Discussion for article #227692
The Alaska Senate race seems to be a drunken brawl.
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So I guess it’s too late to make Alaska a Territory again, rather than a State, right?
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Alaska Senate Debate:
Sullivan: “Don’t you know who I am?”
Begich: “Don’t you know who I am?”
Sullivan: “Don’t you know who I am?”
Begich: “Don’t you know who I am?”
In Unison: “Don’t you know who I am?”
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There are almost no people in big behind states like Alaska and Montana. There are almost no people in the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Idaho. Rhode Island has more people in the tiny pinky finger of a state than any of those big expansive land masses. Why can’t we get rich liberal billionaires to sponsor a million-liberal move to each of those states? Koch brothers would already be conspiring if it were the other way around. To quote Michelle, “Let’s Move!” To the west!
Why not just literally call everyone in the state? With a decent phone bank, it’d take a couple hours, tops. Here, I’ll dial a random 907 area code number and show you.
Hello, ma’am. I’m doing a political survey. Can you tell me who you’ll be voting for in the Senate race this fall?
Well for starters I just wanna say that a mama grizzly like me has to think about goin’ rogue sometimes, swimmin’ against the stream and thinkin’ about what real Americans want also, and–oh, hang on, I gotta go brawl for a minute.
Okay, it was a bad idea.
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Can we devolve Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma to territorial status also?
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Alaska and Louisiana will both stay in the democrat’s hands. Senator Begich and Senator Landrieu are both natives to their states and people tend to vote for people who were born and raised in the state they are running in. There are many exceptions to that rule. That is when there is no incumbent, all bets are off.
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Louisiana is in the bag for sure. That’s why,worst case scenario,we end up with a 51-49 Dem Senate.
including the veritable Nate Silver of Five Thirty Eight
ver·i·ta·ble adjective \ˈver-ə-tə-bəl
: being in fact the thing named and not false, unreal, or imaginary —often used to stress the aptness of a metaphor
This usage of ‘veritable’ is awkward and unusual at best - it’s not like there are false 'Nate Silver of Five Thirty Eight’s running around, or that Silver’s name is being invoked metaphorically (‘He’s a veritable Nate Silver’ - though even this, the more common choice would be ‘a real Nate Silver’).
I suspect the word that was being reached for here, rather, was venerable:
ven·er·a·ble adjective \ˈve-nər(-ə)-bəl, ˈven-rə-bəl
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: deserving to be venerated —used as a title for an Anglican archdeacon or for a Roman Catholic who has been accorded the lowest of three degrees of recognition for sanctity
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An interesting point about Senate polls: If you go through the archives of polling data on real clear politics you’ll notice an interesting trend: Democrats have outperformed polling averages by an average of 3-5% on nearly every close Senate election for the last two election cycles. That’s rather significant when you consider how many Senate races are within that margin right now.
Check it out for yourself: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/
Click on the “RCP Senate Ratings Map” for 2012 & 2010 on the left side bar and then click on each “toss up” election. It’s a bit amazing how consistent the trend has been. Here are the numbers
2012 Senate: Difference between poll average and election results
Indiana: Dem +2.7
Mass: Dem +4.5
Montana: Dem +4.1
Nevada: Dem +2.8
N. Dakota: Dem +6.6
Virginia: Dem +4.1
Wisconsin: Dem +3.3
2010 Senate
California: Dem +4.8
Colorado: Dem +3.9
Illinois: Dem +2.4
Nevada: Dem +8.3
Pennsylvania: Dem +2.5
Washington: Dem +3.5
W. Virginia: Dem +5.6
As you can see, in all 14 Senate races considered “toss ups” from their polling averages (7 races in 2010 and 7 races in 2012) the Democrats out performed the polling average in every single race.
The average by which the Democrats outperformed the polls was 4% in 2012 and 4.4% in 2010. The range for all of them was 2.4%-8.3%.
Now, RCP simply posts all polls conducted for a race and averages the results without any weighing or analysis. Their final average is just the average of all polls conducted in the last few weeks before the election.
What this implies is that, in close Senate races, there are accurate polls and polls with a Republican bias only. Very few of the polls conducted fell to the left of the election results and almost none were to the left of their margin of error.
In fact, going over the “leans Dem” races shows the same results. For the five “leans Dem” races in 2012, the Dems out performed the polling average in every race by an average of 5.5%. For the one leans Dem race in 2010 the Democrat out performed the polling average by 3.1%. No such trend was seen for the "leans Republican Senate races either year.
Of note: the RCP averages were very accurate for most of the elections in 2006 and 2008.
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You are misusing the term “veritable.”
I believe that you want to use the term “venerable”
Veritable: being truly or very much so, being a lot like. (So Nate Silver is very much like Nate Silver?)
Venerable: accorded a great deal of respect, especially because of age, wisdom, or character. “a venerable statesman”
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“veritable” more @ “venerable”
Just curious, what makes you say that about LA? Latest polling I have seen has Landrieu winning the election, but not by 50%, and losing in a run off.
Neither really applies in this article.
Newly registered voters is the most probable reason for that discrepancy. Newly registered voters are immediately discounted from nearly every likely voter screen, and, by and large, historically vote Democratic. Thus you tend to see Dems slightly beating the polling once all polls start moving to a Likely Voter screen(which happens roughly about now, right after Labor Day).
Its not the only cause, nor something to rest upon, but it is causing some problems in places like Arkansas and Georgia where Dems are quite active in statewide registration drives.
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just to make it more interesting…there are 2 Dan Sullivans on the ballot in Alaska
Here’s something that is really scary about Alaska: citizens can cast their votes over the internet. That means that their computers are vulnerable to vote-changing malware, the election official’s computers are vulnerable to vote-changing hacking, and there are other security risks, such as phishing. Bottom line: grossly insecure voting technology is being deployed in Alaska AND there is no way to conduct a recount to check on the computer-declared outcome.
The hillbilly hoedown with the Palin tribe probably isn’t helping in a state with so few people living in it.
History. She’s been here before in 2002. In 2008,McCain won LA 59-40 and Landrieu still won re-election. Plus she already has the COC and Oil & Gas Lobby in her corner. She is as powerful in LA as Reid is in NV and McConnell in KY.
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