Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: This complicated election

_{Visual source: Newseum}

Nate Silver on election forecasts:

Although each map takes a slightly different approach to projecting state-by-state results, they all have Mr. Obama leading Mitt Romney in 'solid' and 'leaning' electoral votes. It's in the breadth of that lead and the most likely paths to those vote totals where disagreements arise.

The New York Times sees Mr. Obama with the slimmest edge, a mere 11 electoral votes. Pollster, on the other hand, has Mr. Obama with 270 electoral votes, a 79-vote advantage over Mr. Romney and already enough for a second term.

Nate Silver, fivethirtyeight.com

It's a tenuous lead. Obama's problems are exaggerated by the media ("it's a problem because Romney said it's a problem") and so is the role of money, but hey, it's election season.

Speaking of the role of money, check the back and forth at The Mischiefs of Faction on the meaning of money in WI:

It's no surprise that Gov. Scott Walker won the recall.  Polls had shown him ahead for some time. The question here is: did the spending make a difference?  In such quandaries, a counterfactual is the best way to demonstrate causality. For example, would Walker have won....if he had raised less money? ...or if he had raised a higher proportion of his money from in-state donors? ...or if Barrett had raised more?  Seth's attempt to capture such a counterfactual using the 2010 election is reasonable, perhaps because it some of the only evidence we have.  I think some readers have found this unsatisfying because the implication is that the two years of intervening political turmoil were, perhaps, meaningless (at least in terms of affecting political change in the form of an election outcome).

We talked a lot about polls and polling yesterday at Netroots Nation. For those of you who couldn't be there, we were joined by Mark Blumenthal (Huffington Post), Jon Cohen (Washington Post), Margie Omero (Momentum Analysis) and David C. Wilson (University of Delaware) for a great discussion. Here is the unedited video:

Did you know Jenny McCarthy Causes Autism? It would be true if correlation equaled causation.

The same researchers were even startled to find that the correlation between her rise in popularity/rise in autism is much more strongly correlated than vaccines and autism. When asked for comment, McCarthy tweeted, "correlation doesn't equal causation, jackass."

To which we all exclaimed, "UH DUH!"

Daily Beast:

Netroots Nation and Obama: It's Complicated

I asked Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas if he was worried about the level of despair at the conference. He replied, 'The administration should be worried about the level of despair here.' Like many attendees, he brought up the failed recall election in Wisconsin. The Republicans, he pointed out, sent all sorts of surrogates to the state to campaign for Gov. Scott Walker. 'Obama stayed away,' he says. 'Why? Because he would be embarrassed if he lost. I'll tell you what. If he shows that he's going to fight for the things that I care about, I will fight twice as hard for him.' And if he doesn't? 'Then I'll vote for him,' says Moulitsas.

SF Chronicle:

Netroots Nation, an annual convention of liberal bloggers and activists that draws national political attention, will be held in San Jose next June.

The annual gathering, inspired and organized by readers of the liberal DailyKos political blog, is being held this week in Providence, R.I., where it is expected to attract 2,700 people.

Next year's conference, June 20-23, is projected to draw 3,000 people to the San Jose Convention Center. The city "is thrilled to host Netroots Nation in 2013," said Meghan Horrigan, a spokeswoman for Team San Jose, which manages the convention center.