For those unable to wait a couple hours, Stochastic Democracy provides final forecasts for the races in New Jersey, Virginia, New York, and Maine using the statistical model that produced the closest forecasts of the 2008 cycle.
Go below the fold or to the website to see discussion and graphs.
StochasticDemocracy.com
****Cross-posted at StochasticDemocracy.com***
[7:02 pm EST] Also, fellow Stochastic Democracy Contributor Rasmus is running a live-blog over at DailyKos covering both the big-ticket races and some important local races. It's already 3am in this time zone, but I'll try to post a little over there too as late as I can.
Summary:
New Jersey Governor race:
Corzine (D) 's estimated two-way vote: 49.62% (+/- 1.53)
Corzine (D) 's estimated three-way vote: 44.55% (+/- 2.54)
Corzine (D) 's estimated probability of victory: 33%
Most Likely Outcome : Chris Christie (R) victory (67% chance)
Virginia Governor race:
Deeds (D) estimated two-way vote: 42.69% (+/- 2.89)
Deeds (D) estimated probability of victory: Rounding error...
Most Likely Outcome: Bob McDonnell (R) victory
New York City Mayor Race:
Bloomberg (I) 's estimated two-way vote: 58.1% (+/- 1.47)
Bloomberg (I) 's estimated probability of victory: >99%
Most Likely Outcome: Micheal Bloomberg (I) victory
Maine Gay Marriage Proposition:
Prop 1's estimated support: 52.36% (+/- 4.67)
Prop 1's estimated probability of passage: 69.6%
Most Likely Outcome: Passage of Prop 1, leading to the repeal of Gay Marriage in Maine. (69.6% chance)
Special Election in House District NY-23:
Owens (D) ' estimated two-way vote: 46.75% (+/- 5.62)
Owens (D) ' estimated probability of victory: 15%
Most Likely Outcome : Doug Hoffman (C) victory (85% chance)
*Disclaimer: On the basis of a single Sienna Poll with 18% of respondents undecided.
Quick Definitions
Two-Way Vote - The two-way vote strips out third party support and only looks at how the leading candidate does compared to his strongest competitor. It has the useful property that a winning candidate will always win more then 50% of the two-way vote. Formula: 100*Candidate_1/(Candidate_1+Candidate_2)
Three-Way Vote - Like Two-way vote, but for three candidates. Formula: 100*Candidate_1/(Candidate_1+Candidate_2+Candidate_3)
New Jersey
Smoothed Corzine two-way vote and 95% confidence intervals. Smoothing done via Bayesian filtering
Democratic Candidate Jon Corzine is forecasted to win 49.62% (+/- 1.53) of the two-way vote and 44.55% (+/-2.54) of the three-way vote. This leaves him with a 33% chance of winning the election, making republican Chris Christie a 3-1 favourite. Christie and Dagget are expected to receive 45.18% (+/-4) and 8.58% (+/- 6.6) of the vote respectively.*
Note how much smaller the margin of error is for Corzine's share of the vote in comparison to Christie and Dagget. This is because most of the variation in the race has been voters jumping between Christie and Dagget, while Corzine voters have mainly kept put.**
This is a close race and there have been a lot of polls showing both Corzine and Christie ahead. But since yesterday, PPP and Quinnepac released pro-Christie polls with large sample sizes that pushed our estimate against Corzine. Keep in mind, these two agencies believe that conservative turnout today will be higher then other pollsters assume. If the other pollster's assumptions were right then Corzine will win, if PPP is right, then there is a much larger enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans then is generally believed.
*Haven't had time to update 3-day estimates from yesterday, so they do not reflect today's polls
*Statistics Trivia: Why do the candidate's vote shares add up to 100? Because when jointly estimating 3 correlated random variables [u, v, w], the vector [Most likely value of u, most likely value of v, most likely value of w] need not be equal to [Most likely combination of u, v, and w]. Joint estimation of 3 or more random variables a little non-intuitive, this makes talking about multi-party races more complicated.
Virginia
Smoothed Deeds two-way vote and 95% confidence intervals. Smoothing done via Bayesian filtering
Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Creigh Deeds is set to be defeated by Republican Bob McDonnell with 43.23% of the two-way vote.
New York
Smoothed Thompson two-way vote and 95% confidence intervals. Smoothing done via Bayesian filtering
Mayor Bloomberg will annihilate his Democratic challenger Bill Thompson with an estimated 58.1% (+/-1.47) of the two-way vote.
Maine
Smoothed vote and 95% confidence intervals. Smoothing done via Bayesian filtering
Proposition 1, to repeal the State Legislature's legalization of Gay Marriage, is set to pass with 52.36% (+/-4.67) of the vote. However, this outcome is not a sure thing. We estimate that the measure has approximately a 30.45% chance of failing.
This is a strong reversal from our last update, when the amendment had a 70% chance of failing. What happened?
PPP released a poll showing the Yes side 4 points ahead with a large sample size. In this particular case, the Maine election has been very lightly polled, so a single outlier poll with a large sample size like PPP's can push estimates a lot. This is especially true because the few other polls in this race have tiny sample sizes.
Like in New Jersey, PPP shows large Republican leads on the basis of high conservative turnout on one end, while nearly every other pollster forecasts relatively comfortable Democratic victories. It isn't obvious which side is right.
****Cross-posted at StochasticDemocracy.com***