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Ohio, Oh My Oh: Buckeyes Will Decide the Election

Statistics dreamboat and 100-percent boyfriend material Nate Silver has awarded the state of Ohio the "Florida-in-2000 Prize for Undue Anxiety and Overdetermined Prognosticating." Mazel tov, Buckeye State, and better luck next year, Pennsylvania.
Vanity Fair
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BOWLING GREEN, OH - OCTOBER 2: A sign directs people where to vote during early voting at the Wood County Court House October 2, 2012 in Bowling Green, Ohio. Early voting began October 2 in the battleground state of Ohio, five weeks before election day on November 6. (Photo by J.D. Pooley/Getty Images)
BOWLING GREEN, OH - OCTOBER 2: A sign directs people where to vote during early voting at the Wood County Court House October 2, 2012 in Bowling Green, Ohio. Early voting began October 2 in the battleground state of Ohio, five weeks before election day on November 6. (Photo by J.D. Pooley/Getty Images)

By Juli Weiner, Vanity Fair

2012-10-24-cn_image.size.ohio.jpeg

Statistics dreamboat and 100-percent boyfriend material Nate Silver has awarded the state of
Ohio the "Florida-in-2000 Prize for Undue Anxiety and Overdetermined Prognosticating." Mazel tov, Buckeye State, and better luck next year, Pennsylvania.

Silver writes: "Ohio is central enough in the electoral math that it now seems to matter as much as the other 49 states put together." Alright, well, no need to kick Pennsylvania when it's down by lumping it in with, like, Delaware. He continues: "We are now running about 40,000 Electoral College simulations each day. In the simulations that we ran on Monday, the candidate who won Ohio won the election roughly 38,000 times, or in about 95 percent of the cases. (Mr. Romney won in about 1,400 simulations despite losing Ohio, while Mr. Obama did so roughly 550 times.)" Silver has Obama currently ahead by two points -- but what do we really know about this Ohio?

VF.com editor Chris Rovzar recently traveled to Toledo, which, he recalls, was covered with political billboards. Rovzar just missed Barack Obama, who traveled to Ohio on Tuesday to hang out with Joe Biden in Dayton. The Associated Press is calling it a "rare joint appearance." Rarer still: an appearance with Obama, Biden, and Chris Rovzar. CNN speculates that blue-collar workers (coal mining division) might go for Romney, while blue-collar workers (auto manufacturing division) might prefer Obama. VF Daily forecasts that popped collar voters swing definitively toward Romney.

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