View Poll Results: Predict the result of the Presidential Election

Voters
74. You may not vote on this poll
  • Obama landslide (310 + electoral votes)

    2 2.70%
  • Obama comfortable win (290-310 EVs)

    17 22.97%
  • Obama close win (279-290 EVs)

    27 36.49%
  • Obama barely wins (270 + 278 EVs)

    6 8.11%
  • Exact tie 269-269

    0 0%
  • Romney barely wins (270 + 278 EVs)

    7 9.46%
  • Romney close win (279-290 EVs)

    7 9.46%
  • Romney comfortable win (290-310 EVs)

    7 9.46%
  • Romney landslide (310 + electoral votes)

    1 1.35%
Page 6 of 99 FirstFirst ... 456781656 ... LastLast
Results 101 to 120 of 1980
  1. #101

    What about FDR?

    The health/age issue makes me think back to Franlkin Roosevelt. He was first elected in 1932 at age 50 and was "just" 62 when elected for the fourth time in 1944. Modern research has shown that he was in EXTREMELY poor health in 1944, when he ran for his fourth term. Those around him, even without medical training, could see how frail and pallid he looked. In March of 1944, he entered Bethesda Naval Hospital for a complete checkup that revealed terrible respiratory and cardio-vascular problems. Those findings were not made public. And, of course that was an era before TV and it was easier to hide his physical decline.
    Last edited by hurleyfor3; 06-07-2012 at 10:13 PM. Reason: deleted content not directly related to age

  2. #102
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
    Location
    California
    Nate Silver has released the 538 forecast:

    http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes...ous-advantage/

    Lots of metrics there, but in summary, he is giving Obama an edge in the electoral college, with a 61.6% chance of winning in November. That's in spite of both Florida (where Romney has a slight edge in the recent polls, 45.9 vs. 45.8) as well as North Carolina (where recent polling is deadlocked at 45.9 each) going red in November.

  3. #103
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Location
    Chicago
    Quote Originally Posted by El_Diablo View Post
    Nate Silver has released the 538 forecast:

    http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes...ous-advantage/

    Lots of metrics there, but in summary, he is giving Obama an edge in the electoral college, with a 61.6% chance of winning in November. That's in spite of both Florida (where Romney has a slight edge in the recent polls, 45.9 vs. 45.8) as well as North Carolina (where recent polling is deadlocked at 45.9 each) going red in November.
    Latest polling data suggests that the race continues to tighten, though Obama remains the clear favorite:

    Intrade has Obama's odds of winning at 53% (down from ~60% through most of the GOP primary race), and Romney's at 42% (up from the 35-38% range generally seen since he effectively locked up the nomination)

    RealClear Politics' average of recent national polls has Obama ahead by 0.8% (45.7% to 44.9%), down from the +3% range observed over most of the past few months, with an increasing percentage of undecideds

    In terms of the Electoral College, RCP also shows several more states that had been Obama leans now in the "Toss Up" category. The President still has a 221-170 edge in terms of "Likely" and "Lean" states.

    None of this is terribly surprising, given recent economic news domestic and abroad, as well as the President's unfortunate and widely reported gaffe about the private sector "doing just fine". Another wild card is the pending Supreme Court ruling(s) on ObamaCare. Intrade currently has the odds of the individual mandate being struck down at 68%. Conventional wisdom says that this would hurt the President, but Karl Rove - of all people - makes an interesting case in today's WSJ that it could in fact provide a golden opportunity for Obama to "tack back to the center".

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...mod=hp_opinion

  4. #104
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Hot'Lanta... home of the Falcons!
    So, did the Supremes just help or hurt the Prez's re-election chances?

    -Jason "I think it helps... he can now point to this and say, 'I got something significant done!'" Evans
    Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?

  5. #105
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Steamboat Springs, CO
    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    So, did the Supremes just help or hurt the Prez's re-election chances?

    -Jason "I think it helps... he can now point to this and say, 'I got something significant done!'" Evans
    Upholding the ACA helps Obama in the negative sense that, if the law were found unconstitutional, Republicans could claim that the entire first term was wasted.

    sagegrouse

  6. #106
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    NC
    Quote Originally Posted by luvdahops View Post
    Latest polling data suggests that the race continues to tighten, though Obama remains the clear favorite:

    Intrade has Obama's odds of winning at 53% (down from ~60% through most of the GOP primary race), and Romney's at 42% (up from the 35-38% range generally seen since he effectively locked up the nomination)

    RealClear Politics' average of recent national polls has Obama ahead by 0.8% (45.7% to 44.9%), down from the +3% range observed over most of the past few months, with an increasing percentage of undecideds

    In terms of the Electoral College, RCP also shows several more states that had been Obama leans now in the "Toss Up" category. The President still has a 221-170 edge in terms of "Likely" and "Lean" states.

    None of this is terribly surprising, given recent economic news domestic and abroad, as well as the President's unfortunate and widely reported gaffe about the private sector "doing just fine". Another wild card is the pending Supreme Court ruling(s) on ObamaCare. Intrade currently has the odds of the individual mandate being struck down at 68%. Conventional wisdom says that this would hurt the President, but Karl Rove - of all people - makes an interesting case in today's WSJ that it could in fact provide a golden opportunity for Obama to "tack back to the center".

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...mod=hp_opinion
    Silver's 538 site has Obama's odds of winning up to 65% with a "nowcast" of 72.7%. That represents a slight uptick in the forecast and a substantial uptick in the nowcast over the last week (note: I have no idea what the difference between the Forecast and nowcast is).

    He's done a pretty decent job of predicting the elections, but take this for the grain of salt it is worth. A lot can happen between now and November anyway.

    Silver not terribly surprisingly predicts Ohio as the biggest swing state, with Pennsylvania and Virginia following.

  7. #107
    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    So, did the Supremes just help or hurt the Prez's re-election chances?

    -Jason "I think it helps... he can now point to this and say, 'I got something significant done!'" Evans
    On balance, I think it helps. It will galvanize Republicans, but the alternative for President Obama -- i.e., the embarrassment of having his signature legislative and public policy achievement struck down -- would've been far worse, I think.

    Also, I think it puts Romney in a spot he'd rather not be in. First, it knocks him off-message. Romney wants this election to be all about the economy. He's paid lip service to other issues when necessary (immigration, etc.), but he always tries to pivot back to the economy as quickly as he can. He can't pivot away from Obamacare now, though. He now has no choice but to divert time, energy and resources to campaigning vigorously and full-throatedly against it. Every time he attacks Obamacare, though, he re-opens himself to the response that he's just flip-flopping for political convenience. And the best thing about that line of attack for the Obama campaign and the DNC is that they don't even have to make it themselves. They can just fire up clips of other Republicans (think Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich from the Republican primary debates) talking about how Romney is vulnerable or has no credibility on this issue because he enacted proto-Obamacare legislation in Massachusetts.

    Another issue for Romney now is that his regular stump speech line on the campaign trail has been that he'll "repeal and replace" Obamacare. He's been woefully deficient so far, though, in offering any specifics as to what he'd "replace" it with. Now it's going to be much harder for him to duck that question.

    In short, I have to think Romney would've preferred the Supreme Court to strike down at least the mandate, so these issues would be, if not entirely off the table, at least a bit farther in the background and less likely to distract from the economic message that he wants to make the centerpiece of his campaign.

    With all that said, though, the Obama campaign and the DNC absolutely cannot afford to simply rest on today's win. They need to start doing RIGHT NOW what they didn't do effectively when the legislation was being debated originally -- talk as much as humanly possible about all the stuff in the legislation that people like, and trumpet today's ruling as safeguarding those things.

  8. #108
    Quote Originally Posted by CDu View Post

    (note: I have no idea what the difference between the Forecast and nowcast is).
    The Forecast is his prediction of what will happen on Election Day. The "Now-Cast" is his prediction of what would happen if the election was today.

  9. #109
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Austin, TX
    Quote Originally Posted by Tom B. View Post
    With all that said, though, the Obama campaign and the DNC absolutely cannot afford to simply rest on today's win. They need to start doing RIGHT NOW what they didn't do effectively when the legislation was being debated originally -- talk as much as humanly possible about all the stuff in the legislation that people like, and trumpet today's ruling as safeguarding those things.
    This is important, for both sides. The decision today took away the Republican's easy way out, but the repeal option is still there if the Republicans win the Senate and Romney wins. This is going to be key, regardless of whether or not republicans like Romney, because if voters are anti-ACA enough, they will do whatever it takes to position for repeal, even hold their nose and vote for Romney.

    But voters on both sides of the debate are woefully deficient in actually understanding the bill beyond sound bites. The side that can best illustrate, dispassionately and with facts and reasonable predictions, the pros and cons of the ACA will do a *MUCH* better job winning over the undecideds. Obviously, that is easier said than done considering our current political environment. But the more extreme ads and talking points on both sides of the aisle are just preaching to the choir and being tuned out by the swing voters. Perhaps those ads will get the choir out to vote where they might not otherwise, but the middle is what needs to be convinced one way or the other.

  10. #110
    Quote Originally Posted by A-Tex Devil View Post
    The side that can best illustrate, dispassionately and with facts and reasonable predictions, the pros and cons of the ACA will do a *MUCH* better job winning over the undecideds.
    I wish that were the case, but I think speaking dispassionately and laying out facts and reasonable predictions has been shown repeatedly in modern American politics to have very little return on investment.

    As I see it, the ability to win undecideds on ACA rests largely with the Democrats at this point. Unless and until the Republicans enunciate an alternative, I would have to think that their attacks on ACA are fairly well tapped out in terms of who they can get going forward - they've been railing against it since the moment it passed, and they've achieved the dissonance of fairly high levels of disapproval of the law in the abstract in polling despite high approval numbers of the individual concepts in the law when broken out. They've also lost a lot of their ammo in Roberts's decision today - if a very conservative, Bush-appointed Chief Justice is willing to uphold this law, then it can't really be proclaimed a case of massive, authoritarian/socialist overreach by Democrats anymore. I guess I don't know if many undecideds would go for that, anyway, but one of the underpinning arguments being made by the Republicans has been that ACA is an unconstitutional affront to the free enterprise system and/or equivalent to forced socialized medicine, and that's generally been wiped out today. Also, they're running a candidate who's stuck between a real rock and a hard place on the issue, given the only thing anyone knows about his tenure as governor of Massachusetts.

    Part of what's holding the Democrats back is that they're still talking in future terms for the most part, since the bill's just coming online and being phased in. If it's still law in another 5 or 10 years, they'll (theoretically, assuming the law works as they've envisioned) have an easier time defending it by just appealing to however many people are enjoying having their underemployed 25-year-olds on their insurance or have gained access to coverage they couldn't previously get or have discovered a pre-existing condition but nevertheless not been turned down. I think they're banking on the assumption that once the specifics of what ACA does and doesn't do and how it affects or doesn't affect the average person becomes known to voters through personal experience, approval ratings for the legislation as a whole will steadily rise.

  11. #111
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
    Location
    California
    Quote Originally Posted by A-Tex Devil View Post
    the repeal option is still there if the Republicans win the Senate and Romney wins.
    Since a repeal would require presentment and a new vote, Republicans would basically need to hold the House, win the presidency, and get to 60 seats in the Senate (to overcome a Democratic filibuster). I guess it's theoretically possible, but I would put that scenario in the "extremely unlikely" category. However the presidential race turns out, there could be some horse-trading in 2013 regarding how to implement and/or improve upon the Affordable Care Act, but I don't see outright repeal as a viable option at this point.

    EDIT: Wait--what am I talking about? Horse-trading? I forgot that Congress stopped doing that for some reason.

  12. #112
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
    Location
    California
    Interestingly, despite split support for the Affordable Care Act as a whole, independents already oppose outright repeal 47 percent to 33 percent:

    http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics...es-challenges/

    One would think that, after today's ruling, the numbers among independents would shift even further against the "outright repeal" approach. This cannot be lost on Romney and his advisors, so (while he has expressed his general disagreement with the decision today), he will likely move onto other topics in the coming days.

  13. #113
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Austin, TX
    Quote Originally Posted by El_Diablo View Post
    Since a repeal would require presentment and a new vote, Republicans would basically need to hold the House, win the presidency, and get to 60 seats in the Senate (to overcome a Democratic filibuster). I guess it's theoretically possible, but I would put that scenario in the "extremely unlikely" category. However the presidential race turns out, there could be some horse-trading in 2013 regarding how to implement and/or improve upon the Affordable Care Act, but I don't see outright repeal as a viable option at this point.

    EDIT: Wait--what am I talking about? Horse-trading? I forgot that Congress stopped doing that for some reason.
    Fair enough. I imagine, though, that a single party republican legislative and executive branch could still do quite a bit of damage to ACA through other legislation despite what McConnell's endgame might be.

    One arrow in the Republican quiver is to highlight that the only reason the mandate still exists (set aside the rest of the legislation, of course) is because it is another tax. Obama made a slight tactical mistake by claiming the mandate was not a tax when he probably knew that he may need to rely on that to keep it viable in the eyes of the Supreme Court. We'll see if that comes back to bite the administration. I think it's semantics, but a lot of the electorate won't see the nuance.

  14. #114
    Quote Originally Posted by El_Diablo View Post

    Interestingly, despite split support for the Affordable Care Act as a whole, independents already oppose outright repeal 47 percent to 33 percent:

    http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics...es-challenges/

    One would think that, after today's ruling, the numbers among independents would shift even further against the "outright repeal" approach. This cannot be lost on Romney and his advisors, so (while he has expressed his general disagreement with the decision today), he will likely move onto other topics in the coming days.

    I think Romney would like to move on to other topics in the coming days, but the Tea Partiers (who are already skeptical of him because of Romneycare, but whom he needs if he's going to win the election) won't let him. Killing Obamacare is their raison d'etre -- they will force him to keep the issue front and center, which in turn forces him to do two things: (1) he has to keep twisting himself into a pretzel to explain why he was for a health insurance mandate before he was against it, and (2) he has to walk a rather narrow tightope between placating the "Repeal!" crowd and convincing moderates and independents that he's sensitive to and willing to address their concerns. While many moderates and independents may not like the mandate, per se, other parts of the legislation are more attractive to them, and many of them also recognize generally that something significant needs to be done about improving access to health care and health insurance in this country. That's why, as I said above, he really can no longer duck the question about what specifically he'd do to replace Obamacare.

    Don't underestimate the importance of this, because it will require a significant shift in philosophy and tactics by the Romney campaign. So far, they've been very reluctant to talk in specific terms about anything that Romney would do as President, and not just on health care. On tax and fiscal policy issues, for instance, Romney keeps saying that he'll close the budget gap and reduce the debt by "reforming the tax code," "eliminating loopholes" and "cutting spending," but he has so far steadfastly refused to say explicitly how he'd reform the tax code, what loopholes he'd eliminate, and what spending programs he'd cut. He's trying to make the election a referendum on President Obama, not a choice between him and President Obama. The more it's a "choice" election, though, the more he has to get into the specifics of what he'd do as President -- and the more potential opportunities he hands his opponent to pick apart and criticize his proposals.

    Today's ruling effectively makes this a "choice" election on the health care/health insurance issue. No longer can Romney hope that the Supreme Court will come through that door to bail him out. Now he has to own the issue, which means more than just saying he opposes and will push to repeal Obamacare. We already know that, and we've known it for some time (his endorsement of Romneycare in Massachusetts notwithstanding). He now has to offer an actual alternative -- one with real substance and meat on the bones -- which (IMO) is not the type of conversation he'd prefer to be having.

  15. #115
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Hot'Lanta... home of the Falcons!
    I think it is worth noting that America loves to back a winner. That is why, in the wake of an election where the winning candidate gets about 50% of the vote, the candidate's approval rating generally starts in the 60s or even higher.

    There is little question that the media and the pundits will paint today as a "win" for Obama. I suspect his approval ratings will tick up a little bit for the next few days. But, to me, the more significant uptick will be in public approval for Obamacare and, specifically, the mandate portion of the law. The Surpreme Court has backed it and now the American people will get on board to a larger extent too.

    And I think that will help Obama because it will allow him to argue on behalf of something that is more popular.

    -Jason "did that make sense? I bet we see polls on this in coming days and they will show an uptick in popular support" Evans
    Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?

  16. #116
    Quote Originally Posted by A-Tex Devil View Post
    One arrow in the Republican quiver is to highlight that the only reason the mandate still exists (set aside the rest of the legislation, of course) is because it is another tax. Obama made a slight tactical mistake by claiming the mandate was not a tax when he probably knew that he may need to rely on that to keep it viable in the eyes of the Supreme Court. We'll see if that comes back to bite the administration. I think it's semantics, but a lot of the electorate won't see the nuance.
    Good point, and judging from the initial reactions from the conservative side, it appears the Republicans will be all about this "Obama lied to you and then increased your taxes" angle. Whether anyone believes that, given that it won't impact the tax burden of anyone that already carries health insurance (a substantial majority of the population), I can't say. There are some other fairly simple responses available to the Administration, there, too, including just pointing out to people that their insurance costs stand to increase if lots of people take this opportunity to freeload off the system. Or that this is another Republican idea that was already in Romney's Massachusetts plan. Whether or not they make those arguments and they're effective, again, I don't know.

  17. #117
    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post
    -Jason "did that make sense? I bet we see polls on this in coming days and they will show an uptick in popular support" Evans
    I think that not only makes sense, but is right. As much as I'd like it not to be true, being something of a political junkie, for most people this is confined to hearing on the nightly news that "Obamacare was upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court today, in a big validation of the President's agenda." And that will feed a subconscious "He's doing well" narrative for them. There will be lots of spin on this coming from the Republican side, about how they've got a great issue to campaign on now, etc. But the bottom line for an unquantifiably large number of people will be that the wind seems at the President's back on this because it just looks like a win. The fact that it's a 5-4 decision, or that there's a lot of dicta in the Court's opinion that would indicate the last 75 years of Commerce Clause jurisprudence is being looked at with an extremely jaundiced eye by a majority of the Court, or any other nuance of this decision, won't even register for most people. It's a huge W in the standings for the President, and next week we move on to something else. And as someone else pointed out upthread, had this gone the other way, the huge L in the standings for the President would have been all that mattered, too, especially since it would signal the defeat of his biggest legislative accomplishment.

  18. #118
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
    Location
    California
    Quote Originally Posted by A-Tex Devil View Post
    One arrow in the Republican quiver is to highlight that the only reason the mandate still exists (set aside the rest of the legislation, of course) is because it is another tax.
    Yeah, there might be a kernel of something there. Since that was Sarah Palin's immediate response, I agree that this will likely be a talking point.
    Last edited by hurleyfor3; 06-28-2012 at 07:22 PM. Reason: removed ad-hominem attacks and irrelevant content

  19. #119
    Quote Originally Posted by JasonEvans View Post

    I think it is worth noting that America loves to back a winner. That is why, in the wake of an election where the winning candidate gets about 50% of the vote, the candidate's approval rating generally starts in the 60s or even higher.

    There is little question that the media and the pundits will paint today as a "win" for Obama. I suspect his approval ratings will tick up a little bit for the next few days. But, to me, the more significant uptick will be in public approval for Obamacare and, specifically, the mandate portion of the law. The Surpreme Court has backed it and now the American people will get on board to a larger extent too.

    And I think that will help Obama because it will allow him to argue on behalf of something that is more popular.

    -Jason "did that make sense? I bet we see polls on this in coming days and they will show an uptick in popular support" Evans


    It wouldn't surprise me either. The vocabulary of the coverage alone can have a significant effect on perception, above and beyond policy issues. If the decision had gone the other way, the coverage would revolve around words like "defeat," "embattled," etc. Instead, President Obama's name will appear alongside words like "win" and "victory." The change in vocabulary transforms the image from one of an administration that's stumbling, lost and doesn't know what it's doing to one that's on an upward trajectory with forward momentum.

    Today's decision also helps President Obama's efforts put a period at the end of the sentence. The fight over this legislation has been going on, in one forum or another, for three years now, and the one constant throughout has been a sense of uncertainty about its future. When the legislation was being debated in Congress, there was protracted uncertainty over what form it would take, and whether any legislation would pass at all. As soon as it passed, the focus shifted immediately to the court challenges. Today's ruling wipes out much of the uncertainty. Of course, the Republicans will continue to scream, "Repeal!" -- but I wonder whether the public as a whole (beyond the Tea Party-types) really has it in them to go yet another round over this. At some point, combat fatigue is going to set in and at least some people will say, "The President won in Congress, now he's won in the Supreme Court -- why, after three years, are we still fighting the same battle? Don't we have other stuff to do?"

    We're still a long way out, for sure. But if President Obama goes on to win re-election, we may look back on this as the moment of his Presidency in which Jimmy Chitwood stood before the town meeting and said he was ready to start playing ball again.
    Last edited by Tom B.; 06-28-2012 at 05:18 PM.

  20. #120

    swing states

    Quote Originally Posted by CDu View Post
    Silver not terribly surprisingly predicts Ohio as the biggest swing state, with Pennsylvania and Virginia following.
    There's a lot of talk about swing states -- usually including such states as Missouri and North Carolna.

    But in my mind there are two real swng states -- Ohio and Pennsylvania. That's in the sense that Romney can't really win without Ohio and Obama can't win without Pennsylvania.

    I know you can construct scenarios where either happens --yeah, Obama loses Pa but wins Ohio and Florida; Romney loses Ohio, but wins Pa and Michigan ...

    In the real world, neither of those two things are going to happen. If Obama wins Ohio, he'll win Pennsylania and Michigan. If Romney wins Pennsylvania, he'll win Ohio.

    The more I think abou it, the more this election is going to come down to Ohio. I'd willing to make a reasonable bet that the candidae that wins Ohio wins the election. I could see a very slim chance for Obama without Ohio, but no realistic chance for Romney without Ohio.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •