Nope, not wealth necessarily. Wayne County, in addition to Detroit also has Grosse Pointe (old money city). It's more about urban lifestyle, union/autoworker focus, more eclectic culture, ethnicity, and religion, and exposure to both the infrastructure issues and poverty issues within the city.

Outstate they are more conservative, rural, agricultural, right wing, conservative Christians. I don't think they necessarily have more money. The exception is Ann Arbor, liberal land of the universe, thanks to the University of Michigan..lol.

I think the FL divide is even more stark than the NY divide, but it's very similar--an agricultural north primarily made up of natives, with a more cosmopolitan south primarily made up of people who aren't from the area. Florida is funny too because of all of the out-of-state retirees, both military and civilian, who make up a good percentage of the senior citizens in the state.

I don't think it's a wealth-party affiliation in Florida, but it's weird and someone should write a book on it for sure.

All of this does occur, as does simple regression to the mean and backlash to the frontrunner - Silver's models use varying ways to account for this, mostly based on historical comparison, and it's still a 90%+ shot for an Obama victory.

Additionally, we can't account for racism, and that will certainly play a role in the actual lever-pull moment for some portion of the population, but unless there is something incredible that happens, you're looking at a massive edge for Obama and all of the momentum going his direction. That conclusion certainly passes the smell test for me, even accounting for psychological effects of polling and similar.

Yeah, I don't know that McCain can win although I'm still hoping, but as I said, I don't think the 14 point lead from last week will match up with reality.

It was the size of the lead that seemed so far off. It's apparently narrowing this week.

And maybe it's because I'm supporting McCain but I don't think the reluctance to own up to supporting him is even predominately a reflection of racism on the part of McCain voters.

I think many people who plan to vote for McCain aren't talking about it because it's not worth feeling like you have to defend yourself to a bunch of people whose political opinions you may not value.

Even though race is clearly involved in the Bradley effect, I'm not sure that the reason that people vote the way they do (in elections where its affect has been assumed) is particularly attributable to racism by the voters who vote against the black candidate. It may have more to do with the fear of having your motivation judged to be racist when you are asked in advance if you support the black candidate. It's far easier and I think pretty common to in a lot of, even non-political, instances to offer public approval for figures who you might be judged to be a racist if you publicly disapprove of, even if you have specific and non-race based reasons for your disapproval.

There's absolutely no risk in showing approval and a big risk of seeming racist in disapproving.

I have no reason to doubt that it was an accurate reflection of reality as of last week - the race always tightens at the very end, that's a historical trend with many and varied explanations.

Remember, I didn't make this connection - you did.

I'm saying that, in addition to the other polling biases that exist, there will be an unprecedented lever-pull moment effect related to race - we don't know how significant this will be, or how many it will affect, we simply know it is likely to exist.

All of this may or may not be true - I'm not sure of any sort of substantive research on voter satisfaction with their own choices and how it is reflected in a willingness to answer an anonymous survey (at least beyond historical comparisons, a la 538.com) - but again, these effects should bear themselves out in the comparative and historical data, regardless, right?

I don't know. Again, I think there are too many new variables to know for sure. If we accept what you've said about an unprecedented amount of race related level-pulling effect, isn't it going to be particularly hard to measure in advance?

But I didn't even realize I had made the racism connection that you commented on, so what do I know. (Do you simply mean bringing up the Bradley/Wilder Effect? When did I make that connection before you did?)

the lever, if pulled, will need not to come from McCain or McCain's camp... too many levers have been pulled from them to give any credibility. Obama will need to mess up or someone else will need to showcase this catastrophic meteor that will knock Obama off his current orbit.

YES, which is why I noted it was "unprecedented" and "unmeasurable."

However, other effects that you noted are completely wrapped within other elections, and thus make for a worthy comparison study.

Remember - supposedly unmeasurable race/gender effects were rampant throughout the Democratic primaries, and Silver's model did a fantastic job mapping those (better than every mainstream media source). So . . . yeah. Feel free to wonder about the numbers, but there's a good chance your Spidey-Sense is tingling for reasons other than a lack of numerical or scientific accuracy of the assay.

I apologize but could you spell out for me what effects you think were previously measurable and wrapped within other elections and which you find unmeasurable in this election. I don't doubt it's my own fault, but I can't seem to tease them out. Seriously, I'm not trying to snark; I'm not following your distinction and I'd like to.

I've tried to be pretty clear about how little insight my Spidey-Sense or any other sense provides me on this issue, other than to say it's going to surprise the hell out of me if the margin is as big as the one last week.

I can if you're really that loose on what we're discussing, but going through 538.com will actually answer these questions for you - I don't have time right now, but I'll look into it if I get a minute.

However, I think I can basically answer in the 'negative' as it were: the only difference between this election and previous is the existence of a black man. We can account for economic problems, wartime, etc. by using similarity comparisons. So literally everything else will be accounted for - even if incompletely or without realizing it.

And I completely agree - last week was probably the high/low point of the election process, depending on which side you're on. However, narrowing after this point is normal (and accounted for), so the odds take this into account. It's still probably a 19:2 shot against McCain.

I just wanted to note that I'm fivethirtyeight believer now. I know I'm arrive after the party is over, but I'm really impressed at how close their projections were. I'm waiting to see finalized votes, and then I plan to look at each one to see how close they were for each race, or at least some of the more interesting races to me.

It's kind of interesting that we didn't seem to see the big influx of new voters or really exceptionally high turn out apparently at least in most places.

He really gained a lot of credibility over time and the accuracy of his predictions was pretty amazing. The statisticians I work with were very impressed with his models and began following him every day.

I saw a list (maybe on CNN, maybe on MSNBC web site) of the top 10 key people in this election and Neil Silver was on the list. Bright guy.