The odds.

[paulitics]

In case you were wondering what the odds are that Ken Buck, Joe Miller, and Sharon Angle would all lose I will give you a rough estimate based on intrade the day before the election. I am not including Odonnell or Rand Paul since their races were not competititve.

ALl 3 had roughly a .70% chance of winning, give or take a few points. The odds that all three would lose is only about 2.7%

So, it seems like the high profile liberty candidates had a really bad night based on the odds, and the polling data the day before the election. There was a 93.3%chance that Rand would have had at least one ally out of the bunch.

I'm assuming that Joe Miller and Ken Buck lose by the way. I don't see how either can win based on the numbers.

Needless to say, I'm disapointed because these were the races that matter most, since they were not RINO republicans but constitutional conservatives.

So what happened?

[teacherone]

well...when you put it that way...

good fucking question!

[adamni]

Diebold is what happened. ;)

[rprprs]

I don't have an answer to your question, but it certainly is a discouraging result. I am most disappointed in the Angle loss and most surprised by Miller. Murkowski should have been done in by her arrogance alone. :mad:

[starless]

Constitutional conservatives need to master the soft sell. Your chances of winning are slim when you have a history of saying you want to provatize social security and medicare, and you're unsure of the constitutionality of various things like the minimum wage, etc.

We need to learn to cool down the rhetoric. Anything else can be too easily spun to sound "crazy" to an uneducated electorate.

[justinc.1089]

Constitutional conservatives need to master the soft sell. Your chances of winning are slim when you have a history of saying you want to provatize social security and medicare, and you're unsure of the constitutionality of various things like the minimum wage, etc.

We need to learn to cool down the rhetoric. Anything else can be too easily spun to sound "crazy" to an uneducated electorate.

EXACTLY.

When you say stuff like that it makes literally 97% of voters tremble in fear, and question their support for you even if they were previously certain they were voting for you.

And I noticed at least a few of the Tea Party candidates, such as Angle for example, were saying things like that.


Just keep in mind the Tea Party movement is one election cycle behind our movement. We made some of those speaking mistakes with Ron Paul in 07, and learned from it in this election with Rand. Rand spoke very mainstream so that voters felt confident in him, and felt confident he wasn't going to just destroy their guberment support. And Rand won. The voters were afraid other Tea Party candidates were going to destroy their guberment support, especially with boogeymen like Reid building up their fears, and so they voted against other Tea Party candidates.

The best Conway came up with was the Aqua Budha.

I don't think I should even need to mention the stuff that Reid and others had to use against their opposition...

[brandon]

I don't think there is really enough volume on intrade to say their odds are predictive.

[low preference guy]

So what happened?

Two possibilities I can think of:

1. This is an unusual election and difficult to poll. The polls gave our candidates more advantage than they really had, which means the "odds" were not accurate.

2. The GOTV effort from the dems was extremely good, but the reps GOTV was weak. Could this be partly blamed on Michael Steele? Does he have some responsibility in building the structure to get out the vote?

[jclay2]

Two possibilities I can think of:

1. This is an unusual election and difficult to poll. The polls gave our candidates more advantage than they really had, which means the "odds" were not accurate.

2. The GOTV effort from the dems was extremely good, but the reps GOTV was weak. Could this be partly blamed on Michael Steele? Does he have some responsibility in building the structure to get out the vote?

Or there was also a mix of voter fraud?

[low preference guy]

Or there was also a mix of voter fraud?

It could of course, but what was the margin?

[klamath]

I could write off Nevada as voter fraud but not Alaska and CO. I think starless point is well taken. The republicans still don't have it down, as all they think about is retaining majorities. With the electorate this country has you have to lie like the democrats to get elected and then reveal your true colors after elected. Vote in mass to repeal a bunch of sh*t then take the consequences in the next election. It doesn't matter your agenda went forward.
Take Obama care. The democrats knew that passing it would cost them the majorities but they also knew that the republicans couldn't win enough votes to repeal it. THEIR agenda moved forward. This is how they work and it is very effective. In a few years they will win majorities again and ratchet the next step.

[osan]

So what happened?

The answer is obvious. It was fraud. Can you spell fraud? Let's try:

D I E B O L D - fraud.

See? It's pretty easy.

Seriously, it's hard to say in AK or CO. NV, OTOH, seems pretty fishy to me.

[nate895]

Looking at the Congressional Races, it is obvious voter fraud on a large scale. Super conservative House candidates won across the board, significantly outperforming even Bush in their districts. However, the candidates with the same positions did horrible statewide. For example, Koster (staunch conservative) in WA state is winning CD 2, whereas Rossi is losing the same district as of now (that could change, it is really close either way).

This election just doesn't make sense. The main problem I think is that the Tea Party didn't establish a narrative in the Senate races, and so the media was able to establish a narrative that allowed fraud to come in. This entire political game seems more like a theater than anything else.