As has been diaried here the Yahoo blog called "The Signal" has crunched a bunch of numbers and determined that President Obama is likely to win re-election. Handily.
The methodology of the forecast is interesting. It's not based on public opinion polls. In fact, it takes very few political factors into account. It's based on facts -- mostly economic. And that, of course, has enraged right-wingers.
Diarist aaraujo outlines the factors used to make its projection:
...it forecasts the results of the Electoral College based on past elections, economic indicators, measures of state ideology, presidential approval ratings, incumbency, and a few other politically agnostic factors.
The model is the work of two economists. It compares economic data to election outcomes in each state over the past 10 presidential campaigns. The economists claim their model would have correctly predicted the outcome 88 percent of the time, or in 440 of the 500 state ballots cast over the past 40 years.
A key finding of the model is that economic trends -- whether things are getting better or worse than they were a month ago -- are more meaningful than the level state of the economy. In other words, whether the unemployment rate is increasing or decreasing is more important than what the unemployment rate actually is. Another lesson of this model is that, while campaigns and candidates matter, they don't matter all that much. Despite the varying quality and positions of the campaigns and candidates over the last 10 presidential elections, variables beyond their immediate control describe the outcome very well.
Here's how the Yahoo model sees the 2012 outcome, state by state:
A few things jump out at me from this projection:
-- in 7 states, the projection gives Obama between 48 and 52% of the vote. It has him winning in 6 of them.
-- The model projects Obama to lose Florida, Indiana and North Carolina, all states he won in 2008.
-- One of those states, Florida, is projected to give Obama more than 48% of its vote (with a 3 point margin of error).
-- The model projects Obama to win no state that voted for McCain in 2008.
-- The model projects Obama to win 303 electoral votes, down 62 from 2008.
Remember, this model doesn't factor in politics -- not campaign tactics, not issues, not polls, not even the candidates themselves. (Though the model uses Romney as the likely Republican candidate, it doesn't actually name him.) It supposedly only looks at economic facts. And those facts, as The Signal concedes, may change between now and November. Updates are promised.
This projection has generated more than 22,000 comments (as of this writing). The 20 "most popular" comments are all hair-pulling screeds. A sampling:
Where do they find the psychos to write this garbage
Yeah this is the same Media Propaganda machine that tells you unemployment is
only ~9%
THIS IS YAHOO TRYING TO TELL THE CITIZENS WHO TO VOTE FOR!!!!!
Someone's on crack ... never going to happen!
Early call = kiss of death for the socialist in chief
media loves obama. voters don't
We really have become a country of total idiots.
.....if Obama wins that means there are a lot of stupid lasses in this country....{sic}
IF OBAMA WINS YOU CAN KISS THIS COUNTRY GOODBY.
Oh the Media is asking to subvert our Constitutions, {sic}
keep this #$%$ up and there will be a mass exodus FROM yahoo, permanently
If he wins, I'm becoming a Canadian.
I didn't go through all the comments (shudder), but a cursory examination finds many reflecting this attitude:
Oblamer fools. Revolution will ERASE your kind and AMERICANS can't wait.
The Signal doesn't detail the entire methodology for this projection, and even if it did I probably wouldn't understand it well enough to offer a meaningful critique. But I still say, "Well done, Yahoo!" I applaud any endeavor that pushes the wingers into showing their true colors.