VA Governor's race:Election Eve update

Several elections are being held tomorrow. The polls say there is no suspense whatsoever in the governor's race in New Jersey or the mayor's race in New York, where repsectively Chris Christie and Bill De Blasio are expected to win by double digits. In Virginia, the governor's race between Terry McAuliffe and Ken Cuccinelli looks closer, but if my system hold true, there is extremely little chance of an upset. (I have notbeen checking the data for the down ticket races. Daily Kos says only the Attorney General race looks close.)

For a time in early September, Cuccinelli appeared to be gaining on McAuliffe, but that trend turned around and Cuccinelli's team has been starved for good news since. The last three updates on October 20, October 27 and November 3 have all put the Confidence of Victory number for McAuliffe at a formidable 99.4%. (In a strange coincidence, these three numbers came from three separate polls from three different companies, the well-known Quinnipiac and Rasmussen and the lesser known Newport College Polling Group.

My system does not predict the margin of victory, but except for one outlier predicting a close 2% margin, the rest of the polls in the past week make it look like the margin will be 6% to 7%.

I will report back on Wednesday about the results.
 

Final report: New Jersey special election for Senate

The special election to fill the seat of the late Frank Lautenberg will be held this Wednesday, October 16. Why it isn't being held on the same date as the governor's race this November or even being held on a Tuesday as most American election are, only Chris Christie knows.

In any case, I have said almost nothing about this race because no poll has shown it being very close. Cory Booker has a commanding lead over Steve Lonegan in every poll so far. The only dispute is how big the lead is.

Oct 13: Rutgers: sample size 513 Booker ahead 58%-36%(22 points)
Oct 12: Monmouth: sample size 1393 Booker ahead 52%-42% (10 points)
Oct 8: Richard Stockton College: sample size 729 Booker ahead 50%-39%(11 points)
Oct 7: Quinnipiac: sample size 899 Booker ahead 53%-41% (12 points)
Oct 5: Farliegh Dickinson: sample size 702 Booker ahead 45%-29% (16 points)

The story for polling nerds here is the huge discrepancy between the last two polls. My Confidence of Victory system does not try to pick the margin of victory, just the victor. Because the width of the margin is so high in all cases, the polls all agree Lonegan has next to no chance. Here are the odds using Confidence of Victory, stating them as x to 1 favorite, rounded to three significant digits.

Oct 13: Rutgers: Booker is a 16,000,000 to 1 favorite
Oct 12: Monmouth: Booker is a 18,500 to 1 favorite
Oct 8: Richard Stockton College: Booker is a 1,320 to 1 favorite
Oct 7: Quinnipiac: Booker is a 10,900 to 1 favorite
Oct 5: Farliegh Dickinson: Booker is a 4,170,000 to 1 favorite

Can I explain these differences? This may seem strange, but my explanation is these differences really don't matter. Once you get past being more than a 1,000 to 1 favorite, it's over. I have not yet had 1,000 samples, but so far the biggest favorite to lose since 2008 was about 11 to 5, or 2.2 to 1. This was Spitzer vs. Springer in New York City comptroller, a race only one Quinnipiac called for Springer.

There were some very big upsets in the Republican presidential primaries after Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich both failed to be the Not Romney and Rick Santorum went from also-ran to contender, but two person races are pretty easy to call, especially when the numbers are this big.

I'm sure there will be bigger upsets in two candidate races eventually and there may be some I didn't log because it was in a race I skipped over, like the House races or state ballot propositions. But unless voter turnout is crazy low and skewed as hell, Cory Booker will be a Senator very soon.

VA governor's race:First October update

There are races in New Jersey for senator and governor this year, but I haven't reported on them because they haven't looked interesting. Democrat Cory Booker will likely become a senator with a double digit win and Republican Chris Christie appears to be cruising to re-election by a wide margin as well.

The governor's race in Virginia is a little closer, but according to my Confidence of Victory system, only a little. Here's the latest data.

 

Since late August, polling companies have been taking a major interest in the race between Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Ken Cucinnelli. Every week or so, two or more polls are released, so the data I present here are weekly medians of the Confidence of Victory numbers.

Advantage McAuliffe, if you haven't been paying attention.

Most news outlets that show polling data consider the percentage lead the most important information, but my system is based on the percentage lead of voters who have a preference. This I turn into a Confidence of Victory (CoV) number using very basic statistical methods. In mid August, McAuliffe's CoV numbers were over 98%, but they fell in mid-September to about 85%. Since then, they have climbed back to 96.8%. I haven't collected enough data to say that there really is much difference when someone gets a CoV over 90%. No one with that strong a lead at the end lost in the data I gather since 2004.

Notice the prepositional phrase "at the end". We aren't at the end yet, because the election is a month away. But as it stands currently, Cuccinelli needs something like the miracle Bill De Blasio got when Anthony Weiner went from front-runner to pariah/dick joke. Unless there are pictures of Terry McAuliffe's junk floating undetected around the Internet, Cuccinelli faces very long odds indeed.

More updates when there is more data.

More election news:Results from New Jersey, new polls for New York City mayor

The results from the primary for the New Jersey special election came in and there were no surprises. Cory Booker won the Democratic nomination handily with 59% while his closest rival had 20%. Republican Steve Lonegan beat his single opponent Alieta Eck 79% to 21%.

The Booker vs. Lonegan election will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 16. Two months is a long time in politics, but currently Booker is leading comfortably in all the polls that have asked about this particular match-up.
  

The New York City mayoral race is much more up in the air. The Democratic primary polls taken this month by Siena and Quinnipiac don't agree on much except the fall of Anthony Weiner from the top tier of candidates.

The rules of the primary state that if a single candidate gets more than 40% of the vote, he or she is declared the winner. Otherwise the top two candidates are in a run-off. Here are the results for the top three candidates in the most recent polls.

Siena (8/2 to 8/7)
Quinn 25%
DiBlasio 14%
Thompson 16%

Quinnipiac (8/7 to 8/12)
DiBlasio 30%
Quinn 24%
Thompson 22%

My Confidence of Victory method does have ways of turning each of these sets of numbers into probabilities of victory for all three of these candidates, and as you might expect the Siena numbers from earlier in the month would make Quinn the prohibitive favorite while the Quinnipiac number would hand the big favorite role to DiBlasio.

Quinn has been the favorite for several months, never polling less than second. Similar to the 2012 Republican presidential primary, there is a remarkable amount of what I call "churn" in the numbers. If I stretched the analogy a little farther (perhaps too far, I can't be sure), this would put Christine Quinn, the openly gay speaker of the New York City Council in the role of Romney, while Weiner and DiBlasio, the  New York City public advocate and considered the most liberal candidate, in the roles of the many Not Romneys that the Republican field had to offer.

The last five elections for mayor have been won by a Republican (Giuliani) and a former Republican turned Independent (Bloomberg), but the current assumption is that the star power is gone from the Republican ranks currently and the Democratic primary winner will move to Gracie Mansion.

I've read analyses by Harry Enten and Nate Silver, both of whom are very keen on historical track records. Maybe it's because I'm older than either of them or I've just seen so many predictions done on flimsy data turn out so badly, but I'm not convinced the historical record is the right thing to look at. An issue like "stop and frisk" has a strong chance to be a game changer, and that would work to DiBlasio's advantage.

Enten believes it's all about ethnic politics, which gives Thompson,who is black, an edge over DiBlasio. Silver thinks Quinn's position as front runner for most of the year gives her the inside track. I claim no expertise about New York politics, but I believe more strongly in event driven elections being the correct modern model and that historical data is often so much balloon juice.

I'll post again when there is new data.

I will keep track of these races through the primary on September 10, the likely run-off on October 1 and the general election on November 5.

The not much election news to report.

My Internet crashed on the day of the reporting of the Massachusetts special Senate election. My prediction said Ed Markey looked like a prohibitive favorite and he won. The median poll said he was leading by seven to ten points, he won by ten.

The other two elections in the news are the governor's race in Virginia and the special Senate election in New Jersey. There hasn't been any news since the middle of July in Virginia, where McAuliffe is still leading in the median polls.

There is news from New Jersey, but it is of zero interest to those who want an exciting race. Newark mayor Cory Booker has a huge lead in the Democratic primary and former Bogota mayor Steve Lonegan looks to be a shoo-in in the Republican primary. In the general election, Booker has a massive lead as well, though there is a long time between now and the October 16 special election, strangely scheduled for a Wednesday.