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Coming to a Theater Near You: Oregon-- Swing State or Crazy, Hippie Commune?

By The GroupNewsBlog


As we sit here, just before the Oregon Primary-- folks are wondering, "What the heck is with those Oregonians?"

Blue Oregon gives us some great background info and numbers to get to know this quixotic state a bit better.

 

The
blog FiveThirtyEight.com - dedicated to the mathematics of presidential
politics - has some answers to that question. (Or as they put it,
"Oregon: Swing State or latte-drinking, Prius-driving lesbian commune?")

There
are two ways to be a swing state. One is to have a lot of moderates.
That doesn't really describe Oregon; a moderate state like Ohio would
never pass an assisted suicide law. The other way is to have both a lot
of conservatives and a lot of liberals, who happen to roughly balance
one another out. Oregon is one such state.

Digging into the math,
they explain that Oregon's Kerry voters were the most liberal Kerry
voters in the country; while Oregon's Bush voters were the most
conservative Bush voters in the country.

h/t to MikeS.of DAJapan (my favorite Oregon voter) Keri of Blue Oregon and five.thirtyeight.com

538.com

The site is a must visit for primary junkies and number crunchers. poblano (blogger at DKos as well) does an amazing job. Such an amazing job that in a world full of punditry, pollsters and predictions, poblano -one of those DFH bloggers who sits in his pajamas for days on end- was singled out by members of the TradMed for the job he has been doing:

Mystery Pollster
THE POBLANO MODEL
by Mark Blumenthal
Thu. May 8, 2008

Over the last week, an anonymous blogger who writes under the pseudonym Poblano did something bold on his blog, FiveThirtyEight.com. He posted predictions for the upcoming primaries based not on polling data, but on a statistical model driven mostly by demographic and past vote data. His model predicted a 17-point victory for Barack Obama in North Carolina and a 2-point edge for Hillary Rodham Clinton in Indiana.

Critics scoffed. Most of the public polls pointed to a close race in North Carolina. Looking back at Poblano's efforts in Pennsylvania, pollster Dick Bennett decried the models as "stepwise regression run amok." Slate's Mickey Kaus predicted failure for "a sophisticated model that ignores... what's been happening in the campaign. Like Rev. [Jeremiah] Wright."

But a funny thing happened. The model got it right.
[...]
Moreover, the predictions were more accurate than any of the pollsters' results, as indicated by the graphic below (modified from a chart created by Brian Schaffner of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies).
[...]
http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/mp_20080507_8254.php

And poblano's follow-up on West Virginia?

Clinton 67.4%
Obama 28.6%

The actual result?

Clinton 67%
Obama 26%

Amazing.

Be sure to visit to see what's in store for tomorrow: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

[/end shameless plug for poblano's blog]
____________________
The "Dream Ticket" is a Death Trap!

By SJerseyIndyMay 19, 2008 - 9:55am