I don't know what to make of this, except that this guy is way, way into analyzing this campaign. I'm talking google maps of the candidates' itineraries to try to figure out what their internal polls are telling them. And much, much more. He thinks McCain is going to win. At a minimum, I think anybody planning to, say, drink themselves to death if McCain loses should put it off until at least tomorrow.
I will say, I do have an intuition that Pennsylvania will be closer than the polls say. OTOH I am almost always wrong about these things. I'm afraid I think the same about Ohio. I will stop now. This is based on my thought that saying "Coal sucks and BTW you guys are a bunch of racist, gun-clinging, Jesus shouters" can't do you any good. That may, however, be old politics. Now I'm really done.
Another thought. CDOs, MBSs, CDSs and so on are a lot more complicated than polls and the people working on them a lot smarter and paid a lot more. And yet, it appears they f*%$ed up their models so badly (default risk, covariance risk) that they helped bring about a full on financial catastrophe. So could the polls be hugely wrong? Yes, they could.
I wasn't totally certain about the polls either, but they proved very much on target; if anything, they underpredicted Obama's support. For the two states you mentioned, PA went D+11 when the final polls predicted D+8; OH went D+4 when the polls said D+3. The other states were pretty much on target too; 4 points off in IA, 1 in CO, 3 in NM, 1 in FL. No real surprises at all.
I read that guy's rant and it sounded a dream and/or propoganda. You gotta think with your head, not your heart.
Posted by: rids | November 05, 2008 at 01:06 AM