And I think I'm done with it all

I didn't sleep again last night, and it is time for me to move on emotionally.

Having looked at Florida I think I know what happened, and it probably happened nationwide.  I do not think it was massive vote fraud.  There was definitely fraud in Miami-Dade which turned Florida to Obama.  But there is a reason we say "win beyond the margin of fraud".  We didn't win by enough.  This allowed the votes of a single large Democrat county to manipulate the vote totals enough to swing the election.  I suspect this occurred in all the rest of the swing states.  For future reference, if a Republican wants to win in Florida, he needs to win by over 500,000.

So what went wrong?  Romney turned out enough votes in every county to exceed McCain's numbers.  But he didn't exceed by enough.  Whether or not this was a failure of the ORCA program, or a failure of the campaign, I can't tell you.  I don't think it matters.

We don't have enough votes to win a national election, and I don't think we ever will.  The Democrats have their core votes who they have proven able to turnout as needed in an election.  Our core votes appear to be barely enough to match them, but not by enough.  And not enough to overcome election tricks and fraud to which they have no moral objection, but we do.

I actually believe that the Rasmussen month party ID poll is correct.  Republican identification is 4 points higher than Democrat identification.  The problem is that they have enough certain voters to produce a D+6 electorate.  This is now the second election that it has occurred.  Republicans can only get about 33% of the electorate to the polls, the rest of us don't vote.

There is no specific block of voters that sat out.  SoCans, FiCons, and Hawks all turned out at expected levels.  But they aren't enough.

The problem is the less engaged low information voters.  They simply won't vote for Republicans.  The culture and the media have made it such that our beliefs and values are mocked and ridiculed, and that matters.  These voters are shaping their political opinions by watching The Daily Show.  Principled positions that are important to members of our coalition are considered worthy of contempt.  Gay marriage and antisemitism are now the cultural norms, leading us to loss of freedom and a more dangerous world.

I fully expect that with this loss the Republican party will now begin to pander to client groups in attempts to woo them into voting for us.  This will be ultimately futile.  It will shatter the coalition and enable the Democrats to further consolidate their voting blocks with these groups.  The media and the culture are our enemy, and we can't win.  We have no way of making free market capitalism attractive to the Honey BooBoos of the country.  Not to mention principles positions on the sanctity of life.

On the pro-life position, we have lost.  Infanticide is now considered a cultural norm, and anyone who believes that the brutal mutilation and murder of an unborn infant in the womb is just a neanderthal who doesn't understand women's health issues.  Again the culture has driven us to this point.  Young women under 40 will actually vote to keep their right to murder the child of an unplanned pregnancy over being employed.

At the end of the day, we just aren't hip and cool.  The Jay-Zs and Kelly Clarksons of the world are determining who the rest of those voters will vote for.  It isn't going to be us.

So now I am going to disengage and try to live my life in some level of comfort.  I feel an acute sense of betrayal by my fellow citizens.  Since there is no place else to go, I will have to try and hunker down into a shell and try to drown out the noise.  If the American people prove at some point in the future that they are willing to take up the mantel of the principles they were gifted, then perhaps I will reengage.  But I doubt they will.

It is worth remembering that Jeffersonian theory that the citizens own the State, may be the core principle of our founding, but it is not typical in the history of mankind.  Statist ownership and control of the citizens is the normal way human governments have been established, either through monarchies, tyrannies, or bureaucracies.  It is not surprising that our country will slowly march toward Statism.  It is the typical choice, and can be seen in the voting choices in France and the UK.

So if that is the choice we have made, there is nothing I can do to stop it.  I have maybe 30 years left in my life, I'm going to try and enjoy them as much as I can.  And try to pretend that politics are unimportant.

I'm still working numbers, but...

I can tell you where fraud occurred if it did.  There are only 1 county where Romney under performed McCain significantly.

Miami-Dade - 92% of McCain - 28,949 vote drop

In all other counties, Romney hit at least 97% of McCain's numbers. He exceeded them by a lot in other counties St. Johns and Sumter were up 113% and 132% respectively.

First odd thing

This is going to take time, so be patient.  I have a lot of data to input into a spreadsheet, and I'm working out how to manipulate the data to find what I want.  But let me give you a tidbit.

So far, I've done a couple counties, working in alphabetical order.  This includes 2 Democrat strong holds (Alachuha and Broward) and a Republican (Brevard, my home county).  I also did Miami-Dade because I was curious regarding them taking so long to close the polls, and reporting late.

So far, what I am finding is that Romney matched the McCain numbers in all the counties, 100% to 103%.  This includes Broward County.

The exception is Miami-Dade.  Romney hit 92% of McCain's number, with a drop of 29,900 votes.  Obama also over performed picking up 39,000 votes over 2008.  This is a 70,000 vote swing, and swings the election as we stand today.

Now Miami-Dade is next door to Broward, but Broward has a larger percentage of Democrats.  So even though Miami has more Republicans than Broward, less of them turned out to vote. 

Meanwhile Obama matched his 2008 numbers in Broward, but dramatically over-performed in Miami-Dade 101% to 108%.  This despite the fact that Broward has a much higher percentage of Democrats, 53% to 44%.  The counties are about the same size and had almost identical participation rates.

I have a lot more counties to enter, so this will take awhile.  But I wanted to give you an idea of what I am seeing so far.

Was it Stolen?

I hate going down a birther road, but yes I believe the election was stolen, and the implications of that are very bad.

First of all, Obama received 10 million less votes than he did in 2008.  The part that is unbelievable is that Romney received 3 million less votes than McCain.  At the end of the day, Obama won in the 4 critical swing states by 500,000 votes.

But is is worse than that.  We can look at who voted.  By examining the number of Independents and their preference shift among actual voters, we know that 5 million Independents changed their votes from Obama to Romney.  So Romney started the day 2.5 million votes ahead of where McCain was in 2008.

This means that 5.5 million Republican voters are not accounted for.

They didn't show up at the polls, or their votes were not counted.  We know now that no subgroup of the coalition decided to sit out.  So the current attempts to blame the SoCons are stupid.  All of our groups showed up to vote at the rates they did in 2008.  For this to be true over 10% of Republicans needed to decide not to vote this year, who did vote in 2008.

Does that make any sense?

In fact, it is even worse, we know for a fact that heavy GOP counties were swamped all day.  We watched all day as Pasco County Florida was showing huge increases in GOP voters over the 2008 numbers.

In Virgina, with 69% of the precincts in, Romney held a 6% lead.  Yet once a small number of counties reported, that lead disappeared.


If the vote drop off occurred, it occurred in a very small number of counties.  It was not visible nationwide.

I contend that you can not get a 10% drop off in GOP turnout without it being noticeable during the GOTV effort, measures of enthusiasm in polling, or visibly lower turnout in GOP leaning precincts.

I know you don't want to believe such a thing is possible.  You don't want to think that the Obama campaign would engage in such blatant election fraud.  But these are the same people who ran Fast and Furious without regard for the cost in human lives, turned off their credit card verification system to allow fraudulent donations, and allowed CIA operative in Libya to die because it was politically inconvenient.  Do you really think that massive election fraud is something they wouldn't do?

If this is true, then we have some hard things to consider.

First of all, we are now needlessly fracturing our coalition pointing fingers at people for not voting.  Second, we are making an assumption about the make up of the American public that is not true.  We are going to modify our party and message to appeal to a group of individuals who do not represent the majority of the population.

Most difficult to believe is that we are living in Venezuela where our elections are merely for show, and the people in charge of the Governments decide who will win elections.  We become wards of the State, which is the aim of those who stole this election.

So how can this be proved?

I am going to start by looking at a few key counties in Florida.  What I want to see is the voter registration numbers by party, and then compare them to the actual votes received.  Theoretically, if this were to be done for all counties in Florida, we could see where the fraud occurred. Comparing the votes Romney received to the strike lists would show that in specific counties Romney received something like 50% of the Republican vote (picking a number out of the air) while we know that nationwide he received 95% of the Republican vote.  To really get to the answer, we would need to get the registration books, which might be possible through Freedom of Information act.  Those show who actually voted, by name, and their party.

The media will not pursue this.  This will take citizen journalists working in every state.

Not at all what I expected

So obviously, my predictions were all wrong yesterday, mostly because no one saw the electorate really being D+6.  I still can't get my head around the fact that Romney received less votes than McCain, after being spotted 2.5 million Independent votes.

This was a turnout election that wasn't.  The lack of turnout also sank every Senate candidate, with the exception of Fischer and Heller.  At least those were the ones I said were at 100%, saving a tiny little bit of face.

One tiny nugget though.

I plugged the actual partisan split of the election in my model, and it would have predicted Obama 49.22 to Romney 47.68.  While it isn't the 50-48 that CNN has up it's web site, it is better than the 48.8 - 48.1 that RCP was projecting, and a lot better than the 2 point Romney win Rasmussen was predicting.

So in the end, there may be some value to this model.  All you need to know is what the turnout will be.  If I do this again, I will probably pay more attention to the reported partisan split and use an average of those to provide one of the model results.

Not that I am in much of a mood to be doing this again.  I think we have turned a corner in the country, and I am very worried about what that means.

I don't really plan to keep using this blog.  I have nothing really to say of much value now that the election is over.  So thanks everyone for putting up with me for the last month.

November 6, 2012 - My Final Prediction

If you haven't voted yet, why are you reading this?  Go vote!

I will not be doing any more poll averages after this, even with final polls that will drop today, like Fox.  I'm going with the final polls that have been released so far, and making my predictions.

Polls included:

Tracking Polls
R+1 - Rasmussen Daily Track
R+1 - Gallup
O+1.6 - IBD/Tipp
O+3 - ABC/WaPo

Others
R+1 - Battleground
O+3 - Pew
Even - CNN/ORG
O+0.005 - NBC/WSJ
Even - Monmouth

O+0.51% - Current RCP Average
O+1.40% - Average using the 2008 turnout model
R+1.52% - Average using the D+3 turnout model
R+3.85% - Average using the 2010 turnout model
R+3.92% - Average using the 2004 turnout model
R+7.02% - Average using the Rasmussen Party ID turnout model

Average Democrat advantage across all polls: D+5.00
Average Independent support for Romney across all polls: +8

I thought long and hard about including the CNN poll in the final analysis, and in the end decided I would do so.  It heavily favors Romney, but I think it helps better capture the Independent support Romney has.  For most of these polls I have posted in depth analysis, and I don't need to revisit those.

As I said before, I am offering three election scenarios.  D+3, Even, and the Rasmussen Party ID.

D+3:  (likelihood 10%) One of the reasons that I think the pundits and pollsters have been expecting a D+3 turnout this year is that looking at 2008, the Dems turned out at D+2, while the Republicans were at R-5 over 2004.  I believe the thinking is that the Dems will still be able to turnout their base and execute their election strategy, but the Republicans will bring their base back to almost 2004 levels.  I believe that this is the Romney campaign's turnout model.  For weeks now, the only cold water that I have had thrown on my expectations has been from the campaign itself.  I keep thinking this will be a blowout, then they leak some internals showing them barely ahead in Ohio.  However, from their perspective this makes complete sense.  They are still polling, and must apply a turnout models to determine the results.  They have to assume that their competition will be able to execute their turnout strategy as well.  You can't go into a turnout election assuming the Democrats won't turn out.  Having said all of that, I think they have over estimated the Democrat's ability to turn out their base.  The early voting numbers are down from 2008, and all of the campaigning on the other side has been designed to appeal to the base.  Obama has made no effort to appeal to the Independents or undecideds.  On the other hand, I think the GOP has underestimated the enthusiasm of their base.  The size of the crowds at rallies has caught them by surprise, as has the number of volunteers.

Using this model Romney will win 49.21% to 47.69%

With this 1.52% win, Romney will take FL, VA, CO, NH, and OH for 279 Electoral Votes.

Even: (likelihood 65%) I view this turnout model to be the most likely.  Obama has a small lead in early voting that is overwhelmed by GOP turnout on Tuesday.  Obama is still able to get his core supporters to the polls, but it isn't enough to compensate for a very fired up GOP base and the Independents.  One factor that everyone is missing is the Evangelical vote.  As I noted in the IBD/Tipp poll, religious votes are favoring Romney by a large number.  This block is able to produce 25 million votes for the GOP, when it votes.

One of the things that everyone misses that the most played commercial of the Obama campaign is footage of Romney saying that he opposes Roe v Wade and will defund Planned Parenthood.  This might be a good commercial for the Obama base and the "War on Women", but it also drives evangelicals to the polls and makes them enthused to vote for Romney.  This ad may end up being the worst decision of the Obama campaign.

Using this model Romney will win 50.38% to 46.52%

With this 3.85% win, Romney will take FL, VA, CO, NH, OH, WI, IA, and PA for 315 Electoral Votes.
 
R+4.2: (likelihood 25%) This is the turnout to end all turnouts.  The irony is that all it take to believe this model is to believe the 3 month average of a poll of 45,000 respondents with a MOE of 1, is actually correct.  The average of the Rasmussen Party ID poll for the last 3 months is R+4.2%.  Even Gallup is finding that R+3 is possible, with leaners.  In this turnout model the GOP gets all of the self identified Republicans, and the reports that Obama has been cannibalizing his election day voters turns out to be true.  Turnout among Democrats is way down from 2008.

Using this model Romney will win 51.96% to 44.94%

With this 7.02% win, Romney will take FL, VA, CO, NH, OH, WI, IA, PA, MI, NV, OR, MN and ME-2 for 355 Electoral Votes.

Final Senate Predictions

I spent 40 minutes in line this morning to get into my polling place in one of the reddest counties in Florida.  When I arrived 10 minutes after the polls opened there were already 120 people in line ahead of me.  When I got to the front of the line there were 100 people behind me.

By comparison, in 2004, there were 20 people in line when I arrived at the polls.  2004 was an election with an Even turnout.

I will be making my final national election prediction in the next post, but I want everyone to understand that I am basing this prediction on an Even turnout.  If turnout is D+3 then some of these seats, like Wisconsin, won't fall to us.  But I view any D+ result to be unlikely right now.  On the other hand, if we have an R+5.8 results, then every competitive seat will be won by the Republican.  These races are very dependent on turnout.  In all races but two, there will be no Obama/GOP Candidate voters, but there will be Romney/Dem Candidate voters.  GOP turnout is critical to lifting these candidates to victory.  Romney will run ahead of the numbers for these candidates.  The only exception to this is Heller in Nevada and Brown in Massachusetts.  Both will out perform Romney in their races.

Races we will win

• Nebraska 100% -  With GOP enthusiasm where I think it is, Kerrey has no chance of winning this race.  He was close in one poll, but that poll assumed Democrat enthusiasm that isn't there.
• Montana 80% - Rehberg is ahead by 4 in the latest poll and almost at 50%.
• Nevada 100% - Heller remains well ahead, even with Obama leading in the polls there.  This race is still over.
• Wisconsin 90% - Romney is looking very strong in this state, and is confident of winning it.  That means Thompson will win too
• North Dakota 90% - With GOP turnout, Berg will win this.

Races where it is competitive

• Indiana 60% - I still think Mourdock will win this, but polling shows him down.  I have a hard time believing that Romney will get the GOP turnout he does, but Mourdock loses.
• Massachusetts 60% - All polling now shows Brown with a small lead of 1 or 2 points.
• Virginia 70% - Romney is winning this state, no question about it.  The question is by how much.  If turnout is high, Allen will win.  If Romney wins by his margin with NoVa Independents then Allen will have a harder time.
• Ohio 60% - After looking deeply into Ohio, I think Mandel will win this race.  The polls are just not telling the true story, and Brown needs the early votes just like Obama does.  Those votes aren't there.  Mandel is polling behind Romney by about 2 points, so with a Romney win of 5% or so, Mandel will also win.
• Pennsylvania 60% - Romney pulled over 30,000 at his event in Bucks County.  Smith has been blanketing the airwaves in PA for months.  I think this race looks a lot like Toomey's in 2010, and Smith gets a 2% win.
• Missouri 50% - Similar to what is going on elsewhere, I think Akin will win this.  Romney holds a commanding lead in the polls, McCaskill is really disliked in the state, and the evangelicals are going to turn out.

Races we will likely lose

• Florida 20% - Mack might pull this one out.  All the polls show Nelson leading by about 5.  But if Romney can win by 7 to 10 points, then he could pull Mack with him.
• Michigan 10% -  No polling, but I see no reason to believe Hoekstra can win.
• Maine 10% - The Independent will win this race.  He could decide to caucus with the GOP, especially if it means being in the majority.
• New Mexico 10% - No change, I think Wilson will lose.
• Connecticut 10% - I'm seeing no evidence that McMahon is going to close the deal.  And she could end up with Dems and Independents voting against her to keep the Senate out of GOP hands.  I think the unpopularity of Romney in the East that Gallup showed makes this a hard seat to win.

Probability of at least a tie in Senate = 95.1%
Probability of winning the Senate = 87.5%
Most likely outcome = 9 wins

Final prediction GOP wins 9 of these races and holds the Senate with 53-47 seats.

Final IBD/Tipp Poll - November 6, 2012

Likely Voter, 712 sample size, Obama leads 50.3-48.7, 0% undecided.

IBD/Tipp finally released their final tracking poll.  They are showing an Obama lead of 1.6%, with Obama at 50.3%.  However, be careful with that result.  Previously they have been finding about 6% undecided.  The top line number was reached by taking the remaining undecideds and assigning half to each candidate.  I think this is a poor model to use, since at this point undecideds will not vote for Obama.  They are deciding between Romney or not voting.  In my model I am using an undecided factor of 4% in this poll, which is slightly less than their previous results..  They do not reveal how many they had in their final poll.

The D/R/I of this poll remains the same at 38/31/32 for a D+7 result.  Independents favor Romney by 6 points, which tracks with most other polls.

Putting these results through the models, we get the following:

O+1.6 - Current result
O+0.4 - 2008 turnout
R+2.5 - D+3 turnout
R+4.7 - 2010 turnout
R+4.9 - 2004 turnout
R+7.8 - Rasmussen Party ID

One interesting tidbit in the poll was support for the candidates by religious affiliation:

Romney is leading Protestants by 21 points, and Catholics by 19 points.  Even the Jewish vote is way down for Obama, though the sample size was very small, so take it with a grain of salt.  These levels of support are going to be very relevant tonight.  Remember, these leads are in a D+7 sample.


The IBD/Tipp poll predicts a final result of Obama winning 50.3 - 48.7.

The models show that this poll actually indicates the following possible results:

Using a D+3 model Romney wins 50.74 - 48.26
Using an Even turnout Romney wins 51.87 - 47.13
Using an R+5.8 turnout Romney wins 53.42 - 45.59

Final? ABC/WaPo Poll - November 5, 2012

Likely Voter, 2345 sample size, Obama leads 50-47, 1% undecided.

I'm not sure if ABC/WaPo will run this tracking poll one more time, but if they do I may ignore it.  This tracking poll has been one of the silliest polls in the last few days.  It keeps increasing their sample of Democrats and unsurprisingly Obama's support at the same time.  Consider the following:

We've moved from D+3, to D+4, to D+6.  At the same time:

We've moved from Romney +1 to Obama +3.  Independents continue to support Romney by 2 points, as they did yesterday.

Putting these results through the models, we get the following:

O+3 - Current result
O+3.9 - 2008 turnout
O+0.8 - D+3 turnout
R+1.6 - 2010 turnout
R+1.8 - 2004 turnout
R+5.0 - Rasmussen Party ID

At this point this poll does not make a prediction on who will win the race.  However, it indicates the following possible results:

Using a D+3 model Obama wins 50-49
Using an Even turnout Romney wins 50-48.5
Using an R+5.8 turnout Romney wins 52-47

Final Gallup Poll - November 5, 2012

Likely Voter, 2551 sample size, Romney leads 49-48, 3% undecided.

I posted a small update earlier regarding Gallup, but they released their own analysis of the final poll that deserves comment.  If you look at RCP, they post a top line of 50-49 with Romney leading, but they do this by splitting the final 3% undecideds and giving half to each candidate.

As I mentioned before, it is hard to determine the partisan ID with Gallup, since they don't publish it.  However, I believe the sample has a D/R/I of 35/34/31.  Now this is a bit of a guess based on a couple factors.  First, there was a previous release where Gallup provided their sample which was about D+0.2.  Since then I have reasons to think they have moved to a slightly higher Democrat sample.  The following table gives a clue:

In this table we see that Romney is attracting 2% more crossover vote than Obama does.  We also see a slight 1% preference by Independents for Obama.  I'm estimating that we need a D+1 sample to result in a Romney +1 result.  If the sample were even, then Romney would be up by 2.

Putting these results through the models, we get the following:

R+1- Current result
O+2.4 - 2008 turnout
R+0.6 - D+3 turnout
R+2.8 - 2010 turnout
R+2.8 - 2004 turnout
R+5.9 - Rasmussen Party ID

As I look through the report, there are a few problems that I want to point out.  First is that slight Obama lead among Independents.  I think we can find the reason for both the significant loss of Romney's lead over the last few days and the loss of Independent support.  The following table shows support for each candidate among all voters by region:

Obama is leading by 20 points in the East, while losing by 4 in the Midwest, 10 in the South, and 6 in the West.  This race is being fought in the Midwest and South, not in the East.  That gaudy 20 point lead will be of no help to Obama, but it does serve to tighten this poll.

Additionally the Gallup poll suffers from the same over sampling of early voters as the other polls.

Thirty-two percent of likely voters interviewed Nov. 1-4 say they have already voted, while another 6% still intend to vote before Election Day.

38% of the 2008 electorate would be 49,000,000 votes.  The problem is that the actual early vote total nationwide currently stands at 30,000,000 or 23%.  This serves to again push too many respondents past the likely voter screen.

2,551/2,854 = 89.4%.  As I mentioned yesterday the participation rate in 2008 was 58.2%.  890 of these respondents say they will show up at the polls/voted, but won't/didn't.

Finally, I want to point out voter opinions on Obama's performance on key issues.

Unless the voters really want to elect a President of Hurricane Response, those disapproval numbers do not support a tie in the polls.  Being at -14 on the top issue of the campaign alone is enough to result in a a resounding defeat.

While I believe there are significant issues with this poll that are leading to an over statement of Obama's support, we will still look at what it is predicting.

The Gallup poll is predicting a final result of Romney winning 50-49.

However, using the models, it is predicting the following results:

Using a D+3 model Obama wins 50-49.5
Using an Even turnout Romney wins 51-48
Using an R+5.8 turnout Romney wins 53-47