* at this point, you will start writing a long comment, but refuse to bet me any money, because even you don’t believe in your crap.

silver can’t account for the magnitude effect of the swan. i’m 99% sure he’d agree with me on this, though i haven’t gotten to reading his book. this is of the same class of problems as formal models in finance. you can account for what you can account for, even uncertainty you can account for. but you can’t formally account for what you can’t account for. this is not much of an issue in physics which can be modeled in a linear fashion. much more of an issue in social science.

You are of course right that there needs to be some uncertainty built into the model. But Nate Silver’s model already has that in there. If numbers remained unchanged between now and election day, the percent chance of winning would continue to rise (until it equaled the “now-cast”) as the likelihood of such “black swan” events would become less and less in the remaining period before voting.

I’m not sure why you say “chances are the race will tighten” U.S. Presidents who win re-election basically always end up winning a higher percentage of the popular votef or their second term. I can think of only three exceptions.

1. James Madison in 1812. The Federalist-supported candidate, DeWitt Clinton, was actually a dissident Democratic-Republican, and in the early days of the Republic the franchise was so limited that in some ways the inside politics of the American elite probably played a larger role in the outcome than any popular sentiment on Madison’s performance.

2. Andrew Jackson, who had an Anti-Masonic challenger (Amos Ellmaker) in 1832. Discounting this, his share of the two party vote rose from 56.2% to 59.2%

3. Grover Cleveland, who also had a third party challenger (James B. Weaver – Populist) when he ran for his second winning term in 1892. Discounting the populist share, he improved from 50.1% of the vote to 51.8% of the vote. Plus, of course he famously won the only non-consecutive second term in U.S. history.

Thus, it’s fair to say that no U.S. president since 1812 has seen their share of the two-party popular vote decline when successfully reelected to their second term. Going by this I’ve always assumed that if Obama looked reasonably good coming out of the conventions, he’d do better than 2008. He very well might do worse in the electoral college however, due to reapportionment shifting electoral votes to red states, plus almost certainly not winning Indiana again. But I’m willing to stake money (or at least a book or two) that he’ll perform better in 2012.

- The latest poll by Pew research before the election will overestimate Obama´s share of the national vote by at least 2%. (20 USD)

- The latest poll by “We ask america” in Wisconsin will overestimate Obama´s share of the vote by an amount greater than its margin of error. (20 USD)

Regards

Of course, I don’t think this model is likely to be true.

Anyway I’ll take your bet, not for the money but for the fun of it. If I lose I’ll mail you five books I would hope you haven’t read but would at least enjoy skimming through. If you lose you mail me one book. The loser e mails the other his home address.

I think Romney loses by more that the six point he is trailing by. The man has no game. It is perfectly fine to be a rich asshole and become president, some of our better modern presidents were exactly that. But good ole Mitty campaigns as one. Game on.

yeah, of course. i myself lean toward romney, as long time readers are probably aware of (and my friends in “real life” are quite conscious of but that doesn’t mean i’m going to put down a stream of bullshit like dwight above. that being said, if dwight et al. are more than full of shit (i.e., they believe the crap they’re putting out there), then i want to make some money off their delusion. it’s a public service, incentivizing people to be more attuned to what is, and not what they want to be.

we’ve seen this before

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2008/10/polls-are-smarter-than-you.php

I prefer to stick with Nate Silver’s melded polls, which have a proven track record of being accurate.

If the bet is to take the side of polls being off and your side is their accuracy, you will win. The trailing team is of course going to try to give his supporters hope.