"'It smells,' said one Obama campaign official."

Apparently she calls herself a "consultant" not a lobbyist. See, she works with lobbying firms, but she herself is not a lobbyist, but just a "consultant" to the lobbying firms.

So there's nothing wrong here.

A White House aide conceded being “pissed off” by the story, expressing concern that Mitt Romney could use it to ridicule Obama’s pledges to change Washington’s political culture. He cited several other consultants working on the reelection campaign and said, “You don’t hear stories about them so obviously exploiting their access.”

A campaign aide said: “The timing is terrible. I bet it comes up in the debate [Monday] as a question of Obama ethics. I think she is well over the line.”

White House and campaign spokesmen defend DunnÂ’s dual roles, saying that all relevant ethics rules have been heeded. Dunn left a post as White House communications director in 2009 and, soon after, doubled to the size of her firm, SKDKnickerbocker, which now employs some 60 people.

I'm not sure how Mitt Romney brings this up elegantly during a debate on foreign policy, but if he's smart he'll bring up a lot of things not exactly germane to a foreign policy debate -- like the economy, jobs, taxes, energy and the deficit -- whether elegantly or not.

Posted by: Ace at 03:57 PM | Comments (136)
Post contains 269 words, total size 2 kb.

This story is all over the media.

I could tell you other lies. But I'll stick with that one.

Here's a radio interview with the victim.

Face successfully gotten into

Sliiiiide: Obama slipped below 58 on Intrade.

Posted by: Ace at 03:19 PM | Comments (179)
Post contains 67 words, total size 1 kb.

I've got no ideas.

I hope it's not a birth certificate related thing, just because I'm fairly confident that's a dry well and will not actually be yuge.

Posted by: Ace at 02:48 PM | Comments (273)
Post contains 56 words, total size 1 kb.

I guess he was just hoping for the best.

Kind of like with the nonexistence of security at Benghazi.

Our diplomats fought for seven hours without any aid from outside the country. Four Americans died while the Obama national-security team and our military passively watched and listened. The administration is being criticized for ignoring security needs before the attack and for falsely attributing the assault to a mob. But the most severe failure has gone unnoticed: namely, a failure to aid the living.

...

Fighter jets could have been at Benghazi in an hour; the commandos inside three hours. If the attackers were a mob, as intelligence reported, then an F18 in afterburner, roaring like a lion, would unnerve them. This procedure was applied often in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Conversely, if the attackers were terrorists, then the U.S. commandos would eliminate them. But no forces were dispatched from Sigonella [our base in Sicily].

Posted by: Ace at 02:10 PM | Comments (284)
Post contains 188 words, total size 1 kb.

This is cut in that scary (compelling) RGA style. I swear, Romney used to run ads like this in the primaries; where are they now?

This one might be a little too conservative-leaning to make a good general election ad. It sort of scares me, but in a good way. Like The Predator.

But it sure will fire up conservatives. Send it around! Everything is on the line.

And I'll just sneak in another poll here: Monmouth University has it 48-45 for Romney nationally, a reversal from a month ago (48-45 Obama).

There's a lot of good stuff here.

The election remains particularly tight among female voters, with Obama earning 49% of this groupÂ’s vote to 45% for Romney. This is similar to the Monmouth University PollÂ’s split among women voters earlier this month. Prior to the first debate, though, the Democratic incumbent enjoyed a double digit lead among women. Gov. Romney holds a sizable 51% to 40% lead among male voters right now.

The Republican nominee is trusted more to handle a range of issues. His biggest advantage is on the federal budget and national debt. More than half (51%) of likely voters trust Romney on this issue compared to 42% who prefer Obama. This marks a gain from the 48% to 44% edge Romney had earlier this month. Prior to that, voters were split on which candidate would better handle the deficit and debt.

Romney’s advantage on jobs and the economy has also grown since the second debate. He has an edge over Obama on this issue – 50% trust the challenger to do a better job and 44% prefer the incumbent. This is up from his narrower 49% to 45% lead after the first debate. Romney has also pulled ahead on Social Security and Medicare, claiming a narrow 48% to 45% edge on this issue. After the first debate, likely voters were split – 46% trusted Obama more to 45% who preferred Romney – but earlier in the fall, Obama had a distinct advantage on this issue.

Romney also draws even with Obama on foreign policy – 46% of likely voters trust the Republican more on this issue compared to 47% who favor the Democrat. This is similar to the 45% Romney to 47% Obama split recorded after the first debate and an improvement for Romney since mid- September.

More than half of likely voters (56%) report watching the entire second debate and another 24% watched part of it, which is slightly less than the number of likely voters who reported watching the first debate. Seven percent of likely voters report that the debate caused them to have a change of heart about which candidate they would support – compared to 9% after the first debate. Among this group, 57% now declare themselves for Romney to 32% for Obama. After the first debate, those who changed their mind went for Romney by a larger 73% to 18% margin.

Let me stress that Romney gained from the first and second debate. His numbers on most key issues improved.

I want to stress that because I said that would happen and I want some damn credit.

Oh sure, you said it too. But I had so much on the line: blog credibility. By some estimates that's worth ten, fifteen dollars.

Mitt RomneyÂ’s personal ratings also continue to improve, standing at 49% favorable to 39% unfavorable among likely voters. This builds on the 46% positive to 39% negative ratings he received after the first debate. Prior to that event, voters were almost evenly divided on their ratings of the GOP nominee.
Voter opinion of Barack Obama has been almost evenly divided throughout the entire campaign. The current results show little change. The Democratic incumbent holds a 45% favorable to 45% unfavorable rating.

Romney's favs are higher.

Voters shifted their opinion about the two running mates since the vice presidential candidates debated on October 11. Republican Paul Ryan now earns a 45% favorable to 34% unfavorable rating, up from 38% positive to 33% negative in September. Democrat Joe BidenÂ’s rating is upside down at 37% favorable to 46% unfavorable, a larger net negative gap than the 34% favorable to 39% unfavorable rating he held last month.

Oh, so now you're 46% unfavorable?!

The biggest stat here is that Independents favor Romney over Obama by 52-33.

That's a whoopin'.

Sorry about all the poll stuff. I will turn to something else, promise.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:28 PM | Comments (191)
Post contains 754 words, total size 5 kb.

Josh Jordan, aka NumbersMucher, looks at Nate Silver's much-heralded "The Model" (it's always with a "The" in front of it) and wonders why he's assigning high weights to polls that favor Obama and low weights to polls that favor Romney.

The most current Public Policy Polling survey, released Saturday, has Obama up only one point, 49–48. That poll is given a weighting under Silver’s model of .95201. The PPP poll taken last weekend had Obama up five, 51–46. This poll is a week older but has a weighting of 1.15569.

The NBC/Marist Ohio poll conducted twelve days ago has a higher weighting attached to it (1.31395) than eight of the nine polls taken since. The poll from twelve days ago also, coincidentally enough, is ObamaÂ’s best recent poll in Ohio, because of a Democratic party-identification advantage of eleven points. By contrast, the Rasmussen poll from eight days later, which has a larger sample size, more recent field dates, but has an even party-identification split between Democrats and Republicans, has a weighting of .88826, lower than any other poll taken in the last nine days.

There's a lot of this sort of thing in the article, and obviously, I cannot quote it all, as much as I would like to.

But there seems to be a pattern here, at least based on NumberMuncher's data: Polls get weighted more -- judged as "good, professional polls" -- based, it seems, largely on whether they show the results Silver thinks they ought to show (Obama winning, of course). How else to explain this?

This is the type of analysis that walks a very thin line between forecasting and cheerleading. When you weight a poll based on what you think of the pollster and the results and not based on what is actually inside the poll (party sampling, changes in favorability, job approval, etc), it can make for forecasts that mirror what you hope will happen rather than whatÂ’s most likely to happen. This is also true of SilverÂ’s dismissal of RomneyÂ’s lead in Gallup this week. While Romney is likely not up by seven points nationally, as the poll predicted, you canÂ’t dismiss it while at the same time giving a twelve-day-old Marist/NBC Ohio poll a higher weighting than eight newer polls when Marist has leaned Obama this entire cycle.

The implication is that Nate Silver seems to be cherry-picking polls, perhaps unconsciously, thinking that a poll showing a nice Obama lead must be a better, more professional, more accurate poll simply because it's in line with his hunch (Obama wins). Polls that are incongruent with this belief -- Gallup, Rasmussen, most notably -- are weighted less because they are "bad polls" with a "Republican house effect" or whatever sort of language he employs.

So "good polls" get weighted more heavily -- hey, it's the more accurate, more professional poll, right? -- and "bad polls" less heavily and, surprise surprise, "The Model" winds up saying what Silver subconsciously directed it to say.

I have a problem with the whole "state polls are most important" thing of Silver's.

I see there being three levels of analysis here:

Unsophisticated people just look at the national polls. They don't know any better, and don't realize this is a 50 state election.

Sophisticated people look at the state polls. They understand this is not a race for the national vote, but for 50 separate contests in 50 separate states.

Finally:

Even more sophisticated people do what the unsophisticated people do, which is primarily look at the national polls, because unless the national vote is extremely close (1%, 1.5% separating winner from loser) it is mathematically very unlikely the national vote winner will diverge from the electoral college winner.

What is a swing state, after all? What makes it a swing state? What makes it a swing state is that its "political temperature," for lack of a better term, is very close to the average political temperature of the entire United States.

It's a swing state precisely because it's made up of a balance of Americans which makes it essentially a microcosm of the whole country.

That's why swing states tend to swing together. Because the same pitch that works on swing-voting Iowans will more than likely work on swing-voting Ohioans.

There are, of course, local concerns that can cause a swing state to deviate away from the national trends. In Ohio, it's often noted that the unemployment rate is actually lower than the national average (thought to benefit Obama) and that many jobs in Ohio were "saved" by the GM bailout. So it is possible (moreso than usual, I think) that we could have Ohio swinging away from the broader trend of swing states.

Still, the general rule has been that swing states go the way of the national vote and that's why they decide the election. And it's harder to understand why other swing states would be inclined to depart from broader national trends. If I can see a special case for Ohio, I have trouble seeing the same case for, say, Nevada, which has the highest unemployment in the country.

If Ohio's relatively low (yet still kind of high) unemployment rate means it's likely to break from the national trend and wind up in Obama's corner, why isn't it also likely that Nevada will flip to Romney, no matter who wins the national popular vote?

Are most of the swing states going to diverge from the national vote count? What's the precedent for that?

Ohio and the National Vote: JackStraw offers this nugget, noting that the Ohio is even more closely correlated with the national vote than I thought:

According to Larry Schweikart, the U of Dayton professor who has been studying Ohio voting for years, any politician who carries the national vote by more than 0.5% wins Ohio. This has been true for decades.

Posted by: Ace at 12:43 PM | Comments (212)
Post contains 987 words, total size 6 kb.

"When he says that, it's shows even more about his arrogance. See because what he's saying is 'It's not my fault.' See it's not my responsibility, it's not my fault. It's George Bush's fault. It's Dick Cheney's fault. It's Big Oil's fault. It's the coal companies' fault. It's the gas companies' fault. It's the fault of the Republicans in Congress... For God's sake it's anybody's fault but mine, that's what he's saying to us, he says 'Please, just give me another four years, I'll figure it out.' You know Mr. President, I'm tired of waiting for you figure it out."

Then he gets into a whole "He's never led anything in his life until we made him president" riff.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:56 AM | Comments (288)
Post contains 167 words, total size 1 kb.

A US citizen was jailed for exercising his free speech rights, in order to appease an anti-American, religious-maniac foreign movement, and thus "calm the waters" for an imperiled president.

Few seem to care.

“Nakoula was ordered detained -- held without bond -- by a federal judge, who determined he posed a flight risk,” said Thom Mrozek of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California.

Where would a guy with a fatwah bounty on his head flee to, exactly?

Via LadyLiberty1885

A commenter notes that Nakoula has more security swarming him than the Benghazi consulate.

Posted by: Ace at 10:46 AM | Comments (345)
Post contains 125 words, total size 1 kb.

A Suffolk University poll in Ohio just published. It has it 47-47, tied.

As far as favorability, it's also a statistical tie -- Obama 50/45, Romney 50/46.

The partisan split, D/R/I, is 39/35/27, or D+4. (Not 39-34, as my typo first had it.) Captain Ed just noted in his post on the CBS/Qunnippiac poll...

In 2008, the D/R/I was 39/31/30, while in 2010 it was 36/37/28

D+4 seems ballpark plausible, if you guess (as I would) that 2012 will be somewhere between 2008 and 2010.

20% of voters say they've already voted. CAC keeps noting that polls overstate how many people have already voted -- the people claiming to have voted early in polls has been, in past polls, something like nearly double the actual number of voters who have voted early. I don't know how 20% tracks with the actual numbers at this point.

Those who already voted say they favored Obama 54-41, but those yet to vote (80%) favor Romney 48-45.

The economy/jobs is rated as the most important issue, at 52%. But then, Obama narrowly edges Romney (!!!) on this score, 45-44.

It seems there's a bias towards people who say they've already voted. Either these people are over-eager to answer pollster's questions, and wind up being overrrepresented in samples, or Democrats are just inclined to bullshit questioners about their actual level of political involvement.

Over the weekend I spent an hour or two checking the polls for 2004 and 2008 to see how the races went then. Just to get a sense of how accurate the polls were.

In 2004, Kerry seemed to be slightly head in Ohio, or tied... until about right now. There was a late break for Bush. Then again, Bush had been ahead there before the debates, so it was a bit of a coming-home effect.

But in 2008, polls had a persistent lead for Obama through the entire season. The final RCP average was +2.5 for Obama -- but he won stronger than that, +4.6%.

If this is going to be a 2004 sort of year, we should start seeing a break towards Romney pretty soon.

Weak Voter Screen: If you check the poll, you'll see its only voter screen is a question asking people to rate their likelihood of voting. Anyone who says "Very likely" is a likely voter.

That's barely a screen at all, and that's what's causing divergences between polls with more involved screens (like Gallup) and most other polls.

Look, most people do not like admitting they are not interested in something all the Smart Set tells them they should be interested in. And they don't like admitting they're not going to do what they're told is their civic duty.

So there is a socially-favored answer here: "Yes, I'm very likely to vote."

That's why Gallup asks a bunch of questions to try to smoke out the bullshitters, asking if you've voted in the previous two elections, and if you know where your local polling place is. Likely voters tend to say yes to these questions; unlikely voters tend to say no.

It now seems that Gallup is one of the few polling companies that asks a battery of LV screen questions, rather than simply asking people to rate their likelihood of voting.

Reuters IPSOS, Tied, 46-46: Is this that late-break thing starting to happen?

The online survey of likely voters found Obama and Romney were each supported by 46 percent of the electorate as they prepare for their final televised debate on Monday night.

Note that this is an online survey. They try to be scientific about these things (unlike those useless "everyone just send your people to freep this poll" fake polls), but it's still not really the same as random digit dial polling.

I think they attempt a randomization, but it's all through internet users, so who knows whether that's really representative.

Posted by: Ace at 10:04 AM | Comments (227)
Post contains 672 words, total size 4 kb.

Corrected: It's 51-45, not 51-46 as I headlined. The "six" was in my head from "six point lead."

Romney loses a point from both overnight. Still seeing an anti-Obama bounce from the debate.

A poll last week claimed something like 39% of women rated abortion as the most important issue. Gallup says that's just not true-- women rate the economy and jobs as the top issues, at about the same percentages that men do, followed by the federal deficit and healthcare. Abortion is cited as the top issue by 1% of women.

There's a 1% for ya.

Molly Ball wrote in The Atlantic (link to Hot Air):

Unlike their more conservative cohorts, these women agreed that abortion is not any of the federal government’s business. But they also didn’t believe abortion rights were on the line in the coming election. “It has never changed,” Zebib said. “We’ve had pro-life presidents many times, and it didn’t change. It’s a bumper sticker. They try to divert our attention.”

Eileen touched her friend’s arm. “Most women I know, whether they’re for Obama or Romney, they feel the same thing,” she said. “It’s a distraction. That whole Gloria Steinem thing is old.”…

...

The “binders” line didn’t register at all among the undecided women.

But of course it's not really meant to. It's meant to charge up the Democratic base. I don't think Obama has much hope of winning Independents. His best play is to make the election a stinkbomb of tiny partisan appeals that Indepdendents just aren't interested in... so they stay home.

For Obama, the election is solely about churning out the base, preferably in numbers exceeding 2008. (Though that seems very unlikely.)

I keep quoting Larry Sabato's analysis from two months ago:

he data in Table 1 show that compared with voters supporting a candidate, swing voters were disproportionately white and female. They were also much more likely to describe themselves as completely independent and much less likely to describe themselves as Democrats or independents leaning toward the Democratic Party. But the most dramatic differences between swing voters and voters supporting a candidate involved their opinions about President Obama and their enthusiasm about voting in 2012.

Swing voters had much more negative opinions of President ObamaÂ’s job performance than other voters. In fact, their opinions were almost as negative as those of Romney supporters. Only 11% of swing voters approved of ObamaÂ’s job performance compared with 6% of Romney voters. In contrast, 92% of Obama voters approved of the presidentÂ’s job performance.

But while swing voters were similar to Romney voters in their evaluation of President ObamaÂ’s job performance, they were much less enthusiastic about voting. Only 19% of swing voters described themselves as extremely or very enthusiastic about voting in 2012 compared with 47% of Romney supporters and 50% of Obama supporters. And 58% of swing voters described themselves as not too enthusiastic or not at all enthusiastic about voting compared with only 27% of Romney supporters and 21% of Obama supporters.

Romney's mission is a little more complicated than Obama's. He'd like to turn out Independents (inclined to vote against Obama) and the Republican base.

Brit Hume observed:

My thought about that would be that Romney will undoubtedly run a lot of ads that add up to saying that, and he will say it a lot himself and so will his surrogates on the campaign trail,” Hume said. “I think Romney has — look, I think Obama’s record is such a burden to him that he has no real choice but to go negative and go negative hard, which to a great extent he has.”

The reason Romney shouldnÂ’t go as negative, Hume said, was to set up a contrast between him and the negativity of Obama.

“I think Romney is in a different position because when people turn to the prospect of, ‘Well OK, what happens if we elect him’ — he needs to radiate something of a positive spirit … I would just say that people need to believe that if they turn to him, he can make things better. And if he seems morose and negative all the time, he’ll fail to convey that sunny spirit. He needs a bit of sunlight in his message and I think that’s important to him. In a way that’s the game and it’s too late for Obama. He can have all the sunlight in his message that he wants. The results kind of speak for themselves.”

Which is what Romney seems to be doing, or trying to do.

Obama's running on fear -- attempting to scare the crap out of his base because he can't run on hope and change anymore, and he certainly can't run on results. So his only play is #waronwomen and #hesnotoneofus and the rest of the partisan/client group micro-appeals.

The guy actually running on hope -- hope for a real change in our circumstance -- is Romney.

Ahead of the Game: From the sidebar, @rdbrewer4 notes that Romney is running ahead of most other election-winners at this point in their respective cycles, including Barack Obama. At least in Gallup.

Politico/GWU Battleground Poll... Old news but might as well note it here -- Romney has moved into a 49-47 lead in the battleground states.

Unfortunately he is narrowly but persistently behind in Ohio.

There's a bit of math which says that if the national vote winner wins by 1.5% or more, there is barely any mathematical chance he can lose the electoral college.

Unfortunately, I think this is one of those cycles where this is most likely. Ohio is so stubbornly -- at least so far -- in Obama's corner, and that's a state Romney really does need. Without it, Romney would have to pick up some other difficult state. Although he can still win, even losing Ohio, if he picks up Nevada, Iowa, Colorado and New Hampshire. (Another possibility is if he wins Nevada, Iowa, Colorado and one of Maine's four EV's-- then he'd hit 270 exactly.)

You can play with the interactive map at 270towin.com to game these things out.

Posted by: Ace at 09:13 AM | Comments (337)
Post contains 1035 words, total size 7 kb.