With Obama going ballistic in The Daily Gallup/Intrade trackers, an interesting question to ask might be the size of the Democrat’s Electoral College vote ceiling for the election, as well as its likely EV floor. First up though, the trackers:
At least something is booming in these grim times. The win probabilities are starting to dramatically tighten as each opportunity for some game changing campaign event passes without even a whimper, such as yesterday’s Presidential Debate. If we look at the Intrade probabilities of the States through our 30-70 prism of contestability and see how those contestable States (and their respective Electoral College votes) have been moving over the last 12 days we get:
If we allocate the EV’s of those States where the Republican or Democrat win probabilities are greater than 70% to the respective parties, then we’ve got a baseline for the Republicans having 265 163 Electoral College votes and the baseline for the Democrats sitting on 273.
That’s pretty much the Intrade floor for the Democrats right there. At the moment all of those contestable States bar Missouri and Indiana are in the Democrats column, currently giving them 353 EV’s. Yet polls for both Missouri and Indiana are starting to regularly show Obama ahead and their win probability for the Democrats has been sharply increasing of late. If Obama picks up those two States as well, that would take the Democrat’s Electoral College vote number up to 375.
So where does the extra 1 EV come from to get a ceiling of 376?
Nebraska, particularly the second Congressional District (NE-2) which takes in a large swathe of the city of Omaha. Maine and Nebraska are the two States that don’t have a winner takes all Electoral College vote system, but instead allocate EV’s on the basis of not only who wins the popular vote in the smaller Congressional Districts (1 EV for each district) but also allocate the remaining EV’s on the basis of who wins the State wide vote.
NE-2 is just across the river from Iowa, so the Democrats already get a free advertising boost in NE-2 as a result of TV ad buys for the Council Bluffs area in Iowa leaking across the river into the television sets of Omaha residents. NE-2 is high density urban with a good chunk of ethnic diversity and two thirds of residents are classified as white collar. The Democrats recognised the possibility of picking up one vote here and set up a ground operation early on.
There is no Intrade market currently on NE-2, but if there was, one would expect this District to be not too dissimilar to Indiana probabilities.
So if we add the 1 Electoral College Vote of NE-2 to our 375 already – we have our Democrat EV ceiling of 376.
The next States on the probability pendulum for the Democrats are Montana, Georgia and West Virginia all currently sitting on a 20% win probability – so anything higher than 376 is going to take something beyond the usual definitions of the word “remarkable”.
18 Comments
Intrade is very interesting although it is somewhat volatile, take a look at this post: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/intrade-betting-is-suspcious.html
Nevertheless, your current Intrade map ties in well with what I feel the election could be in real terms on the day. Some sites are predicting wins in North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana, Georgia as a distant possibility, etc. I don’t doubt that Obama has created strong movement in these states but I don’t feel he will flip them on the day (unless stronger and more consistent poll numbers come though, I am going on gut feelings here).
A likely scenario is Obama with Kerry States + Iowa + Colorado + NM (this is his path of least resistance to >269).
Other good possibilities are Virginia, and (to a lesser extent) Ohio, Florida, Nevada etc.
But hey, you already know this stuff!
Also, kudos to you for the fact that you are one of the (very) few Australian pseph sites covering the US election with detail and strong analysis.
Nebraska II is on fivethirtyeight as about 53-47 to McCain.
Thanks Wayne.
53/47 eh? That’s a bit tighter than I thought it’d be!
Sorry Possum, I was reading the wrong line. FTE has the NEs as follows:
First CD (East): McCain 85-15
Second CD (Omaha): McCain 72-27
Third CD (West): McCain 100-0
And that 72 is a 73. It’s been a long day.
It was Obama’s primary vote that was 47 in CD 2. Sorry to all!
Interesting to note a few hours before <a href=”http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/1008/McCain_camp_making_news_in_the_morning.html”Politico announced the McCain campaign would have some news to announce in the morning, someone sold a heap of intrade bets on Obama.
gah… sorry about that.
While talking about Intrade.com, can anyone go to the market on Australian Politics, and click on Brendan Nelson being leader of the Liberal Party at the next election? Done it? Who on earth is that a picture of??? Does anyone out there know??
http://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/common/c_cd.jsp?conDetailID=615066&z=1223557924483
Rocket – thanks to the knowledge pit over at Pollbludger, that’s US Democrat Senator for Florida Bill Nelson!
Cyclo – I took this last night on the Intrade contender markets of that sad attempt by Republicans to give their new ad momentum:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/files/2008/10/macainonaughts.png
They’ve been pulling shit like that for weeks. Never works mind you, but fools and their money….
Rocket Rocket here’s the real Brendan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL7vU_8iwPA&feature=related
Possum – assume you mean 165 not 265 for GOP base figure?
Ta Wakefield – I must have been possessed by Sarah Palin there for a bit.
So – even putting the rosiest spin on it ya can from McCain’s side …. they are basically stuffed. To use an apt analogy considering a certain event on a certain mountain this weekend – McCain is six laps down on the leader and needs an almighty pile up at skyline to take out the leaders if he’s to win.
Hi Poss – Unless my artithmetic’s gone wonky, I think the GOP baseline is 163, or 162 when you take out NE-2 (i.e. 538 minus 376).
Heh! It is 163 – makes you wonder how I got 165 via a spreadsheet (I’m failing the maths of drag and drop… Oh the humanity!)
Thanks.
The Intrade baseline is 163 (just checked with a good old fashioned calculator) – and then there’s 1 NE vote, but Intrade doesnt (yet) run a market on Maine and Nebraska allocating EVs other than homogeneously.
It will be interesting to see if they do, and what the odds come out as.
I don’t know how credible this is, but this Hillary Clinton-based blog claims there is a RICO (Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations) Statute investigation into the ties between the Obama campaign and massive voter fraud in 15 (or more) states by ACORN.
The RICO Act is the primary tool the FBI uses for combating organized crime, and that they are (or maybe, depending on how solid this info is) looking into Obama is quite significant.
Link
Oh and Possum, that same article I just linked, says this about the odd graphs you and I just posted before: