Marriage Opponents Now In Minority

Nate Silver looks at the latest polling trends on same-sex marriage.

Republican candidates, who have placed less emphasis on gay marriage in recent years, probably cannot expect their opposition to it to be a net electoral positive for them except in select circumstances. If support for gay marriage were to continue accelerating as fast as it has in the past two years, supporters would outnumber opponents roughly 56-40 in the general population by November 2012. Past trends, of course, are no guarantee of future ones, and it’s always possible that the momentum toward increasing support for gay marriage could flatten out or even reverse itself. But this does put Republicans in a tricky position. Their traditional position on gay marriage is becoming less popular. But to the extent they disengage from the issue, they may lose even more ground. One way to read the trends of the past few years is that we have passed an inflection point wherein it is no longer politically advantageous for candidates to oppose same-sex marriage, which in turn softens opposition to it among the general public, creating a sort of feedback loop and accelerating the trend.

Nate Silver's Final Governorships Forecast

Larger interactive version here. We're certainly enjoying that dark blue in California, aren't we? Florida remains troublesome, with teabagger and Medicare fraudster Rick Scott maintaining a slight lead over Democrat Alex Sink. In Illinois state Sen. Bill Brady is in a toss-up with Gov. Pat Quinn, who had the unenviable job of taking over for Rod Blogojevich. In Minnesota former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton is holding onto a five-point lead over teabagger asshat (and Target BFF) Tom Emmer.

Nate Silver's Final House Forecast

Larger interactive version here. Silver gives the Democrats an 18% chance of holding the House majority. Blue Dog Democrats have downplayed their support of health care reform and distanced themselves from the president, a mistake in my opinion, since many consider it the crowning achievement of the Obama administration so far.

Nate Silver's Final Senate Forecast

Larger interactive version here. Silver gives the GOP a 9% chance of winning the Senate majority. Keep your eyes on West Virginia, Washington, Nevada, Colorado, and Illinois. Alaska is really a mystery, what with Murkowski's write-in campaign and the GOP backing away from its own nominee Joe Miller. Democrat Scott McAdams is only polling at 27%, but in a three-way race with the two GOP candidates splitting votes, there's a slight chance we'll see a nice surprise.

NEVADA: Nate Silver Sees Harry Reid's Chances Shrinking Against Sharron Angle

Grim, grim, grim. As much as we loathe Lady Racist, at least some of this has to be due to Reid's somnolent performance in the debate. He makes Al Gore look like a manic game show host.

Nate Silver: GOP Will Gain 49 In House

Over at FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver updates his forecasts today to predict that the GOP will pick up 49 seats in the House. That's far fewer than the 100+ being claimed by some Republican flacks, but still enough for the GOP to take the majority by six seats. Silver hedges his bets:

As I have warned repeatedly in the past, we believe that the uncertainty in the forecast is intrinsically quite high, stemming from the unusually large number of seats in play, and from differences of opinion among pollsters in how to calibrate their likely voter models to account for the so-called “enthusiasm gap.” There are only 170 seats that the model thinks of as “safe” Republican — those where their chances of winning are 95 percent or higher. However, there are only 151 seats that the Democrats are at least 95 percent assured of winning.

According to Silver, there's still about a 25% chance for the Dems to hold the House, a result which would, of course, depend on a strong turnout from Democratic voters. Hit the link for an interactive breakdown of each race by district.

Where The Dems May Lose House Seats

FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver today takes aim at some of the polls crying doom and gloom for House Democrats previously thought to be safe, cautioning that the volume of losses may not be as bad as some fear.

Many of the polls are either partisan-affiliated, or were “robopolls” that used automated scripts rather than live interviewers, or both. Polls with an explicit partisan affiliation are on average about 6 points friendlier to their candidate than those conducted by independent groups. Robopolls have not shown any persistent bias in the past — but this year, they have been 2 to 4 points more favorable to Republicans than traditional surveys, and the differences have tended to be larger in polls of House races as opposed to conducted in Senate or gubernatorial campaigns. So this is a group of polls that you’d expect to be pretty Republican-friendly.

Silver's own calculations, some of which are shown in the chart above, predict that the GOP will gain 45-70 House seats. But by pretty much everybody's numbers, the Democrats will lose their majority.

Nate Silver Predicts Republican Landslide In State Governor Races

In states with a 50% or more chance of flipping their governorships, elections prognosticator Nate Silver predicts that the vast majority of the changes will be in the GOP's favor. (Although Florida's race is still a statistical tie, it is listed at the top because current governor Charlie "Closet Case" Crist is technically an independent.)

Nate Silver's Senate Forecast

That's an awful lot of red, but Silver still says that the Democrats have a 76% chance of holding the majority. The Senate seats most likely to flip to the GOP are below. Note that Silver gives Sharron Angle a 66% chance of deposing Harry Reid.

U.S. House Forecast Update

Nate Silver's latest forecast gives the Democrats only a 35% chance of holding their majority in the House.

Republicans are assigned a 65 percent chance of taking over the House by our forecasting model, up slightly from 62 percent last week. They are projected to control 224 House seats in the new Congress, up a single seat from 223 last week; this would imply a gain of 45 seats from the 179 they have now (counting one vacant seat most recently held by a Republican member). Substantially larger — or smaller — gains are possible, however.

Latest Forecasts From Nate Silver

More at FiveThirtyEight.

Gay Rights A Low Priority Issue For Both Parties In 2010 Campaign

Nate Silver explains his chart:

I studied the campaign Web sites of Republican and Democratic candidates for the House in the 33 Congressional districts currently labeled toss-ups by The New York Times political desk. Although a few candidates did not highlight particular issues on their official Web pages, and a few others remain engaged in primaries where there is no clear favorite, we were able to examine the sites for 29 Republicans and 29 Democrats who are likely to be on the ballot in November. We then examined the subjects these candidates highlighted on the “issues” sections of their sites, dividing them into roughly 30 categories.

Silver notes that while the vast majority of candidates on both sides are avoiding gay rights issues in their campaigns, Democrats may be doing so because they are "hamstrung by Mr. Obama, who has taken a series of half-steps on the issue."

Nate Silver's 2010 Senate Predictions

Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight makes its debut as part of the New York Times today, where he gives us the above predictions for this year's Senate races. It looks like Silver is predicting that the Democrats will lose about seven seats, yet retain a slim majority.

Nate Silver On Marriage Polls

Nate Silver:

Something to bear in mind is that it's only been fairly recently that gay rights groups -- and other liberals and libertarians -- shifted toward a strategy of explicitly calling for full equity in marriage rights, rather than finding civil unions to be an acceptable compromise. While there is not necessarily zero risk of backlash resulting from things like court decisions -- support for gay marriage slid backward by a couple of points, albeit temporarily, after a Massachusetts' court's ruling in 2003 that same-sex marriage was required by that state's constitution -- it seems that, in general, "having the debate" is helpful to the gay marriage cause, probably because the secular justifications against it are generally quite weak.

I know you freaks are dying to comment on the shape of the graph.

(Via - Towleroad)

NATE SILVER: 250 Million People Live In Jurisdictions With Full Marriage Equality

Nate notes this about his graph:

The big spike you see in 2008 is California recognizing gay marriage through the courts, and then un-recognizing it through the passage of Proposition 8. Right now, it's possible to marry your same-sex partner in Buenos Aires, in Mexico City, in Ames, Iowa, and in Pretoria, South Africa, but not in San Francisco. With countries like Argentina and Portugal now recognizing same-sex marriages, however, the global trajectory has returned to its slow-but-steady upward pace.

NYT Takes Over Nate Silver

The New York Times has taken over hosting of FiveThirtyEight, the popular elections prognostication site run by statistics guru Nate Silver.

Mr. Silver, a statistical wizard, became a media star during the last presidential election season for his political projections based on dissections of polling data. He retains all rights to FiveThirtyEight and will continue to run it himself, but “under the banner and auspices of NYTimes.com,” The Times said in a news release. The arrangement is similar to one The Times struck with the authors of the blog Freakonomics in 2007. The Freakonomics blog appears in the Opinion section of NYTimes.com. FiveThirtyEight content will be incorporated in the politics section of NYTimes.com.

The hiring of Silver, a loud supporter of Democrats, will further annoy the Freepers and their ilk, who usually disparage the paper as the "New York Slimes." Good.

Nate Silver Crunches Fast Food

Stats guru Nate Silver takes a look at KFC's infamous Double Down versus other fast food fare. On his chart above, the Double Down is the benchmark by which other items are compared.

I've created an index based on the amount of fat, sodium and cholesterol that the Double Down and a variety of comparable sandwiches contain as a portion of the USDA daily allowance. (In the fat category, saturated fats are counted double and trans-fats are counted triple.) The index is scaled such that the Original Recipe version of the sandwich receives a score of 1.00, a measure of gluttony that will hereafter be known as The Double Down (DD).**

By this measure, the Double Down is indeed quite unhealthy, but some other sandwiches are just as bad. The Burger King Chicken Tendercrisp (1.00 DDs), which has less cholesterol but more fat and sodium, is comparably unhealthy to the Double Down on balance. The chicken ranch sandwiches from Sonic (0.94 DDs) and Jack-in-the-Box (0.98 DDs) are close. And surprisingly, some sandwiches from "fast casual" restaurants that have a reputation for healthy food do even worse. Panera's Chipotle Chicken checks in at 1.49 DD's -- it has almost 50 percent more bad stuff than the Double Down -- and Boston Market's Chicken Carver at 1.14. So do some products that stretch the definition of "sandwich". A chicken burrito from Chipotle with rice, black beans, cheese and corn salsa will cost you 1.16 Double Downs: load it up with sour cream, guacamole, and picante salsa as well and you're up to 1.69. A pack of five McDonald's Chicken Selects with a side of ranch sauce is worth 1.23 Double Downs.

Silver concludes that since the Double Down isn't as filling as other items near it on the chart, one might actually want a second serving, making it "the closest thing to pure junk food of any 'sandwich' being marketed today.