If the election were held yesterday, Nate Silver is giving Team Obama roughly an 80% chance of winning with Romney about 20%. It all depends on turnout and which way things break. Turnout is the campaigns’ problem, which way it will break, or if it breaks one way or the other at all, is totally unpredictable. But good economic news doesn’t hurt the incumbant:
Wapo— The unemployment rate rose to 7.9 percent, up from 7.8 percent, but the reason behind the uptick also points to an improved job market. Some 578,000 more Americans counted themselves as part of the labor force, and only 410,000 more people reported having a job. In one particularly welcome sign, the proportion of the population reporting that they had a job rose one-tenth of a percent to 58.8 percent. The Labor Department counts only those with jobs or looking for jobs as among the U.S. workforce.
The campaigns jumped on the numbers Friday, giving their spins on the final unemployment report before Tuesday’s election.
I’m still not all that optimistic, there ares a lot of low info voters lout there and some racism to boot. We’ll see, it’s gonna be a nailbiter with healthcare and retirement security held in the balance for millions of us, including me.
You may be failing to consider where people get their news. One of the reasons I keep FOX’s top headlines on my RSS feed reader is so I can see how they spin any particular event.
Sure, the WaPo and the NYT both ran with some variation of “171,000 jobs added, unemployment rate ticks up slightly.”
Fox News? All caps, full front page splash story
LAST JOBS REPORT BEFORE ELECTION SHOWS ECONOMY IN VIRTUAL STANDSTILL
Nevermind that the “virtual standstill” language is a direct quote from a Romney press release, that’s what a good chunk of people are going to read and believe. One of the things my job consistently teaches me is that if you’re going to change people’s minds about something you have to figure out what they’re thinking first.
Well obviously the liberal mainstream media will present “facts” that support Obama. Those in the know huddle around their battery-powered TVs in their basements tuning in to that source of true, alternative news, FOX.
If I were a Jedi I would use my mind tricks to make Romney say “I am the White Horse Prophet. When I win almost all Christians will understand that Joseph Smith had the true revelation that completes Christianity.” That would be announced tomorrow.
Sunday: “I hate the 1978 ruling that allowed blacks to achieve the priesthood.”
Monday: “Being gay is a choice all men would take if we didn’t conform to God’s law. Hell, any man’s rectum has gotta be better than Ann’s pussy, though I can’t say I know from personal experience.”
I can dream can’t I? And sorry to be so offensive that that last one. I was just trying to say the most offensive thing I could think for Mitt Romney to say.
@ ^ Francisco Bacopa : I think you found it.
FWIW. I predict – and hope – Obama wins narrowly perhaps winning the electoral college thingummy but marginally losing the popular vote.
*Ahem* That’s I predict Obama wins narrowly.
I *hope* Obama wins in a landslide.
I’m hoping that Obama wins both the popular vote and the electoral college.
Such a sweep would, and I may be dreaming here, put the lie to the right wing spin machine.
I tune into Fox News and Drudge daily so that I can keep my fingers on the pulse of the zombie faction. It’s been a hard slog to wade through their reportage lately, I tell you.
That’s not to say that news sources on the other side (of the great divide) don’t themselves spin but the right wingers are really going all out this cycle. They remind me of children with jam all over their faces telling mother that they weren’t slurping from the jam jar.