David Sedaris's charming little piece on undecided voters includes this line: "calling yourself a maverick is a sure sign that you’re not one." My wife and I had made the same point about "maverick" and have begun, with the help of friends, to construct a list of such terms--ones that, when applied to oneself, constitute strong evidence that "you're not one."
1. A maverick (important exception: NBA basketball players, who, if they say they are Mavericks, most likely are)
2. A raconteur
3. Not a racist
4. Not meaning to offend you
5. A crook
Any more, readers?
Showing posts with label John McCain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John McCain. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
Intrade manipulation confirmed
Tim Jarret noticed this story before I did: the manipulation of the Intrade market to improve John McCain's standing has been confirmed. Tim has a couple of interesting insights about the situation, and I'll pop out a few bullet points of my own:
- Intrade has institutional investors? Bwa? That term must have a different meaning in this context, but I have no idea what it would be.
- A bunch of bloggers crowed about Obama's leap up on Intrade a few days ago, but what I saw was different: the Intrade market was simply allowed to catch up with the others.
- And therefore, the lack of McCainflation created a little bubble of baseless extra confidence and perhaps contributed to the Obama camp's anxiety that its supporters are growing complacent.
- But if that's true, why are Republican hacks so eager to make the case that McCain isn't so far behind after all?
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
When McCain knows he's lying
I don't hide my love for fivethirtyeight.com, but to be honest, when I read Sean Quinn's post on the "tongue jut" yesterday, I was disappointed. Sean was arguing that McCain has an odd mannerism with his tongue that might reveal certain emotions, and I'm prepared to buy that, but I didn't find his video evidence compelling.
But THEN. This morning, I woke up to find this clip of McCain on Talking Points Memo. I tell you, it's astounding: at the moments where McCain knows he's most full of it, that lizard tongue pops out every time. And when it's not popping out, it's trying to pop out.
Check it out. If you don't find the TPM video mind-boggling, I'll give you double your money back.
But THEN. This morning, I woke up to find this clip of McCain on Talking Points Memo. I tell you, it's astounding: at the moments where McCain knows he's most full of it, that lizard tongue pops out every time. And when it's not popping out, it's trying to pop out.
Check it out. If you don't find the TPM video mind-boggling, I'll give you double your money back.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Obama's chances: an update
After I posted about the divergence between Intrade's and FiveThirtyEight's estimates of Barack Obama's chances of winning in November, I wrote to the FiveThirtyEight gang to see whether they had any thoughts about the matter. They didn't reply directly, but they responded to the issue with this very interesting post about the Intrade betting.
The other markets, while favoring Obama more than Intrade, still consistently rate Obama's chances as being lower than FiveThirtyEight's estimates, so my point is largely unaffected by this new information, but this new context is essential for interpreting my first post.
The other markets, while favoring Obama more than Intrade, still consistently rate Obama's chances as being lower than FiveThirtyEight's estimates, so my point is largely unaffected by this new information, but this new context is essential for interpreting my first post.
Monday, September 22, 2008
What are the current odds of an Obama victory?
Reader, I know not what to think!
Like a lot of other people, I have for a while had the sense that Nate Silver and friends at FiveThirtyEight.com and the gloriously impersonal markets at Intrade gave me my best reading of the winds of political opinion.
The two sites use radically different methods, but they attempt to answer the same kinds of questions, and for present purposes, the question is precisely the same: what are the chances that Barack Obama will win the election in November? (Naturally, I could use McCain's name throughout this post, but I find it easier to use the numbers for the current favorite.)
FiveThirtyEight is driven by Nate Silver's attempt to aggregate poll numbers and to interpret them based on the history of polling and election results. The site combines state and national polling, tweaking the model along the way and running simulations to estimate the most likely results given current conditions.
Intrade, however, uses the emergent collective wisdom of a market to answer the same question. In theory, the simplicity of the market might do as well or better than Silver at taking all information into account. For example, Silver has been trying to model the distortions of cellphone usage in this year's polls. Because the possibility of cellphone distortions is well known, a real-money market has the potential, at least, to account for their effects without relying on a controlling modeler to estimate them: in many cases, the aggregated crowd can be sharper than the market. (See the work of Robin Hanson for more on the power of markets in politics.)
In spite of these differences, the two ways of answering the questions have produced similar predictions, with small variations due in part to Silver's model deliberately reacting slowly to new developments. Until now.
As I write, FiveThirtyEight's "win percentage" for Obama has rocketed up to 74.4%, although Obama was a slight underdog shortly after the Republican convention. Intrade's bettors also made Obama a slight underdog at that point, and they too think that Obama has regained his status as the frontrunner, but only barely: there, Obama leads 51.5%-47.4%. (For reasons not worth explaining here, FiveThirtyEight's win percentages add up to 100, whereas Intrade's probabilities will be slightly lower.)
I do not see an easy explanation for such a huge divergence. Both sites attempt to look beyond a current snapshot to project the November result, and both attempt to use all the relevant public information (Silver explicitly, Intrade by means of the market).
I welcome correction on this, but I think the plain-language way to sum up the difference is this: the market is making a big bet that McCain will perform better than candidates who had similar poll results at this point in past campaigns.
The difference must rest on a claim about the present or a claim about the future. A claim about the present would involve something like the Bradley effect--the notion that polls will artificially favor Obama because voters don't want to admit they are voting against the Black candidate. Silver has written a series of posts discounting the Bradley effect in this election, however, and even a strong belief in the effect would not explain a divergence as sudden as what we've seen.
If the implicit claim is about the future, the logic might run something like this: we're seeing a close race, and the spectacle of the current Wall Street meltdown has directed the race in a direction favorable to Obama, but this is a bubble. That is, the polls we're seeing today are like post-convention polls, which involve a predictable but fleeting bump. Today's polls are a parenthetical remark, not the story itself.
Whatever explanation you favor, this is certain: the wisdom of the betting crowd sees something behind the numbers that favors McCain--not enough to make McCain the favorite, but enough to keep the race close to a coin flip. The divergence between FiveThirtyEight and Intrade has given us a window into the differences between analytical modeling and market mechanisms.
Like a lot of other people, I have for a while had the sense that Nate Silver and friends at FiveThirtyEight.com and the gloriously impersonal markets at Intrade gave me my best reading of the winds of political opinion.
The two sites use radically different methods, but they attempt to answer the same kinds of questions, and for present purposes, the question is precisely the same: what are the chances that Barack Obama will win the election in November? (Naturally, I could use McCain's name throughout this post, but I find it easier to use the numbers for the current favorite.)
FiveThirtyEight is driven by Nate Silver's attempt to aggregate poll numbers and to interpret them based on the history of polling and election results. The site combines state and national polling, tweaking the model along the way and running simulations to estimate the most likely results given current conditions.
Intrade, however, uses the emergent collective wisdom of a market to answer the same question. In theory, the simplicity of the market might do as well or better than Silver at taking all information into account. For example, Silver has been trying to model the distortions of cellphone usage in this year's polls. Because the possibility of cellphone distortions is well known, a real-money market has the potential, at least, to account for their effects without relying on a controlling modeler to estimate them: in many cases, the aggregated crowd can be sharper than the market. (See the work of Robin Hanson for more on the power of markets in politics.)
In spite of these differences, the two ways of answering the questions have produced similar predictions, with small variations due in part to Silver's model deliberately reacting slowly to new developments. Until now.
As I write, FiveThirtyEight's "win percentage" for Obama has rocketed up to 74.4%, although Obama was a slight underdog shortly after the Republican convention. Intrade's bettors also made Obama a slight underdog at that point, and they too think that Obama has regained his status as the frontrunner, but only barely: there, Obama leads 51.5%-47.4%. (For reasons not worth explaining here, FiveThirtyEight's win percentages add up to 100, whereas Intrade's probabilities will be slightly lower.)
I do not see an easy explanation for such a huge divergence. Both sites attempt to look beyond a current snapshot to project the November result, and both attempt to use all the relevant public information (Silver explicitly, Intrade by means of the market).
I welcome correction on this, but I think the plain-language way to sum up the difference is this: the market is making a big bet that McCain will perform better than candidates who had similar poll results at this point in past campaigns.
The difference must rest on a claim about the present or a claim about the future. A claim about the present would involve something like the Bradley effect--the notion that polls will artificially favor Obama because voters don't want to admit they are voting against the Black candidate. Silver has written a series of posts discounting the Bradley effect in this election, however, and even a strong belief in the effect would not explain a divergence as sudden as what we've seen.
If the implicit claim is about the future, the logic might run something like this: we're seeing a close race, and the spectacle of the current Wall Street meltdown has directed the race in a direction favorable to Obama, but this is a bubble. That is, the polls we're seeing today are like post-convention polls, which involve a predictable but fleeting bump. Today's polls are a parenthetical remark, not the story itself.
Whatever explanation you favor, this is certain: the wisdom of the betting crowd sees something behind the numbers that favors McCain--not enough to make McCain the favorite, but enough to keep the race close to a coin flip. The divergence between FiveThirtyEight and Intrade has given us a window into the differences between analytical modeling and market mechanisms.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Following up on Sarah Palin
Since I've already written about the underappreciated upside of Sarah Palin's nomination, I now offer the contrary view of why the relatively minor problems that have surfaced in the last few days seem to have unusual traction.
Reporters have information about candidates that they want to share but feel constrained not to. The constraint may come from ethical concerns, from editors, or from peer pressure, and it may be controversial: if you read any left-leaning citizen journalism, for example, you probably know that John McCain has said appalling things to his wife in front of reporters, but mainstream journalists have shown no inclination to recall that fact in the context of McCain's policy positions that relate to women's rights and issues. Many Republicans feel that Barack Obama has similarly been let off the hook for statements he and his proxies have made.
Now may observers are noting that the press seems unusually tenacious in examining Sarah Palin. I've seen some potential explanations and can imagine others, from sexism to religious bias to media resentment.
I suspect something a little different: my guess is that reporters have been struggling for a while with how to convey the fact that John McCain has been screwing up major points of foreign policy, making impetuous decisions, and generally exhibiting a lack of managerial control. This information dribbles out here and there, but no story has brought it all together in the way that the Palin appointment has.
On the heels of a Democratic Convention that, among other things, displayed the Obama team's formidable managerial and logistical skills, the Palin appointment highlighted McCain's impulsive hotheadedness in a way that had nothing directly to do with foreign policy. Suddenly, reporters who felt they could not ethically say, for instance, that McCain's reaction to the Georgian crisis was ludicrously belligerent and ill-considered, could say instead that it seems awfully strange to choose a Vice President at the very last minute with very little information in hand.
Hence the McCain campaign's furious efforts to defend the vetting process--a process that, after the announcement of the result, seems much less important than McCain's alarmingly shaky grasp of the geography and ideologies of the Middle East. Everybody involved understands that the argument over the vetting process is the publicly acceptable proxy for the argument over McCain's stability.
I could be wrong about this case, but I am more confident in the general assertion that many times the press seems hung up on a relatively minor political story, we are seeing journalists attempt to convey something they've been uncomfortable about keeping quiet.
Reporters have information about candidates that they want to share but feel constrained not to. The constraint may come from ethical concerns, from editors, or from peer pressure, and it may be controversial: if you read any left-leaning citizen journalism, for example, you probably know that John McCain has said appalling things to his wife in front of reporters, but mainstream journalists have shown no inclination to recall that fact in the context of McCain's policy positions that relate to women's rights and issues. Many Republicans feel that Barack Obama has similarly been let off the hook for statements he and his proxies have made.
Now may observers are noting that the press seems unusually tenacious in examining Sarah Palin. I've seen some potential explanations and can imagine others, from sexism to religious bias to media resentment.
I suspect something a little different: my guess is that reporters have been struggling for a while with how to convey the fact that John McCain has been screwing up major points of foreign policy, making impetuous decisions, and generally exhibiting a lack of managerial control. This information dribbles out here and there, but no story has brought it all together in the way that the Palin appointment has.
On the heels of a Democratic Convention that, among other things, displayed the Obama team's formidable managerial and logistical skills, the Palin appointment highlighted McCain's impulsive hotheadedness in a way that had nothing directly to do with foreign policy. Suddenly, reporters who felt they could not ethically say, for instance, that McCain's reaction to the Georgian crisis was ludicrously belligerent and ill-considered, could say instead that it seems awfully strange to choose a Vice President at the very last minute with very little information in hand.
Hence the McCain campaign's furious efforts to defend the vetting process--a process that, after the announcement of the result, seems much less important than McCain's alarmingly shaky grasp of the geography and ideologies of the Middle East. Everybody involved understands that the argument over the vetting process is the publicly acceptable proxy for the argument over McCain's stability.
I could be wrong about this case, but I am more confident in the general assertion that many times the press seems hung up on a relatively minor political story, we are seeing journalists attempt to convey something they've been uncomfortable about keeping quiet.
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