November 1, 2012

Taking Nate Silver's football analogy and running with it.

5 more days. I don't think I'm alone here in getting a bit obsessive with my poll watching. Where do we really stand? It seems there's analogies all over the place trying to provide perspective. But whereas most polling analogies try to compare this Presidential election with other Presidential elections in the past (2012 is like 2004, 2012 is like 1980, etc.), I like Nate Silver's most recent sports analogy the best:

Mr. Obama is not a sure thing, by any means. It is a close race. His chances of holding onto his Electoral College lead and converting it into another term are equivalent to the chances of an N.F.L. team winning when it leads by a field goal with three minutes left to play in the fourth quarter. There are plenty of things that could go wrong, and sometimes they will.

But it turns out that an N.F.L. team that leads by a field goal with three minutes left to go winds up winning the game 79 percent of the time. Those were Mr. Obama’s chances in the FiveThirtyEight forecast as of Wednesday: 79 percent.

Not coincidentally, these are also about Mr. Obama’s chances of winning Ohio, according to the forecast.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/oct-31-obamas-electoral-college-firewall-holding-in-polls/#more-36981

I would agree with this analogy, but I think more details are necessary to provide the proper perspective of President Obama's chances of winning the election. So Obama leads by 3 points with 3 minutes left. Who has possession of the football in this analogy? I believe Hurricane Sandy has put possession squarely in Obama's hands. It's an important possession. He can't just run out the clock by spiking the football (i.e. flying over the damage for a photo-op of him looking out the window with a look of grave concern) and high-fiving his teammates. ("You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie!&quot Obama needs a first down to win the whole game.

How close are we? I would say that President Obama just completed a nine yard run with a helpful block, inadvertent or not, from Governor Christie. It's second down with one yard to go for victory. There are no timeouts left and the clock is still ticking. Also, if you take into account our GOTV ground game in the swing states, I would say we're inside the 20 yard line in Romney territory.

I'm liking this analogy a lot! Help me out if you think I'm missing any details.