How My Predictions Worked Out

My last post was my election predictions. With this post, I examine how I did. In a word: I was correct in my direction, but not in the magnitude of the move.

I first said:

The Republican party already controls the House of Representatives, 233 to 199, with three vacancies. I predict the Republicans will maintain control and will extend their majority to around 246 to 185.

This they did. The current count at Real Clear Politics is 243 Republicans, 179 Democrats, with 13 seats not yet decided. Of the ones I could find data for, the Republican candidate was in the lead in five. That would bring the total to 248 for them. If so, I was very, very close with this.

Next I said:

When the election is over the Republicans will have won 52 [Senate] seats...the Republican caucus will be 55 members....

As of right now, the number are 52 Republicans, 45 Democrats, with three not yet decided. Of those three, two seem to favor the Republicans, which would bring the total to 54-45 (plus one Independent). So, again, I was close, predicting the direction but not the magnitude of the move. It was stronger for the Republicans than I predicted.

Then I said"

...what percentage of Americans will be governed by which party...it will be darn close to a 50-50 split, regardless of the number of states involved...the margins in these elections will generally be closer than in 2010....

Here I was off. With a couple of races still to be decided (in states with small populations), it appears the split will be 60% of the population with Republican governors, 40% with Democratic governors. The two that shifted this were Florida and Illinois (and to some extent Massachusetts), which went Republican when I figured they would stay Democratic. So I was off on this one.

And last I said:

As to state legislatures...the status quo will prevail...no legislature to change majorities.

Data on these races is probably still coming in, but the Washington Post reports this:

"Before Election Day, the GOP controlled 59 of 98 partisan legislative chambers across the country. On Tuesday, preliminary results showed Republicans had won control of both the Nevada Assembly and Senate, the Colorado Senate and state House chambers in Minnesota, New Mexico, Maine, West Virginia and New Hampshire. That would give the party control of 67 chambers, five more than their previous record in the modern era, set after special elections in 2011 and 2012."

So, once again, I missed this part of the election decision by voters. I didn't see, in polling data or in any type of public outcry, a movement toward the Republican Party at this level. I'm trying to assess for myself what this means going forward. In my book The Candy Store Generation I said I was waiting for The Had Enough Generation to rise up and wrest control from the idiots who lead my generation, the Baby Boomers. I wonder if maybe we are seeing the beginning of that.

Should I hang up my whiteboard, and quit making election predictions? It's fun to do, but a little risky. Not that I really have anything on the line by taking that risk.

A Political Off-Year

They say this is an election year, but an "off-year" election. That is, a president is not being elected, so interest in the election is expected to be less, with voter turnout lower than it would be in a presidential election year. That's the way it's always been in American elections.

Last election I published The Candy Store Generation. I had this out in July, and made predictions for the November elections. Those predictions were amazingly accurate: exact for president, exact for the House, off a little for the Senate. I had actually made accurate predictions in 2004, and in most years when I looked at the situation and thought it through.

I believe I was able to do this, beating such pundits as Karl Rove and Dick Morris, and the whole crew at MSNBC, because I predicted with my head and not my heart, and because I accurately considered what my own generation was like and how they would vote. I was listening to the world around me, taking in data from whatever sources were available, and making a decision of what I thought would happen, not what I wanted to happen. It seems that too many of the talking heads on news channels and talk radio predict with their hearts. They want a certain something to happen, and based on that they self-filter the data to prove what they want. They may be doing this subconsciously, but I suspect a lot of it is purposeful, hoping to move public opinion to what they want to happen.

So what about this election? What's going to happen? I actually haven't been following it close enough to make a prediction. I'm looking at data now, especially polling data. What I've noticed in the past that, when a political trend is rapidly developing, the polls tend to shift quickly and excessively toward that trend. Then, a short while later, the polls swing back to correctly measure baseline public opinion. It's as if people are caught up in the news and tell the pollster what the news is telling them, but later think better of it and return to the position they've always had. In a slower trend, it seems to me that the polls are more likely to be correct. I could give several examples showing both of these, but won't take up space with it.

At present the news for the administration and the nation is all bad. Multiple problems, foreign and domestic, beset the Obama administration. Congress seems mostly ineffective and lazy. A slowly growing economy, growth that is not expanding the employed labor force in any significant way, is mitigating some of the problems. If anything, Americans seem somewhat more apathetic than normal. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how to assess this data, but my best guess is that the polls are over-predicting, by a small amount, the dissatisfaction of the electorate.

I thought about issuing a new edition of The Candy Store Generation to include a short chapter on what I think will happen this election. That would be risky, but I should have done that. It's too late to do that now, but not too late to make predictions and post them here. I'm still not quite ready to do that, but may do so before the election is here.

No promises, but stay tuned.

The Next Generation

I was part of a recent "dust-up" at a political group on Facebook. These are all conservative people on the site. It's name is Conservative Arkansas. Yet, I posted something that bothered some people. I posted something about my theory that my own generation, the Baby Boomers, is in large measure depending on the government to fund their retirement through Social Security, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obama Care). I called us "The Candy Store Generation" after my book of that title.

Well, that got people really riled. I knew what I wrote was a little provocative, but I was unprepared for what some people posted. Here's what I first posted and what some others said in response.

Me: He's [a person referenced in an Internet news article] a baby boomer, a member of the Candy Store Generation. Most of them will expect to have their health care paid by O.P.M.—other people's money.

Another: David Todd...you have the market on a special kind of ignorance to make a remark as you did.

Another: David Todd is one kind of Special Ignorant Libtard Retard!

Another: David Todd, You must have grown up in neighborhoods of wealthy people.

Another: David Todd, you are sweeping with too wide a broom when you say most.

Another: VERY STRANGE RESEARCH. I've traveled the country managing 10,000 units of apartments from getto to upper end and never recall a conversation with a boomer that thinks the way you say. I suspect your reading liberal propaganda and/or talking direct with northerners who for the most part are twisted liberals

Another: David Todd does not know what he is even talking about!!!

Another: Pure puked up propaganda.

Another: It seems like Mr Todd has been bitten by the BarryBug. Fearsome little critter that has an obscene way of making one believe the most horrendous tales.

Another: Obama wasn't elected by Boomers. He was elected by bullshiting the young know-it-all Young people that live in the Give-Me Society-CHILDREN if the Boomers, combined with Low-Information Voters with challenged IQ's, voter fraud and the Black Vote that didn't care if he was the X-Dictator of Kenya that was here seeking political asylum. The Silent Majority Boomers is why we have a partial conservative House. They WILL rise to take the senate & presidency unless Obama can create a big enough civil war, declare Martial Law & cancel the election in the name of national defense.

Sorry for the profanity in that last one; I'm just quoting it as written. All of these are as written, including any typos. Only two of these are the complete posts. And some are repeated people. These aren't nine different people, but probably just four, maybe five.

Two or three instructive items can be drawn from this. The most important one is how every generation venerates previous generations, never sees a problem with their generation, and runs down the next younger generation. I believe it's been that way forever. No doubt the generation that fought the civil war blamed the long depression in the 1880s on the younger generation. Those who came of age during Reconstruction probably thought those coming of age during the Ragtime of the 1890s were a bunch of blooming idiots. They in turn would have misunderstood the era of good feeling leading up to WW1 and those who were euphoric about it.

Then, those who were adults before WW1 thought the "kids" of the Roaring 20s were profligates and reprobates. Eventually those who lived through the Great Depression and who fought and won WW2 thought the next generation were spoiled brats who were good for nothing. But wait, that would be...the Baby Boomers. Yes, the so-called Greatest Generation, who were our parents and grandparents, who raised and mentored us, saw us as a bunch of druggies, hippies, free-love freeloaders.

Now, on this conservative political site, those same people can't see that everyone in their generation isn't like they are, that a majority of Boomers have their hands in the candy store and are more than willing to use other people's money to fund their retirement. I used that understanding of the Boomers, bolstered by research and statistics, to make an analysis of the electorate as a whole and a prediction of the 2012 elections. And I got it exactly right on the presidency and the House, though was off some on the Senate. When I pointed that out in the thread, one man responded, "Yeah, we really should have seen the election coming, but didn't. As much as I rant and rave, I do still think people are, for the most part, smart enough to do things right. Obviously mistaken."

So, my analysis caused me to make an accurate prediction, while others predicted the election with their hearts instead of their heads. That makes me a libtard retard.

Obviously this isn't a site I should stick around. I don't see them as convincing 70 million people that there's a better way to run a country. They're preaching to themselves, driving away anyone who even slightly disagrees with them, and doing a very bad job of it overall. C'est la vie.

The Senate Moves by Personalities

In my last post I sort of patted myself on the back for having made accurate predictions of how this election would go. My predictions were in my book The Candy Store Generation, published in July 2012. They were based on my belief that the Baby Boomers, the generation now in control of almost everything in America, was addicted to candy from the candy store and would vote for whoever promised them the most goodies from the government.

I predicted Barack Obama would narrowly win re-election, which he did. I predicted the House would remain in Republican control, though with a lower margin, which it did. The Republicans lost a net of six seats, retaining what could be called a comfortable majority.

It was in the Senate where I missed. My prediction was that the Republicans would gain ground, and possibly, though not probably, take it over, or that it would be evenly divided. Before the election the Democratic-Independent coalition had a 53-47 seat edge over the Republicans. I expected that to become either 50-50 or 51-49 one way of the other. Instead, the Democrats increased their majority to 55-45.

So where did I miss it? First of all, maybe I shouldn't be terribly concerned about missing one out of three when I was so exact on the other two. Still, I missed it. The Republican losses in Missouri and Indiana are, it seems to me, the key to what happened in the Senate races.

The Republican candidates in those two states were ahead in their races in the spring and early summer. McKaskill (D) in Missouri seemed particularly vulnerable and the most likely incumbent Democratic senator to be defeated. But then the idiot Republican made his statement about "legitimate rape", and the party was over. From that moment on he was a goner.

In Indiana, the race turned from the Republican's to lose to a sure Democratic victory when the idiot Republican candidate made his statement that a pregnancy resulting from a rape was God's will. From that point on, he was a goner too.

Then, I think these two statements dragged down Republican candidates elsewhere. The media reported them so widely, with disdain to the max, that voters in Montana and North Dakota thought, perhaps subconsciously, that the Republicans were the party of legitimate rape and rape-caused pregnancies, and turned away from them in sufficient numbers that the Democrats won those seats.

Let's be clear about one thing: There's no such thing as a rape that is legitimate. Trying to figure out what Aiken meant, all I can assume is that he meant "actual rape" rather than sex that was acquiesced to but really wasn't wanted, but which later the woman said was rape. I don't know if that's what he meant or not. But if that's what he meant, it's still a stupid comment. Rape is a serious matter, as is men forcing themselves on women. Our over-sexualized culture and media is doing its best to get women to give in to sexual urges rather than retain their natural reticence. Given all that, male candidates just need to shut up about those issues. Rape is rape.

Part of Aiken's comments was about the stress of a rape causing a woman's body to do something—maybe secrete a hormone?—that would prevent a pregnancy from happening. I had actually seen something written on that long before Bozo Aiken made his remark, but have never researched it. I don't know where it was I read that, if it was a medical piece backed up by research or a fluff piece, if it was speculation or science. But it doesn't matter. It was a stupid remark to make in any context, it didn't need to be made, and it sunk Aiken and helped to sink at least two other of his party's candidates.

Concerning rape-caused pregnancies being God's will, or, that wasn't the exact remark. It was more that the fetus conceived and growing as a result of a rape was a life created and thus was God's will. Actually, I need to research the exact quote. Plus, that is a different issue that I want to spend the next post on. Plus, this post is long enough already.

I'll just conclude that it seems to me that senatorial races turn more on personalities than on issues. House races, for the most part, are settled on issues. Senate races are settled with personalities making much more of an impact. That's something for me to consider in future election predictions—if I ever make any more.

P.S. This morning The Candy Store Generation is #99 in its genre list at the Kindle store. Woo hoo!