The Presidential Election For The World...

[comrade_general]

Yes.

[Jubal]

I think the best reason to vote Obama is to avoid a Romney victory though.

Simply speaking in foreign policy terms, I don't think the US understands quite how much ill-will the world actually has towards the Republican party. The US is tough, but not so tough it can literally go it alone, and bar Israel there isn't a single one of its key allies that would like to see Romney in charge. I think that will also strongly hamper any efforts he makes towards deficit reduction - even in key trade partners such as Canada or the UK the GOP swings between bogeyman and laughing stock in the media. Dealing with Chinese currency manipulation is all well and good, but not realistically possible without European, Asian and South American allies backing international negotiations. And pretty much all of those are about as eager to support Romney as cut their own noses off.

The memory of the Bush years is fading a little, but it takes a long time to undo the memories of two costly US-led wars (one still continuing) both of which were unbelievably poorly planned, a lot of somewhat insulting foreign policy decisions (what do you mean, we need to ask before striking your country with missiles), severe human rights abuses such as at Guantanamo, etc etc. Whether these critiques are fair or unfair, they're the popular perception and I think they're going to make it impossible for a Romney administration to operate an effective foreign policy (particularly militarily). Romney has hardly broken from that bad legacy either - insulting Britain when they're your closest ally bodes decidedly ill for negotiating with much less friendly nations worldwide.

Any of Johnson, Obama, or probably even Stein could carry a certain amount of gravitas and goodwill on the world stage. Romney will find himself extremely lacking in it just when he - and the US economy - need it most.

[Jubal]

Difficult to know how things are going.

The media story tends to still be one of "Romentum" - but the polls are showing at best a stalling of it. The national tracking polls are still showing a Romney win, particularly Rasmussen and Gallup, but the crucial swing states are still favouring Obama.

Bottom line: three states matter. Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada. Romney has had pretty much no polling showing him ahead in any of these three, and he needs at least one of them to win (he could substitute Minnesota, Michigan, or Pensylvania, but these three are more solidly in the Obama camp for the moment by another couple of percentage points).

My expectation is still a Romney defeat for this reason. I'm expecting a strong popular vote showing - but I'm increasingly feeling a popular/electoral vote split is likely. Why? Enthusiasm versus campaigns. Obama has the better ground game and he's holding on to poll leads in the swing states. Elsewhere, Democrats aren't feeling nearly so good about things and won't turn out so well, but in states like Minnesota or Oregon - or even California or Massachusetts - this won't lose the Democrats the state, just cut into their margins. The deep south and redder midwest on the other hand is going to be fired up by the prospect of Romney/Ryan, turn out in droves... but make no difference since Romney was going to win those places anyway.

[comrade_general]

Voting for Romney.

[Jubal]

Interesting. Main reasons for switching?

[comrade_general]

My brother wants me to. It's more important that I make a vote against Obama that would make a difference.

[Jubal]

It'd be really interesting to do cultural analyses of voting behaviour. People often vote in similar blocks - for example, here, you voting with your family - but to what extent is this because similar people vote similarly or to what extent is there a cultural effect? If we isolated all the people and just gave them the election literature in a locked room, would we get much more diversity in voting patterns?

Hmm.

[debux]

I guess... we had to vote for mayors and their counselors last weekend, on a national scale (BTW, first time I ever voted! Even though it's only one vote, and that the counselor I voted for had less than 1% of the total votes, I still had a stupid, big smile on my face from how important I felt after voting ). The day before, many of my family members were saying stuff like "I have no idea of the people that are trying to be elected, but I know what party I have to vote for"... it was rather infuriating. I'd guess that such bold and thoughtless remarks would just elevate the confidence of those were still unsecure or undecided and decided to go with the masses.

[comrade_general]

Seems it's gonna be a super close one. There was a Romney rally down around Cincinnati that gathered around 30,000 people, when in comparison when they had the same thing for McCain 4 years ago barely 300 people showed up. My brother was there, he shook hands with Romney.

[Jubal]

I watched Romney's speech, it was impressively delivered.

On the other hand, he's facing a historic battle against the polling consensus to win. Here are some very simply done poll averages from RealClearPolitics:
WISCONSIN 5.4%
MINNESOTA 5.0%
PENNSYLVANIA 4.6%
MICHIGAN 3.5%
OHIO 2.9%
NEVADA 2.7%

The above is enough states for Obama to win another term in office. To put this into perspective, no candidate has ever been elected in a state with a worse margin in polls than 3.5%. That's happened exactly once, and that was Texas in 1992 where there was limited polling and a third candidate to mess things around. If we consider that an outlier, the next state down on the list is Indiana '08 where Obama overcame a 1.3% deficit. A Romney win pretty much needs Ohio; and he can take it, but the polls have to be wrong by the second largest margin in history and the largest in a two-horse race with this amount of polling. If this is the case it shows a very interesting set of methodological flaws must be existent in the polling community which will be important to analyse afterwards.

New Hampshire at Ob +1.8, Iowa at Ob +2.0, Florida (just) at Rom +1.4 and North Carolina at Rom +3.8 are the other swing states outside the 1.3% zone. The genuine toss-ups from the polling would be Virginia (Rom +0.5) and Colorado (Ob +1.0).

All in all a fascinating final stretch; the implication from the numbers appears to be that Romney still has ground to make up, but if any campaign has ever had the financial resources to do it it's this year's GOP.

[Will]

It'd be really interesting to do cultural analyses of voting behaviour. People often vote in similar blocks - for example, here, you voting with your family - but to what extent is this because similar people vote similarly or to what extent is there a cultural effect? If we isolated all the people and just gave them the election literature in a locked room, would we get much more diversity in voting patterns?

Hmm.

If you replaced the names and anywhere that says republican or democrat also.

[debux]

I just wish they wouldn't spend so much on money on advertisement and stuff, that money could be spent a lot better. Like on us 3rd world countries

I'd really abstain from voting, if I could... just to say how ridiculous I find it that they are allocating their money, considering that the crisis in the US is still there (according to BBC estimates, each vote equals $20 spent on publicity)

[comrade_general]

A picture my brother took, just before he shook hands with Romney.

[Jubal]

Yup, that's Willard. 

[debux]

To be honest, what is the point of shaking hands with an important person? I hope I'm not offending anyone because of my lack of humanity (or my lack of understanding of human behaviour), but I sincerely don't see the point of supporting someone so much to the point you almost idolatrise them. I mean, sure, it must be quite something to be able to shake hands with someone that could become the president of one of the most powerful and influential countries of the world, but to him, you're just another person of the crowd. I'd much rather at least strike a casual, "small-talk" conversation to him.