Although most pundits are talking about the fast start to last night's Democratic convention, we wanted to take a moment to focus your attention on a trend that most people have not yet flagged. In short, the Romney vote share has been quietly and slowly increasing for a month. This under-the-radar shift is being driven in part by a simple line from a straightforward political speech. And it has the potential to be a game changer.
On July 13, 2012 President Obama said: "If you got a business, you didn't build that, somebody else made that happen." Republicans seized on this and for a brief period the statement caught the media's attention. At the time, we thought this was a pretty significant moment because it had the potential to be interpreted by voters as a glimpse into what the president truly believed. Yes, the aforementioned quote is preceded by 50 seconds of context of how different people in everyone's lives help them advance in life (see the video here). But the core of the statement was something that stuck. In politics, you are always looking for a hook, a simple symbol or cue that represents either the core values of your candidate or your opponent. Team Romney ran with it, and for good reason. Our trend analysis of all publicly-available polling data suggests that this statement was a hook made of gold. Put another way: this graph shows "You Didn't Build That" was literally a turning point in the campaign.
Our idea was to create a trend line using (and sorry for getting into the polling weeds) a quadratic linear regression equation that finds the best fit between the net Romney percent in the individual poll results and the time remaining before the election. By focusing on polls that finished on June 1st or later, we were able to estimate a regression trend line. While we will use the trend chart in future Election Monitors I hereby promise not to bore you with the above again. The result is startling.
While we are not comfortable projecting an actual election result from this data (it's simply too early) the trend itself tells an interesting story. As the above chart demonstrates, Obama had a slight lead at the beginning of June, which grew somewhat as Obamacare was upheld and he saturated the airwaves with swing state advertising into July. Obama's lead reached its widest margin, just shy of four points, on the day of his "You didn't build that" speech (July 13). The trend since has been all Romney. He had virtually erased Obama's lead by the opening of the GOP convention and, as of the latest polls, has pulled into the slightest of leads (basically up a quarter of a point... but we will call it tied). Romney clearly has the momentum; the question, of course, is what the DNC will do to this momentum.
As we cautioned yesterday, don't read too much into day-to-day snapshot polls. But trends are something completely different.
My thanks to Pete Ventimiglia, Chris Blunt, Kelsey Cohen and Allison Quigley for their valuable thoughts and insights. Follow us on Twitter: @Steve_Lombardo.
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(Please note that the author was an advisor to the Romney for President campaign in 2008, but is not affiliated with any campaign in 2012.)
Follow Steve Lombardo on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Steve_Lombardo
 |
 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
I don't want to confuse anyone by using complex technical terminology or big words but I'm afraid for clarity's sake there is no alternative to a complex statistical notion referred to by the term: Balderdash, or if you would, Malarkey.
I apologize for having to explain the formula to the weak minded among you poor drooling wretches, but I will reluctantly do so.
Nonsense * Claptrap ^ Fanaticism = 2 * Fantasy / Crazy
The hypotenuse of the derivative of the logarithmic value of the asymptotic fractal limit of the probabilities leads us to believe that the author of this article has access to some really good drugs from Reince Priebus leftover convention stash and has been using them for far too long without adult supervision.
All indications from professional statisticians seem to indicate that even Romney's own advertising hurts him in the polls. This situation only gets worse from here on out.
"We're Philistines and Proud of it!" has never been a winning campaign strategy.
Now if I can only figure out how to apply the author's formula to my checkbook and lottery tickets...
For his congressional seat…..
Talk about a “Fix is In” when you can run for TWO different positions at the same time
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81056.html?hp=t3_3
Hey anyone body in Wisconsin – you really want this “CHEAT” to get to “lose” and still “win”??????
I have addressed this in detail at http://election.princeton.edu/2012/09/07/stat-urday-quadratic-fuzzy-math/
Sam Wang
Princeton Election Consortium
Incidentally, I respect your work and would love to be able to better comprehend it, and Nate Silver's, better. Do you have any recommendations for polling glossaries, or something like that, that would enable humanities academics to do so?
My husband and I and our two little boys labored to build our own home. "We built it" and used money "we" earned to pay for it. We have always responded to compliments by saying, "We built it ourselves".
I get what the president's statement was about. We built it using lumber someone else milled, we built it using nails, shingles, tar paper, old bricks that someone else harvested and cleaned from buildings, concrete, equipment, information and products too many to even list. All of things things were delivered to our home or to local businesses on roads others built in vehicles that others built and tires etc. that others made. My list could go on and on but you get the point. I will still proudly refer to the fact that "we built our own home", but I will know deep in my heart that it was made possible because of the efforts of an incredible list of others whose labor gave us the opportunity to build it. Gosh, it makes me want to throw a huge bar b q to say thanks to all those who helped us. That's what President Obama was talking about! Thank you President Obama and thank you America for a country that provides opportunities for all of us. God bless you and God bless America!
Oh, wait....
Just get out the VOTE!
OBAMA/BIDEN 2012
Steve worked on the Presidential campaign for President George H.W. Bush in 1992 and contributed to communications activities at the 1996 and 2000 GOP conventions. In 2008, he served as a senior research and communications advisor to the Romney for President campaign.