I'm all out of internet, and still waiting for TCG to get home.

Actually, according to Nate Silver it was Colorado that provided the tipping point this time.

WOOT!!!!

Though, the election coverage I was watching called Obama once the Ohio results were in. Either way...don't care.

It has been interesting hearing people's conversations post-election. I spent a few hours in a coffee shop today and I didn't overhear any political grumbling, just people happy that Obama won and that there are more liberals in Colorado than most people think.

I was on MSNBC and they called it with Ohio. Considering the abuse the state suffered with voter suppression and nasty ads, they deserved the prize. Clearly I believe we all won, even those that don't get it. I just have to take a Facebook holiday until they stop being Wrong or until I regain my natural ability to ignore.

Though, the election coverage I was watching called Obama once the Ohio results were in. Either way...don't care.

Ohio was the one that got called to put Obama over in terms of the coverage). When Nate looks at the tipping point state, he means when we rank them by winning margins. That is, Obama could've lost every state of his that was closer than CO (that's Virginia, Ohio and Florida), and he would still have won (with 272 votes); but if he lost CO too, then Romney would've won.

I kinda love the attention and adoration that has been bestowed upon Nate through this process. He certainly was my life raft in moments of doubt.

I want to have his little nerdling babies.

I kinda love the attention and adoration that has been bestowed upon Nate through this process. He certainly was my life raft in moments of doubt.

So true; so naturally this is the moment when I'm going to forward a criticism of him. Check out this page at the Princeton Election Consortium: "Feeding Karl Rove a Bug." [link] Sam Wang runs some statistical tests on how well Nate Silver's model did, and compares it to his own (and to making just random guesses). PEC's model is polls-only, and pretty much just takes the median of the most recent polls. Nate Silver's model includes many other factors, including national polls, pollsters' house effects, economic conditions and states' political leans.

Cliffs notes: In calling the Presidential outcomes, they both were very accurate, with PEC slightly better. In calling the ten closest Senate seats, PEC called ten out of ten and did even better than in the Presidential race; 538 missed two (gave Tester in Montana only a 1 in 3 chance; gave Heitkamp in North Dakota only a 1 in 12 chance), and actually didn't do very much better than random guessing.

This suggests that, when making forecasts, the features that Nate Silver tracks in addition to the polls look to have added more noise than signal. (The two Senate seats he missed were in Republican-leaning states, and he excluded a few polls, I think because of being associated with the Obama campaign rather than being stand-alone.) For making predictions, we may be better off following the polls, the whole polls and nothing but the polls.

Having said that, I think 538's more complex model has two key advantages over PEC. First, while it seems that the additional features wind up being fully reflected in the polls, when we're earlier in the campaign it may give some information about where things are likely to move. (Nate Silver gradually reduces the impact of economic variables to zero on election day; that might be a good idea for the other features too.) Second, and I think more importantly, Nate's full-time job is blogging for the New York Times. His richer model gives him an eye on many more events and their effect on the race, which leaves him (I think) better able to provide insightful, valuable commentary.

There may be a third advantage. On the eve of the election, Nate gave Romney a 9% chance of victory; Sam gave him a 0.2% chance. (They both predicted much the same most likely outcome, which was pretty much spot on.) I think Sam was closer to the truth; but I think Nate was closer to what could be readily accepted into mainstream discourse. As the quote says, a little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation. (I'm queasy about this one. I'm a numbers person and prefer the best estimate. But it may give Nate an easier time reaching a wide audience.)

Bottom line though is that all the aggregators (we can include Linzer's Votamatic and Jackman's Pollster) did far better than the prognosticators; and that gap was much greater than the differences between them. And that was just awesome.

Edit: you may now commence discussion on just whether I actually comprehend what is meant by "Cliffs notes".

Although billytea does not quite know the meaning of "Cliffs Notes," I love his brains.

Yes, when we turn Zombies, if FEMA doesn't detain us in one of the concentration camps, I will endeavor to get to Australia so I can eat his spicey brains. yum yum!

In closet news, it seems like the lady who came out and designed/sold me the closet no longer works for the company. And at the time she was new (which explains why she had to call 3 times to get approvals and what not). So when she was calling and asking for design help, apparently she didn't express that the client hates sliding doors, and mirror doors, and wants his closet completely enclosed, to keep dust off of everything stored in the cloest. Latest round of email seems to suggest that the built in drawers that I want can't be behind a door, due to shrinkage of size of drawers; I can't have half closet of double rods, quarter closet of shelves/drawers, quarter closet of double rods, due to the fact, that if I want hinged doors, the shelves/drawers structure will be the structure by which they hang the hinges from, such that, that section will be in the middle, and it will be closer to 1/3 double hang bars, 1/3 shelves/drawers (exposed), 1/3 double hang bars. And currently the talk is the doors are plain jane smooth white doors, when I wanted paneled doors, since every door in the condo has those panels to them, and plain white doors (basically mirror door without the mirror) will look ugly. Waiting on reply.

ION- I think I am becoming a morning person. This scares me. I've always been a night person. Of late, I've been falling asleep before midnight. Waking around 5am. So far today, I've found/disabled the stupid auto launch dock for my HP computer, started another 14 updates on windows. Figured out that the explorer app on the xbox can NOT play flash, and therefor can not play videos from any of the TV websites. Sat on the throne. Currently got a washer load going. And caught up in Bitches. It's 6am. I should be sleeping. I weep, because I fear I may have to give up my vampire status. Also, I need to work nights tonight through Sunday. Who knows, maybe this weekend will kick me back into night mode.

One of my favorite things about the election is the fact that Florida was such a valuable prize, courted and fussed over, and we didn't even need it to close the deal. Like the prom queen who's still fussing over her hair when it's time to go and when she finally comes down the stairs to greet her adoring public, the limo left already and everyone else is at the afterparty.