Thursday, October 2, 2008

So, Nate Silver's 538 website is giving Obama about an 83% chance to win, going strictly by the statistics. But 270towin has a feature where you can plug in your own electoral combinations and it will tell you the odds. If you start with their default swing state view and add Michigan--a state McCain is no longer contesting, McCain's odds of winning the election drop to below 1%. And that doesn't even assume Obama wins New Hampshire. I tend to trust Nate, but it seems to me that Obama winning all the Gore states (as he's doing now) and having about a half dozen plausible win states in addition makes it difficult to see how McCain pulls it out.

The Man, The Myth, The Bio

East Bay, California, United States
Problem: I have lots of opinions on politics and culture that I need to vent. If I do not do this I will wind up muttering to myself, and that's only like one or two steps away from being a hobo. Solution: I write two blogs. A political blog that has some evident sympathies (pro-Obama, mostly liberal though I dissent on some issues, like guns and trade) and a culture blog that does, well, cultural essays in a more long-form manner. My particular thing is taking overrated things (movies, mostly, but other things too) down a peg and putting underrated things up a peg. I'm sort of the court of last resort, and I tend to focus on more obscure cultural phenomena.