The late attempts to to throw campaigning and advertising into states late Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (which, by the now-known-to-be-correct polls, were basically unwinnable) are probably the best evidence. There's also the more squishy testimony of journalists and pundits, who reported on genuine surprise coming from the senior Romney people about the exit polls. Karl Rove's freakout on FOX last night probably also counts.
None of that proves anything. But I think the burden of proof really goes the other way: the Obama campaign clearly seems to have played the moneyball correctly here. If Romney's folks knew they were going to lose, you'd have to show that.
And I don't know how to interpret "Romney really could have won this, had things gone a little differently". If you're talking about polling could have been different had he been winning, then of course: we'd be having the same argument in reverse. Though again, the evidence seems to say that Obama would still have outperformed the popular vote margin and thus have still been running a better data-driven campaign.
If you're saying that the data suggested by the end-campaign polls could have supported a Romney win, then no: that's just wrong, as evidenced by the discussion we're having. That kind of thinking is exactly the kind of "faith-based" notion that the Romney campaign is accused of relying on. The data showed a clear Obama victory. The data was right. Period.
The Romney campaign is reported to have believed they were winning late into the day yesterday.
Based on what their model was telling them.
Not "faith", but data. A model. Math.
I have a strong suspicion in there's a good book in this election- how one set of Big Data led one team in the right direction, and another set of Big Data led the other team in the wrong direction.
This to me is the absolutely crucial thing to keep in mind. You can have your model and have your data, but that doesn't mean you've picked the right model and the right data.
Not the first time that lesson has been demonstrated, and it won't be the last.
The big difference in the models was their assumptions on voter turnout for each side. You can precisely measure what people prefer, but you can't precisely measure whether they will show up next week. So it was the 'art' part of modeling, not the 'science' of statistics, that the conservative pollsters blew.
It's hard to know, but one reason for the strong turnout might have been better get-out-the-vote efforts of the kind described here.
Follow-up articles seem to be indicating the Romney team was indeed wrong about turnout in each direction. Dems turned out more than they expected, Republicans less.
No, that's just wrong. Most "public polls" (rather: the median pollster -- obviously there were outliers in both directions) supported an Obama victory and a demographic and partisan makeup of the electorate that matched closely what was observed in the election. To claim otherwise is just silly, and perpetuating the "unskewing" nonsense that was proven incorrect.
If you're saying that the Romney campaign had "reasonable" justifications for disbelieving the data they saw, then I agree. If you're claiming that they actually had data the supported that position, then you're wrong.
We're talking turnout now, not preference. No one is talking unskewing.
The polls did in fact show that Republicans had higher enthusiasm, which is valid evidence for expecting better turnout. The better turnout did not materialize, but it was completely reasonable to believe that it might.
No, no, no. Polls include a prediction of turnout. That's the point of their likely voter models. They were telling you who was going to go to the polls already, yet the Romney campaign (and essentially all of the conservative establishment) chose to willfully ignore that data on the back of some cherry picked numbers (e.g. Rassmussen) and a set of "unskewed" models that were simply wrong.
There was never any data for that. It was all (incorrect) analysis. So don't say that there was data to support the position, there wasn't.
And the "enthusiasm" numbers were from early in the spring, before likely voter probing can be done. That stuff all disappears once the LV polls start coming out post-primaries.
I'm just at a loss. The poll told you how many voters it thought would appear, based on factors including internal modelling and the enthusiasm quesiton. And your argument is that you should throw the aggregate data out based on that one number, that they already included? That's insane; it's quite literally cherry picking.
And, of course, it's just flat wrong. That you would defend this behavior is just beyond me. It was a mistake, it wasn't ever a reasonable interpretation of the data, and plenty of smart people said so at the time.
The enthusiasm is a measure among the reported data. Not among the survey sample. The data was culled for likely voters, then the enthusiasm spread was among those that survived the cut. At the bottom of each page it says the results are all from the weighted sample.
The concept here is that "likely" is a continuum, and the Republicans had an advantage at the extreme upper end of it.
EDIT- Adding a note and then moving on from this. I understand you're saying the enthusiasm is baked into the final preference percentages, but that's not the case.
I was interpreting your stance as a verdict on the Romney campaign's behavior over the last couple months, rather than just last night. And a month or two ago, they were behind according to the polls but they definitely could have still won.
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin I think are evidence of exactly the opposite: they knew they were going to lose Ohio and they had money to burn, so they threw a hail mary. Because why not?
None of that proves anything. But I think the burden of proof really goes the other way: the Obama campaign clearly seems to have played the moneyball correctly here. If Romney's folks knew they were going to lose, you'd have to show that.
And I don't know how to interpret "Romney really could have won this, had things gone a little differently". If you're talking about polling could have been different had he been winning, then of course: we'd be having the same argument in reverse. Though again, the evidence seems to say that Obama would still have outperformed the popular vote margin and thus have still been running a better data-driven campaign.
If you're saying that the data suggested by the end-campaign polls could have supported a Romney win, then no: that's just wrong, as evidenced by the discussion we're having. That kind of thinking is exactly the kind of "faith-based" notion that the Romney campaign is accused of relying on. The data showed a clear Obama victory. The data was right. Period.