The real winner (contd.)

I have often expressed my admiration for Nate Silver’s wonderful polling aggregate/analysis website, 538. However, there are at least two other very popular sites which aggregate polls : Real Clear Politics and Pollster. How did Nate do in comparison to them? First of all, all three sites were pretty good in calling the winner of [...]

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The real winner of this election

Andrew Sullivan is effusive in his praise of Five Thirty Eight, the polling aggregation and analysis website created by Nate Silver: The only state their model got wrong was Indiana, where they expected a narrow Obama loss. He won the state by a hair. Nate Silver owned this election on the polling front: one young [...]

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Election tidbits

The election results matched pre-election predictions fairly closely. In particular, almost all my predictions, such as this and this have come true. The credit of course, goes to the pollsters who did a great job, and a man called Nate Silver who created the best polling analysis website ever. One of my favourite results of [...]

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The winning team

Matt Welch, editor of Reason, hangs out with some Obama supporters. Unlike in 2000, the crowd outside was much more celebratory, much less shouting angry taunts in the direction of the presidential bedroom, for whatever little that’s worth. It’s a bit startling to have people roll down their windows and yell “O-ba-ma!” at you, but [...]

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Congratulations

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Election 2008: Preview and final predictions

Here, in short, is what to expect tomorrow: Who will win? The outcome of the election is not in doubt. Barack Obama will be the next president of the USA. When will we know the results in each state? Check out this article by Nate Silver for a nice time-line of when polls close in [...]

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Senate projections

According to the latest Five-Thirty-Eight projections, the Democrats’ odds of getting a filibuster-proof 60 seats in the senate are getting longer (currently Nate gives a less than 25% chance of this happening). A filibuster proof Senate majority by a party that also has control of the Presidency and the House is always a disaster. I [...]

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On Bob Barr, and an endorsement

I am not an American citizen and hence not eligible to vote. If I did though, I’d vote for Bob Barr. Yes, that Bob Barr. The guy who authored the insidious “Defence of marriage Act”. A former drug warrior extraordinaire.  Socially conservative ex-Republican. And the Libertarian candidate for President. Suffice it to say that Barr [...]

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Then and now

Charles Krauthammer in October, 2006: When just a week ago Barack Obama showed a bit of ankle and declared the mere possibility of his running for the presidency, the chattering classes swooned. Now that every columnist in the country has given him advice, here’s mine: He should run in ’08. He will lose in ’08. [...]

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Why the Republicans must lose

There are at least two good reasons why libertarians should not be supporting McCain this election. One of those is fairly straightforward: Obama is better. I have written several posts in the past elaborating on this point. To put it briefly, Obama is no libertarian, not even close, but on some of the most important [...]

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We deserve what we are getting into

The Wall Street Journal points out some of the things that I wrote in this post. Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven’t since 1965, or 1933. In other [...]

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We are now officially in landslide territory

Watch McCain lose the remaining undecided women : So how many EV’s will Obama get? 333? 348? 375? More? Right now I am guessing 364 369 , on the assumption that he will win NC, MO and WV but lose IN. [Update] Five Thirty Eight has a post today, where they … basically agree with [...]

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Why betting on political futures makes sense

If you go to Las Vegas and gamble, you will probably lose money. If you keep betting, you will certainly lose money and a lot of it. That’s because everything from blackjack to roulette to slot machines have negative expectation, meaning you are guaranteed to lose in the long term. Not so with real life [...]

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The lesser evil

Both candidates running for presidency are bad from a libertarian perspective, but, my opinion, as I have often stated on this blog, is that McCain is clearly worse. Radley Balko, who shares that view, has a fine post explaining why. Obama is a seriously flawed candidate. And yes, Obama united with a Democratic Congress is [...]

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Obama in the Virginia rain

Some of Obama’s speches, like the 2002 one on the Iraq war, the 2004 one in the DNC or the one earlier this year in race, are magnificiently written and rich in content. By contrast, the one he delivered in Virginia on Saturday night is unremarkable, indeed trite in content, but stylistically brilliant. It starts [...]

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