Silver is over estimating Romney's chances:
Well, 538 is projecting Obama's chances for a win as 68%. In today's column he mentioned that there are other sites that give Obama much higher chances than that and provided alink too.
There the projections are like "almost entirely to the right of 270 (Huffington Post)", "Nine to one for Obama (Sam Wang, Princeton Election Consortium)", "85% (DeSart and Holbrook election forecast)"
The votematic blogger concludes:
Nevertheless, The Daily Caller, Commentary Magazine, and especially the National Review Online have all run articles lately accusing Silver of being in the tank for the president. Of all the possible objections to Silverâs modeling approach, this certainly isnât one that comes to my mind. I can only hope those guys donât stumble across my little corner of the Internet.
Well, Nate made me stumble across his little corner.
America does not react instantaneously.
I think we political junkies watch things very closely and we are expecting large things polling and seven day moving averages to move quickly after the debate. Understandable, given 60 million people watched each debate. But people might form some instant opinion, but it gets reinforced are weakened by other influences, media narrative, fact checking, late night comedian's zingers, etc etc. A nation of 330 million people do not jump instantly after the debate.
After the first debate it took almost 1 week/10 days for Romney to reach his high watermark. The second and third debates came in quick succession, and it would take a while for the electorate to digest the debate, the media news, and the jokes and the stuff.
It looks very much like, Joe Biden stopped the bleeding, the second debate stopped the swing, and the third debate has reversed the momentum. I am very sure CO, NV, OH, IA, WI will move solidly blue in the next few days. VA will be light blue and Florida will be back in play. I think even if we lose NC we will come very close and make them sweat a little.
My take on what is going on:
In the Republican convention, Romney looked like a loser, and the Republican base stayed at home. The first debate provided the excuse the base needed to come home, and give Romney the liberty to shake the etch-a-sketch. None of the Republican splinter groups want to oppose Romney when he had the big swing and he appeared to be winning.
If that narrative is lost and once the Republican insiders give up on Romney, they will splinter and try to make sure their turf is protected. Glenn Beck sounded the discordant tweet first after the third debate. Now this senators are burnishing their "anti-abortion" credentials. Karl Rove must be apoplectic now, his coalition is unraveling. Soon the 2016 contenders would take positions to help their 2016 primaries. They will try to set up a narrative, "if only you guys have followed me... in blah blah we would have won". They will isolate Romney and make the loss his personal failure not a reflection of the suckiness of the Republican brand.
That is when we know what the internal polling is revealing to the Republicans.
Is it wishful thinking? Am I deluding myself? Perhaps but I seem to be good company. Anyway as Churchill said, "We can trust America to do the right thing, once all other options have been exhausted". Yes, America will do the right thing.