Races Called Correctly			dnp	410 out of 427
Close Races Called Correctly			dnp	98 out of 108