Nate Silver - Pennsylvania Sanity Check (Great News)

[KansasVoter]

Suppose that Barack Obama were to concede Pennsylvania's electoral votes. Literally, concede them. Throw 'em back, like a Chase Utley home run at a Cubs' game. How often would he still win the election?

...89.0% of the time, according to our most recent run of simulations, along with another 2.4% of outcomes that ended in ties. This is because in the vast majority of our simulations, Obama either:

a) was winning at least 291 electoral votes, meaning that he could drop Pennsylvania's 21 and still be over 270, and/or

b) was winning at least 270 electoral votes, while already being projected to lose Pennsylvania in the first place.

(a) was much, much more common than (b), obviously.

[dennis4868]

1. Nate knows...

BASEBALL....Nate knows POLLS...my kind of guy! :-)

[MadBadger]

2. Thats not the Sanity Check I was expecting, but were still gonna win PA

[HughMoran]

3. I was just reading this

...thanks for posting it here for the (irrational) worriers.

[Abacus]

4. I just made a comment about this in another thread, but I want to add something

Original post:

Obama losing PA won't give McCain the election, it just makes Obama's victory speech come a little later.

We could lose OH, FL, and PA and still win with NV, VA, & CO -- all places that Obama leads by more than six points.

I hate to be such a fivethirtyeight.com fanboi, but Nate always puts it much better than I ever would: http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/pennsylvania-san...

Addendum:
Nate's model doesn't account for intense localized advertising and GOTV efforts; his model assumes that what moves PA would move similar demographic groups across the nation. The first time this pitfall was illustrated was with his primary results for ND and SD (or was it MT and ND?). Conclusion: The importance of PA will be overstated in Nate's model because of targeted efforts there.

[DCBob]

5. VA,CO, NM, NV & IA plus the other Kerry states still gives Obama the win even w/out PA.

However, I still think PA is safe.