Is the Presidential election already over?

[jpmassar]

18% of Ohio's voters have already voted. Another large hunk is expected to have voted well before November 6th.

There's been a lot of Ohio polls lately, but the only poll done so far that I've seen that distinguished those who already voted from those who didn't had Obama winning among those who already voted by a huge margin, 63-37Obviously it's

Comments

[barking_iguana]

And if you can call Ohio for Obama, you can pretty much call the election.

No, you can't.

Who probably wins if it goes to the House?

[jpmassar]

Yes you can.

[barking_iguana]

In several (I think most) of your polling posts over the past couple of months, Ohio was not the critical state. Meaning if you shift the national electorate, bit by bit, Ohio is still in the Obama column when Romney gets to 270. Do you think that doesn't matter?

[jpmassar]

No, it doesn't matter for what I'm saying. Basically, I'm saying that if I were to tell you that Ohio went to Obama, what would you then think (on a conditional probability basis) was the probability that Obama would win the election?

Doesn't matter whether Ohio turns out to be the tipping point state. If I could (hypothetically) predict with 99% certainty that Ohio is Obama's then can I "pretty much" call the election?

[barking_iguana]

If you could reasonably say a priori that Ohio was 99% going for Obama, then you could indeed say Obama was heavily favored.

If you could say that in some world where everybody in Ohio voted on the same day as everybody else in the country, Obama would be an overwhelming favorite, as you say.

But if Ohio votes on average earlier and therefore Obama wins, that's not nearly as predictive of the rest of the country.

[jpmassar]

The odds of a tie are slim enough that they do not affect in any significant way the "pretty much" qualification of my statement.