• Post election thoughts

      November 7, 2012 at 8:13 am
      Aaron Carroll

    I stayed up way too late last night, but listening to my kids’ excitement about the election this morning was totally worth it. In no particular order, here are my thoughts:

    1) Both President Obama and governor Romney gave pitch perfect speeches last night. It was worth staying up for them.

    2) Any number of people owe Nate Silver a huge apology. Not because he was right, but because they were so wrong. People got angry about his results, but could rarely find fault with his methods. From a scientific perspective, that rubs me the wrong way. Regardless, this was a huge victory for his methodology. I can’t tell you how often I said last night that since I was seeing nothing to prove the polls had been wrong, it was likely Nate was right. And he was.

    3) Speaking of victories for science, it appears that losing sight of it is not a winning formula in Senate campaigns.

    4) I’m stunned at how tough Obamacare has turned out to be. It’s always felt fragile, but now it’s hard to see how it’s not going to be cemented into America. We’re getting the exchanges. We’re getting the Medicaid expansion. We’re getting the regulations and the subsidies. Once they are all in effect in 2014, I can’t see anyone running on a platform to take them away.

    I’m writing a longer post on health care specifically. Back to work.

    UPDATE: Austin has a similar post up. Every time someone mentions “Waterloo”, I think back to this:

    The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
    Aaron Carroll
    www.colbertnation.com
    Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

    Man, that seems like a long time ago now.

    @aaronecarroll

    Comments closed
     
      Health Policy, Politics
      election

    • by Jeremy N on November 7th, 2012 at 10:50

      I would like to argue with point 2. You said people couldn’t find fault with his methods. I was someone who didn’t believe his results for two reasons: 1) Never did his results show a popular vote margin for Romney even though in mid-October almost all polls suggested Romney had one. The only explanation I could think of was that his national poll results were largely contigent on the state poll results. I don’t think he ever explained why we should trust state polls to predict the national popular vote more than national polls.

      Secondly, I was skeptical of the poll results because they showed Democrats voting at levels near or above the Democrat advantage in 2008, which I thought was extremely unlikely (I’m still puzzling over why Democratic turnout was as high as it was). But of all the information I read, no one ever gave a plausible explanation as to why Democrats would be as enthusiastic as they were four years ago, no one seemed to address that criticism of Republicans. This is the reason Obama won, and this is the reason that all those critical of Nate Silver were wrong. (If I missed this explanation somewhere, and you have a link, please post!)

      Also, on point 3, are you referring to the Missouri race only? I can’t think of another example where science would have been an issue. Indiana’s loss wasn’t based on science but a very unsavory opinion.

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    • by Richard on November 7th, 2012 at 22:12

      “cemented into America” from the party of change

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