In his final forecast, Nate Silver now projects President Obama's margin of victory to be two or three percentage points in the popular vote, approximating the margin that George W. Bush achieved in defeating John Kerry in 2004. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytime...ains-for-obama-leave-romney-with-longer-odds/
Actually every reputable model with a track record is giving similar forecasts. http://www.denverpost.com/politics-...ectoral-college-predictions-have-obama-ahead/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill Shill A shill, plant, or stooge is a person who publicly helps a person or organization without disclosing that he has a close relationship with that person or organization. Shill typically refers to someone who purposely gives onlookers the impression that he is an enthusiastic independent customer of a seller (or marketer of ideas) for whom he is secretly working. The person or group who hires the shill is using crowd psychology, to encourage other onlookers or audience members to purchase the goods or services (or accept the ideas being marketed). Shills are often employed by professional marketing campaigns. Plant and stooge more commonly refer to any person who is secretly in league with another person or organization while pretending to be neutral or actually a part of the organization he is planted in, such as a magician's audience, a political party, or an intelligence organization
Great, more namecalling. I wonder why you don't call the right-wing posters on the forum the same names though?!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill Shill A shill, plant, or stooge is a person who publicly helps a person or organization without disclosing that he has a close relationship with that person or organization. Shill typically refers to someone who purposely gives onlookers the impression that he is an enthusiastic independent customer of a seller (or marketer of ideas) for whom he is secretly working. The person or group who hires the shill is using crowd psychology, to encourage other onlookers or audience members to purchase the goods or services (or accept the ideas being marketed). Shills are often employed by professional marketing campaigns. Plant and stooge more commonly refer to any person who is secretly in league with another person or organization while pretending to be neutral or actually a part of the organization he is planted in, such as a magician's audience, a political party, or an intelligence organization
Depends how you define "reputable" Jim Cramer: Obama Is Going To Obliterate Romney In A Historic Landslide The Washington Post asked a bunch of pundits/gurus/big-names for their electoral predictions. There's a big list of folks, and almost all see Obama winning. Among the names on the list. Jim Cramer, who has a SUPER aggressive Obama call. Whereas most folks see Obama just moderately getting over the 270 mark, he sees Obama winning 440 electoral votes, with 55% of the vote. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/jim-...1#ixzz2BISkPbq1
About Nate Silver Silver's final 2008 presidential election forecast accurately predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states as well as the District of Columbia (missing only the prediction for Indiana). As his model predicted, the races in Missouri and North Carolina were particularly close. He also correctly predicted the winners of every U.S. Senate race. The accuracy of his predictions won him further acclaim, including abroad,and added to his reputation as a leading political prognosticator. And Silver talked about Cramer's prediction as well, he said "Jim Cramer says Obama will win 440 electoral votes. 538 model puts chances of this at: 0.004% (n.b. we use heavy-tailed distributions)"
averaging slanted polls is silly. even axelrod said they will not do as well as 2008. therefore a large percentage of the polls silver was using in his models were garbage... garbage in / garbage out. additionally, I read silver was a laughingstock in 2010 and was one of the last people to recognize the gop victory.
Read this http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytime...-have-no-history-of-consistent-partisan-bias/ And you are wrong about 2010 as well. "Our forecasting model, which is based on a consensus of indicators including generic ballot polling, polling of local districts, expert forecasts, and fund-raising data, now predicts an average Republican net gain of 54 seats (up one from 53 seats in last night's forecast), and a median net Republican gain of 55 seats. These figures would exceed the 52 seats that Republicans won from Democrats in the 1994 midterms. In final vote tallys as of December 10, 2010, the Republicans had a net gain of 63 seats in the House, 8 more than the total predicted on election eve though still within the reported" If anything, his predictions tend to be more conservative than other forecasts.