Obama General Discussion, vol. 4

[BigMacPhisto]

Originally Posted by digitize

In the case of 269-269, I think there's somewhat of a chance that Romney could be president and Biden could be VP, which would be fun.

Obviously, Republicans will hold the house regardless and Romney would be elected President. But what the hell happens if it's 50-50 in the Senate? It says that the sitting Vice President can't be the tie-breaking vote....

Regardless, while the odds of the senate being 50-50 after this election are extremely high, the 269 to 269 scenario is pretty unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely.

[BigMacPhisto]

On top of this, while the House is supposed to immediately vote for President, if the Democrats simply refused to show up, they could avoid the vote taking place. Under that scenario, the Vice-President elect from the Senate would become Acting President.

Theoretically....

1) 269 tie

2) Democrats refuse to vote in House

3) Senate votes for Biden by 51-49 vote

4) Biden becomes "President"

Of course, the House would eventually be forced to vote on the President before anything else. And Romney would get his way.

[digitize]

Originally Posted by BigMacPhisto

Obviously, Republicans will hold the house regardless and Romney would be elected President. But what the hell happens if it's 50-50 in the Senate? It says that the sitting Vice President can't be the tie-breaking vote....

What says that? The twelfth amendment, which outlines election procedure, says "a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to [for?] a choice". I'm not sure if that would support allowing Biden to vote or not in the case of 50-50. If it's stuck at 50-50, and can't get un-stuck... well, who knows?

Unfortunately, Democrats can't boycott a vote in the House to effectively prevent a quorum. The POTUS is chosen by the house in an Electoral College tie, but not in the form of a straight vote. Rather, representatives from each state get together, choose a POTUS (who knows what would happen in a tie?), and each state casts a ballot. Each state's vote is equal in this, and I'm almost positive that there's no chance of that not going GOP, though I haven't looked into numbers. Two thirds of states must be present in this final vote, but the constitution says that only one representative is necessary from each state. So the Democrats could only effectively boycott in states where they control all of the representatives, which I doubt is a third of states. Also, even if it was doable, it would stink of disgustingly played politics and cheating the system, even worse than 2000. Even as an Obama supporter and someone who would much rather see Biden in the White House than Romney, I would be against that sort of maneuver.

We need an instant runoff popular vote system. Badly.

[digitize]

However...



Not implausible, but not really likely either. I'd prefer a Romney presidency to what hell would break loose in the weeks following a 269-269 split.

[Moonlit_Angel]

Man, I hope Iowa doesn't go red.

(Says the girl whose favorite color, ironically, is red.)

[Irvine511]

Originally Posted by INDY500

Wisconsin is now in play.

This week.

[digitize]

For those interested in a map, this is where things are currently sitting:



The data for this are from Real Clear Politics's current polling averages. This map, of course, looks really rosy for Obama, but it doesn't tell the whole story. A lot of states have gotten somewhat tighter in the past few weeks, I believe. A lot of the polls averaged into this are several weeks old (the oldest I see are late July), and newer polls tend to point a little more favorably to Romney than do older polls. However, most of the newest polls averaged in are from Rasmussen and Purple Strategies, which trend to the right of reality.

[U2DMfan]

Rasmussen was the most accurate in both the 2004 and 2008 Presidential elections. Almost exact predictions. Can't deny that.

Intrade has it 57 to 42, Obama. Wow.

Florida is not going Blue. At least I don't think.
Romney needs 64 electoral votes according to that map. +29 for Florida.
35 is a much easier path.
Iowa, Colorado and Ohio is 33 and doable.
Could Romney get New Hampshire for 4 more?
Virginia is going to be huge as well but I suspect it goes Blue.

ETA
Apparently Obama up +6 in NH according to one recent poll.
Romney +2 in FL and statistical tie in OH according to Rasmussen.

[digitize]

I'm not overly familiar with polling companies; I've just heard that Rasmussen tends to skew right of reality, not just right of other polls. But if they are more reliable, this is a map based on their current numbers:



They don't have recent polls for Pennsylvania, but I just shaded it blue because... it's gonna be blue. Ohio and Colorado are ties right now according to them. Obama would win under this scenario with just Ohio. Romney would need both Ohio and Colorado to win outright. Obama winning Colorado and Romney winning Ohio would be another 269-269 tie (ugh).

[trojanchick99]

In 2008 I thought FiveThirtyEight was the most accurate. I like that he collects data from the various polls.

Election Forecasts - FiveThirtyEight Blog - NYTimes.com

[anitram]

Originally Posted by U2DMfan

Rasmussen was the most accurate in both the 2004 and 2008 Presidential elections. Almost exact predictions. Can't deny that.

That's not really accurate. Rasmussen was the closest when it came to the final presidential poll - meaning the last poll immediately preceding the election. They are shitty when it comes to state polls and not as reliable this far out from November.

Best way of looking at polls is to aggregate them and then dump clear outliers (though monitor the outliers to see if they're catching a particular sentiment early).

[Popmartijn]

Originally Posted by trojanchick99

In 2008 I thought FiveThirtyEight was the most accurate. I like that he collects data from the various polls.

Election Forecasts - FiveThirtyEight Blog - NYTimes.com

I always check the Electoral-Vote.com website for the polling (and editorial) commentary.
ElectoralVote

It also shows the data from various (non-partisan) pollsters. This time, in addition to the general map of the polling data, it also has a map without Rasmussen data. It also has a note explaining the exclusion ( Note about Rasmussen ). Bottom line, it seems that Rasmussen's methodology for conducting polls is a bit flawed, as well as (probably) its model of the electorate, resulting in a structural bias.

[PhilsFan]

Originally Posted by deep

K - 12 education is something that should be provided at public costs.

Workers, taxpayers should not be required to pick up the tab for higher education. I chose an inexpensive college and worked 2 jobs when I went to college. Granted my grades were not very good. I also chose to pretty much stay away from the students loans they kept encouraging me to take out. I just did not want the debt.

When you went to college, it was possible to pay for it by working while you were there. That is no longer the case. I worked 40 hours a week for the last 3.5 months with no classes to shorten my work week, and I made enough in that time to cover about a third of the tuition for this school year, and about a fifth of my total costs.

[anitram]

Originally Posted by PhilsFan

When you went to college, it was possible to pay for it by working while you were there. That is no longer the case. I worked 40 hours a week for the last 3.5 months with no classes to shorten my work week, and I made enough in that time to cover about a third of the tuition for this school year, and about a fifth of my total costs.

That just means that deep will tell you that you should have gone to the State University of the South-Southeastern North Dakota to save on costs.

[yolland]

I went to a public university in the 90s and even by then, working full-time all the way through wasn't enough to avoid the necessity for loans. And it took me almost a decade to finish paying off my (again, public university) grad school loans. In many fields in the humanities and social sciences, most professors nowadays will actively discourage students from going on to grad school in their field unless they're being offered a full scholarship (rare); otherwise, your chances of being able to keep up with your payments afterwards are slim.

[MrsSpringsteen]

Is there even such a thing as an inexpensive college these days? Don't think so.

Sorry but it really gets to sound like I walked barefoot through three feet of snow to get to school. And a little like that Romney out of touch attitude. I feel nothing but sympathy for anyone trying to get a college education these days, anyone who doesn't have wealthy parents. I took out loans and was able to pay them off relatively quickly (compared to what it takes now) and only got one $500 scholarship from my church. Luckily my mother came into some money and eventually paid off my balance (what was left of it, I think around $2500) years later. I don't even remember how many years it took to pay them off, but it was nothing compared to what it is now. Out of sensitivity I'd probably be embarrassed to say how much it cost me and my parents for four years at two private colleges.

Granted I lived at home for all four years and commuted. I also worked part time. But these days to live at home and even go to a public college/university is prohibitively expensive. Unless you're lucky enough to get a full athletic or academic scholarship.

[digitize]

I am lucky to live in a state (Texas) whose flagship public university is worth going to and has tuition around $10,000 per year. However, state funding is collapsing pretty quickly while the state is still requiring the school to enroll a very large number of students, though that number has fallen somewhat in the past couple of years. I've also stumbled into a fair amount of scholarship money, though that takes work... and it's of the $1000 here, $2000 there variety that takes awhile to add up, though I'm obviously incredibly thankful for it. I had excellent academic stats in high school and I have a high GPA now, so it takes a lot of work to get that money. And I commute, for financial reasons, which I despise... but I should count my blessings on the whole. I'm jealous of older people who talk going to my university in the 50s and paying something like $100 per year in tuition, but I'll probably not have to take any undergraduate debt with the three majors that I'm working towards. College is a tough thing to deal with nowadays.

[yolland]

There certainly aren't many colleges left that are "inexpensive" for the bulk of the students attending them. If you're from an upper middle class family and your parents are helping you out somewhat, then a regional campus of your state's public university system should qualify as inexpensive. But if you're an older student with no parental support and quite possibly kids of your own--which describes a large proportion of the students at those schools--then for you it's not "inexpensive" at all, and in fact if you look at breakdowns of student debt nationwide, that's exactly who owes most of it: community college students, regional public college students. Besides, if your background includes being a high-achieving student who attended good schools growing up (which doesn't at all necessarily mean your family's well-off), frankly you'd quite likely be bored and understimulated at such a college. (Although, many of your classmates will have a more mature and disciplined outlook on life than some of the pampered upper-class kids you'll encounter at more exclusive schools, which isn't all bad.)

[PhilsFan]

My mother (who is in her 50s) worked for the college she attended (a small public college in southern PA) and I believe actually made money while paying off her tuition. What a novel concept.

[financeguy]

Is Barack Obama a Tory? - Spectator Blogs