Tag Archives: Karl Rove

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.

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.