National

This week I was granted access to some of the polling data gathered by a new local communications firm, Out of the Box. One of the men behind the curtain is Richard Korn, former Democratic candidate for Auditor. Richard sat down with me to answer questions about the polling that Out of the Box did for local races, including Insurance Commissioner, SD11 (Deluca v. Townsend), Mayor of Wilmington and County Executive. Deluca v. Townsend and Wilmington Mayor are first up...

The good news: Obama continues to kick ass. "Obama to win" positions hit new highs in both major trading markets over the weekend. (71% Intrade & 70 IEM). The bad news: Republican billionaires are committed to a strategy of harassment and intimidation of Democratic voters while bankrolling huge GOTV efforts among conservatives. ...

We have a TON of polls today, like yesterday, because of a polling outfit called YouGuv. Who are they? Here is Daily Kos Election's description:

The firm is a British firm, that moved into the American market in 2007 when they bought out Polimetrix, a California-based firm that had done a lot of internet-based polling in 2006 in an arrangement with Stanford University. Their polling is based on internet samples, a method which some find problematic (some aggregators of polling, indeed, refuse to utilize their data). It is a methodology that I also confess to qualms about, because when you have a sample that is essentially volunteering to participate, and a smaller universe from which to draw from, the potential pitfalls are pretty self-evident. However, the true measure is performance. [...] YouGov ... has earned at least a cycle's worth of benefit of the doubt. Their 2010 track record was more than reasonable. Indeed, of the 18 pollsters that offered up a substantive number of polls, YouGov came in fourth place in terms of their accuracy (defined as the percentage of races where they came within three percent of the final margin).

Another new polling outfit that has performed a polling dump today is Purple Strategies. Some of their results are eye raising. They have Obama winning North Carolina but losing Florida, and yet within three of Romney in Arizona. I will bet you everything I own that there is no way that is possible. If Obama wins North Carolina, he is winning Florida too. And if he is making Arizona a swing state, then he is up ten in Florida and 5 in North Carolina. Then again, Purple Strategies has been more pro-Romney this cycle, and if Obama is making Arizona competitive, then maybe this race has just broken wide open...

If Mitt Romney wins the election, undoubtedly a vanishing possibility but still a possibility, he will be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu Government in Israel, currently lead by Prime Minister Netanyahu. In case you are living under a rock during the last three years since this latest Likud government has been in power, the Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu is not interested in peace. It is not interested in fairness. It has illegally pursued further expansion of the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. And it seeks, openly and in a manner than can only be described as "frothing at the mouth," preemptive war with Iran. Sound familiar? Indeed, a Netanyahu-Romney pact for war is a foregone conclusion. And isn't it always the other way around? When an American President is recognized as having a partnership or alliance with another foreign head of state or government, isn't it always recognized that the American leader is the senior and superior leader in the alliance? Remember Clinton-Blair, Bush-Blair and Reagan-Thatcher? In our horrible hypothetical future, for the first time I can ever recall, the American President, god forbid Mitt Romney, would be the junior partner being told by the senior partner, Netanyahu, what to do and when to do it. Romney is on record as seeing no way he could ever say no to an Israeli prime minister on anything. So there you have it.

I saw this on Andrew Sullivan's blog last week and have been meaning to pass it along. It concerns an interview with a Mormon feminist (which seems to me to be a contradiction in terms) named Judy Dushku. She relates her personal experience with the Republican nominee for President of the United States, which took place when Mr. Romney was running for the Senate against Ted Kennedy in 1994.

Holy Bajeebus. YouGov dropped a metric ton of polls on us yesterday, and their results turned Ohio, Virginia, and Florida a lighter shade of blue. I might have to read up on Nate Silver's grading on YouGuv. Other states got bluer, like Nevada, Michigan, Iowa and New Hampshire. No state changed hands though, and we are stuck with the same numbers on our Electoral College map as we have been for weeks: Obama 347, Romney 191. The stability of the race is a feature. A refresher on my methodology in coloring the map: 1) I do not count Rasmussen or other obviously Republican polls; 2) I prefer Registered Voter results versus Likely Voter results (although by now the transition to likely voter models is almost universal); and 3) if we have multiple polls in a state on one day, then the majority finding rules. And if you want a refresher on why as state is a particular color, the legend key is at the bottom of the map. Here is the new map: