I got my first one wrong, though I admit, I only picked Wisconsin for Romney in the same way I pick an upset in the NCAA tourney. I thought that maybe Walker’s ground game would save the day.
However, there shouldn’t be a surprise anywhere yet.
In the head to head match-up, Silver is up by one over Rove; New Hampshire went for Obama.
I’m on track to be right; Obama wins.
Again, no surprises in the called states yet.
Of note, Michigan goes Obama and Florida and North Carolina are FAR too close for me.
No surprises.
I was reviewing the data and adding some additional information when I realized I put Florida in the wrong group; Florida is a “contested state.” Rove and Silver have it going different from each other.
Additionally I added my picks, the real value [updated as the races are called] and then Silver’s prediction confidence.
If you look at Silver as a basketball player and use his confidence % as his shooting percentage from different places on the floor, he has a 45.5% of hitting every “contested shot” excluding Florida. That success rate drops to 24.2 if you include Florida.
That means there’s a better than 50 – 50 chance he gets one wrong.
Not that we don’t have enough “they vs. we” going on through this election, but I wanted to set up one more; the Battle of the Maps. The darling of the Left is the most obvious contender. He’s new, young, fresh and, perhaps, most accurate. It is surprisingly difficult to find other polling outfits that actually predict the whole map. Most of them put the states into buckets leaving the hard picks as “toss ups.” So, I went with the guy that folks on the left hate; Karl Rove.
The result is shown above.
The two guys are remarkably close. Of 51 contests, they diverge on only 5. Those five states are listed up top; Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, New Hampshire and Colorado.
The next set are states that they agree on but could be wrong on. Most surprisingly are the states of Florida and North Carolina. I wouldn’t have guessed that Silver put them both in the red side. The other three, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are pretty close to a sure thing in my mind; I don’t think Romney takes any of the three. The closest state in play there is Wisconsin and the other two have been listed, so I keep those three listed separate as well.
The remaining states are pretty close to locks. If forced to choose an upset from each side I’d go with Minnesota or Nevada in the Blue and Arizona from the Red.
Interesting contest to be sure.
And I love the “Red Necks” that live here:
Nothing says “cool” as a pink Romney/Ryan sticker on a mini-van carrying a Jeff Gordon NASCAR license plate.
Posted in Elections 2012, Fun
Tagged Jeff Gordon, Mitt Romney, North Carolina, Red Neck
Turns out the Redskins are a pretty good predictor of things like Presidential Elections:
Romney, who was born in Michigan and was once the governor of Massachusetts, doesn’t have any ties to the Charlotte area. But he’s certainly well aware of the Redskins Rule. Specifically: Going back to 1940, a Redskins victory in their last home game before the election has meant the party currently in power remained in power 17 of 18 times. With a Redskins loss on Sunday to the Panthers, that portends good things for Romney’s political future.
I’ll take everything I can get!
We’re moving from “The Family” to “Welfare” in the latest installment on “The Bell Curve.”
The series has been focusing on various snapshots of impact that the wealth of an individual or family may have and then at the impact that IQ may have. Long has the argument been made that much of the disparity in America is due to the fact that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.
Perhaps it has less to do with the wealth of the family and more to do with the IQ of the family.
So, moving towards welfare.
Previously I posted on the probability of going on welfare, within one year, after the birth of the first child. I posted on this probability using only the socioeconomic status of the family. Here I show both the SES and the IQ of the mother:
The impact is significant. Even more so after accounting for the fact that a woman with higher IQ would be able to avoid the condition that would result in welfare. Yet, after accounting for age, poverty, marital status and SES, we see that IQ plays a massive role in the probability of welfare reliance.
Next, the topic of chronic welfare dependency. The data suggests see below, that SES plays at least as important a role as IQ does. However, the data is restricted to the point that makes it important to point out a note. Of the women in the study that were long term recipients of welfare, none scored in the quintile of cognitive ability; only 5 were in the second quintile.
With that caveat, here is the data:
Both the economic background of the mother AND the IQ play a part. As I mentioned in the original post, education may be the relevant influence on this topic.
Posted in Economics, Middle Class, The Bell Curve, Welfare
Tagged Charles Murray, IQ, Richard Herrnstein, Socioeconomic
A friend of mine posted this on Facebook. I’ve posted here before but I think every now and then it’s important to take time and understand what taxes are really meant to do:
Raise funds to pay for the proper role of government.
And. because we uses a system of taxation that is progressive, when we reduce taxes, that reduction will also reflect the nature of that progressive tax system.
THE TAX SYSTEM EXPLAINED IN BEER
Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100…
If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this…
The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7..
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that’s what they decided to do..The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20”. Drinks for the ten men would now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men ? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share?
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from every body’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.
So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay.
And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% saving).
The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% saving).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% saving).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% saving).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% saving).Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings.
“I only got a dollar out of the $20 saving,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man, “but he got $10!”
“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!”
“That’s true!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back, when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!”
“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison, “we didn’t get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!”
The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!
And that, boys and girls, journalists and government ministers, is how our tax system works. The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.
The “tax cut” above resulted in the rich man saving more dollars. But he was paying more dollars to begin with. Remember this when the left screams, “The tax cuts unfairly benefit the rich!”