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[RedKing]

1 day to Super Tuesday!

Polls so new they still have that "new poll smell":

National:
NBC News has Romney at +6

Ohio:
Three new polls, and we have Romney +3, Romney +1 and Santorum +1. In short, who the hell knows?

Tennessee:
Perhaps I owe Rasmussen an apology after deprecating his poll the other day for showing Santorum's support to have evaporated. Two more polls released today, and they show the state as Santorum +5 and Romney +1. Pretty shocking turn of events there. If Romney wins Tennessee, that's a major coup for Team Romney in terms of the narrative, because it shows Romney can win in a hard red Southern state that's not chock full of Cubans and elderly snowbirds.

Georgia:
Two more polls confirm that Gingrich has a 20+ point lead in the Peach State. I have no idea how he thinks he can turn a win here into any kind of larger momentum, but that certainly seems to be his plan. According to comments from his campaign, he intends to try and focus on the South. My guess is that this is a gambit to be a kingmaker. He can't win by taking the South, but he can certainly amass a big enough block of delegates to swing the final outcome depending on who he backs. Maybe he's looking for a VP slot. Romney/Gingrich or Santorum/Gingrich, anyone?

If Newt sides with Romney after all the shit he's talked...he'll be burned in effigy within the Tea Party ranks, but it might clear the slate for the establishment, where he's been kinda persona non grata for some years. And let's face it, the establishment throws better cocktail parties.

If he sides with Santorum, the insurgent takeover of the party will be complete. And the big money will dry up, because the sane rich people who just want a party that keeps their taxes low will want nothing to do with the "Let's set up the first church on the moon!" folks.

[PTTG??]

Argh Somebody open a window or kill a skunk or something! Anything to get rid of the poll smell!

[RedKing]

But it's the sweet, sweet smell of Republican despair! With a slight taint of Newt.

[Nadaka]

http://news.yahoo.com/people-arent-smart-enough-democracy-flourish-scientists-185601411.html

[Zangi]

+1 to RedKing for the breakdown on Primary news.

*snip*
It would have been a giant can of worms. Thankfully, there were enough Republicans that also realized this and voted it down. This isn't a First Amendment issue. It isn't even a speech issue. It's a labor rights issue. Employees are not the property of their employer. And the fact that employers already make major decisions about healthcare coverage when they choose what plans to offer. The counterargument seems to boil down to, "If your employer pays your insurance premiums, they get to decide. Money talks."

 

In another universe, after the passing of this amendment, employers of companies of all sizes in America take up a new religion, some obscure cult-like christian religion.  They don't believe in modern day medicine or treatment.
In other news, record profits are forecasted for the economy and unemployment goes down as injured and sick employees are let go and deemed unemployable.

[Flying Dice]

http://news.yahoo.com/people-arent-smart-enough-democracy-flourish-scientists-185601411.html

I don't get it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 

[kaijyuu]

The funny thing is, most people who read that wouldn't put themselves in the "incompetent and thus shouldn't vote" pile. Self demonstrating article?

[Nadaka]

The funny thing is, most people who read that wouldn't put themselves in the "incompetent and thus shouldn't vote" pile. Self demonstrating article?

Probably.

I don't think there is an "incompetent and thus shouldn't vote" pile. However there is a pile of people who could become more competent at voting if we had a stronger civics education program.

[RedKing]

Just as an interesting sidenote, here's the current delegate count (roughly...due to all the non-binding caucuses and arcane bullshit, no one can be sure of the actual count yet):

Romney: 173
Santorum: 74
Paul: 37
Gingrich: 33

Now here's what the count would be if the primaries had all been the "traditional" winner-take-all binding primaries:
Romney: 245
Santorum: 104
Gingrich: 25
Paul: 0

This is why in past seasons, the race is typically down to 2-3 people by the time shit gets real. The mass expansion of proportional primaries and caucuses has been a big impediment to one person racking up a bunch of tight victories early on and getting a commanding lead in delegates. Or in other words, this kind of clusterf**k isn't going away. It's the new normal. Which makes me wonder if a lot more people will be running in future Presidential contests, given that a theoretical non-starter like Ron Paul is still in 3rd place (and continues to focus on subverting the caucus process to milk delegates out of states where he's not even getting 20% of the popular vote). You don't need to be the front-runner (in fact it's much easier if you're not), you just need consistent 2nd and 3rd place wins to rack up those delegates. Margin of win is now as important as the win itself. And because every single race tomorrow is some flavor of proportional, this won't be the knockout punch for any of the candidates.

Initially, it was looking like Santorum might actually take the majority of the races. Now it's looking more even but it's going to come down to margin. Romney will run away with Massachusetts, but it's still proportional. Santorum is looking to run away with Oklahoma, and OK is one of those Proportional++ states I referenced several pages back wherein if he wins an outright majority (a distinct possibility...he's polling at 43% as of a few weeks ago), then it becomes winner-take-all. That's 43 delegates which takes a pretty big bite out of the gap between them.

OH and TN are also Proportional++ states, but those look like they'll be very close races, so they're basically a 50/50 split. Where Santorum might have the edge in those races is that the delegates are awarded based on districts won. Romney's support tends to be geographically concentrated, so he'll win a relatively small number of districts clumped in urban areas. Santorum will likely win large swathes of the rural state, which should translate into more districts.

Virginia is an odd bird, and potentially the biggest win of the night (and biggest controversy) for Romney. As I understand it, it's a semi-open primary and winners are awarded delegates based on districts won with a bonus set awarded to the statewide winner. BUT...if one candidate gets a majority, the whole thing becomes winner-take-all. Santorum and Gingrich are not even on the ballot in Virginia. As a result, Romney is polling near 70% in Virginia. Which could wind up giving him all 49 delegates outright -- a small chunk compared to the grand total he needs to win, but it could very well be the margin of win by the end of this thing. Especially crucial if Santorum wins OK outright, as it nullifies his big gain there. But controversial because of the arcane rules and the fact that the Virginia state GOP apparently changed the rules to get on the ballot as late as November 2011, which caused Gingrich's application to get tossed and caused Rick Santorum to not even try to get on the ballot (to be fair, I honestly don't think he thought he'd still be in this thing by this point).

To sum up the article linked above, there was a lawsuit regarding how the signatures to file should be verified. End result was that the state GOP bumped up their "automatic threshold" from 10,000 to 15,000. Meaning that if you present 15,000 signatures of people ostensibly wanting you to run for President, they don't get validated and you're on the ballot. Less than 15,000 and the signatures have to be validated. Too many get thrown out (as happened for Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich) and drop you below a certain threshhold (which I can't seem to find), and you're off the list. Romney was the only one to submit 15,000 signatures, suggesting that they didn't do a good job of getting the word out about the rule change. Expect to see Team Gingrich and Team Paul file suit and call on Team Romney to allow their list of signatures to be validated. To his credit, even though Paul's submission was below the 15,000 mark it passed validation. It does kind of make me go WTF that these other candidates submitted *that many* fake and/or invalid signatures. Is this just a normal practice?

[mainiac]

http://news.yahoo.com/people-arent-smart-enough-democracy-flourish-scientists-185601411.html

Fallacious article much?

Suppose that I have a system where there are a 400 districts, each with 5k or so people in them choosing a representative from two candidates.  Suppose that 100 people in each district know with perfect accuracy who the "right" candidate is and the others chose on a coin flip.  The odds of a given district choosing the "right" candidate are about 92%.  The odds of a majority of the districts choosing the "wrong" candidates are less then 10^-100.  Those odds are about the same as if you chose three completely random atoms from the entire mass of the earth and chose the same atom each time.  The odds grow even more remote if you increase the size of the districts but keep the number of "smart" voters at the same proportion.

Now there are tons of gaping holes in this model, don't think I'm saying the electorate is like that.  But it's just to show that the article is based on fallacious premises.  It doesn't account for the extensive work that people have done on ideological signaling, median voters, etc.  If anything, my model is closer to what the article imagines then the real electorate.  People aren't limited to their own knowledge.  It would have taken me a looooong time to come up with the binomial coefficients used in the calculations of the preceding paragraph.  But even as a highschooler I was able to use (and sometimes understand) z-scores because people had already figured this stuff out, it entered the general knowledge pool and someone taught it to me.

The problem with the electorate isn't that a sufficient number of people are "smart".  You don't need a single voter who understands every last issue for democracy to thrive.  The problems are systematic biases in the way that we signal information to each other and the way that we weigh people's votes.

[Bauglir]

I think the point is that when people decide on what makes a candidate "good", they're looking at qualities that are usually not relevant. Case in point, the "Well he seems like a guy I'd want to have a beer with" reasoning. It isn't that they're choosing with a coin flip, but that they're rationally making decisions on flawed assumptions. It's adding to existing research, not ignoring it, although I will say the actual news article is written in typically sensationalist fashion.

[kaijyuu]

I'll accept what that article is saying... provided we're talking about individual issues, not reality where candidates represent you on multiple issues. Also, I'm taking the assumption that "competence" translates to "doing what the voter wants them to do, effectively" and not "doing what's 'right.'"

So if we were to put to a vote say... economics, it'd probably be best that those with knowledge of economics actually vote about it. Those people would be able to pick out the candidate most suited to do what they want them to do, whereas a random selection of people would chose a candidate that says they'll do what they promise to do, but might not be the most effective at it.


Back to reality, candidates generally represent us on multiple issues, especially at the federal level. Just how much crap does the President of the US have to deal with? Those economists would be choosing a candidate that has to deal with social issues, the military, etc etc, which is NOT their area of expertise. And if we want to educate the public so they'll vote more reasonably, you'll have to educate them on "everything" for them to chose better candidates overall, and that's a hell of a lot of stuff to educate them on. Every little bit helps I guess, though.

[RedKing]

Hmmm....just crunched some numbers regarding current polling percentages and likely delegate totals, and Virginia is going to be a big topic of discussion after tonight. Here's my hypothetical breakdown of the delegate counts in each non-caucus state, based on most recent poll data:

MA:
Romney - 26
Santorum - 7
Gingrich - 4
Paul - 4

OK:
Santorum - 20
Gingrich - 10
Romney - 9
Paul - 4

VT:
Romney - 6
Santorum - 5
Gingrich - 3
Paul - 3

Virginia*:
Romney - 49
Paul - 0

OH:
Romney - 23
Santorum - 22
Gingrich - 11
Paul - 10

TN:
Santorum - 20
Romney - 18
Gingrich - 15
Paul - 5

GA:
Gingrich - 35
Romney - 20
Santorum - 16
Paul - 5

Totals:
Romney - 151
Santorum - 90
Gingrich - 78
Paul -31

Take away that Virginia "win", and Romney and Santorum have almost equal nights (102 vs. 90). The other story is that if you combine Santorum and Gingrich, they'll still outdo Romney even with Virginia left in play. That observation will lead perhaps to an intensification of the rivalry between the two camps as each calls on the other to drop out in the name of "supporting true conservatism".

If Oklahoma goes >50% for Santorum, the final count should be around:
Romney - 142
Santorum - 113
Gingrich - 68
Paul - 27

Which would make Virginia even more of a controversy, because without it Santorum wins the night.

TL;DR: Most of the races won't change the basic math between Romney and Santorum, no matter who wins. The big ones to watch are Oklahoma (to see if it goes over 50% for Santorum), Ohio and Tennessee (more for bragging rights and a few extra delegates than anything). The big one to talk about is Virginia. Lawsuits, ho!

[mainiac]

Back to reality, candidates generally represent us on multiple issues, especially at the federal level. Just how much crap does the President of the US have to deal with? Those economists would be choosing a candidate that has to deal with social issues, the military, etc etc, which is NOT their area of expertise. And if we want to educate the public so they'll vote more reasonably, you'll have to educate them on "everything" for them to chose better candidates overall, and that's a hell of a lot of stuff to educate them on. Every little bit helps I guess, though.

I develop my opinions from aggregators, news, blogs, even this forum.  I understand a very narrow range of the issues.  However I know that if something were really important then my aggregators would bring it to my attention.  I'm going to listen to a chunk of what people say across the spectrum so if there is something to say then somebody will know it and say it.  It's up to me whether I listen but there are outlets for me to tell me that this is something important.

While this process has perhaps grown more sophisticated recently (perhaps), it's hardly new.  This is what lead to the rise of ideological thought and ideological parties in the 18th century.  People wanted sources for opinions representing conservatives or liberals or whatever so parties and newspapers and politicians arose that could give examples of those viewpoints.  Thus they could trust that it would be in the ideological interest of the ideologues to bring egregious stuff to their attention.  If anything the only disruption to this came very recently, republicans decided that rather then giving examples of what is conservatism in the american political spectrum they would just label anything the president said unconservative.  Thus we can't rely on our conservative channels to give us conservative viewpoints anymore, instead they give us the republican viewpoint.  But until very recently, these channels were working pretty well.

So if you have a thesis that basically boils down to these aggregation channels can not exist, then you are wrong.  They empirically do exist and have existed in this country for more then two centuries, not to mention existing all over the globe.  People don't need to understand everything, they never had, they never will and democracy works just fine without it.

[Aqizzar]

So, I don't see where this one has been mentioned yet.  Santorum was busy in Ohio over the weekend, giving speeches about the dizzying hydra of his parochial interpretation of the world.  No one article does it justice, as he rambles back and forth between attacking Obama and Romney.

The problem with socialized medicine – socialized anything?  It’s a narcotic. You don’t even know what you’re missing. You don’t even see the dynamism of life, and the economy, because you’ve been given something for nothing, and you’re happy to have it.

But we won't talk about one of the great underlying causes of childhood obesity, which is the instability of the community, the neighborhood and the family.

I love it because the left says, 'equality, equality.' Where does that concept come from? Does it come from Islam? Does it come from other cultures around the world? ... No, it comes it comes from our culture and tradition, from the Judeo-Christian ethic.

So... The economy and/or quality of life is going down because people are doped up on free healthcare (I'm sure the "Keep your government hands off my Medicare" people will be happy to hear that), childhood health problems are caused by divorce and/or gay people, and the Obama Administration and/or Romney's former administration are Islamo-Fascists who reject and/or copycat Christian equality because they want to force equality on everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Great White Hope of the true conservatives.  At least he's not yakking about birth control now.