[FaceKicker]

Throughout all the criticism from pundits of Nate Silver et al. as a liberal/commie/whatever for predicting that Obama would win, I couldn't help but wonder if there was even any merit to the idea that an Obama supporter would want to say that Obama is going to win the election. I would think predicting that Romney has a 10% chance of winning (making it tough but a distinct possibility he would win) as Nate Silver did would lead to some of the BEST possible voter turnout for Romney (making it the worst possible prediction strategically, if you want Obama elected). On the other hand, a prediction that Romney will win in a landslide would make many Romney supporters stay home.

Is there actually evidence that higher poll numbers in favor of X lead to higher voter turnout from supporters of X? It seems like everyone takes that for granted but I've never seen any evidence that it's true.

[csallen]

>> Is there actually evidence that higher poll numbers in favor of X lead to higher voter turnout from supporters of X? It seems like everyone takes that for granted but I've never seen any evidence that it's true.

I'd like to see some raw evidence, too.

But since we're forced to speculate at the moment, my bet would be that the relation to voter turnout and a candidate's chances of winning isn't linear. It's probably more of a parabola: the more extreme a candidate's chances of being elected (or being defeated), the less likely anyone is to come out and vote, because it feels impossible to make a difference. On the flip side, I'd suspect that the closer and more contested a race is, the more likely people are to feel obligated to vote.

[FaceKicker]

You're absolutely right - I agree that voter turnout "should" be highest at exactly "50% chance my guy wins" and diminish from there in either direction. I think I just got a bit too caught up in what I was arguing when I mentioned that a 10% Romney prediction should be the best one for Romney supporter turnout; a 90% prediction should probably be just as good as a 10% prediction in terms of making you likely to vote.

Under this theory, polls/predictions can't actually skew the result in either direction [1], they can only increase or decrease the total turnout (highest turnout when polls say 50%, lowest turnout when they say 0%/100%). In reality this probably isn't actually true, but we can't say for sure whether or not polls do affect election outcomes, and in which direction, unless there's empirical evidence. I don't even have a guess for which direction it would go (whether you want your supporters to be "concerned" or "optimistic") - I could see either being true.

[1] Edit: I should note that this assumes that each poll/prediction is listened to and taken seriously equally by both sides of the electorate, which almost certainly isn't true. Which actually brings up something kind of interesting - it could be that with all of its "Romney will win in a landslide" talk, Fox News actually hurt Romney's chances because most Fox News viewers are Romney supporters (but they could have done the same amount of damage to Romney's chances by saying "Obama will win in a landslide" - the best way for them to help Romney might be to say that the election is exactly tied). And I suppose it would also lead to a justification for the idea that Nate Silver has a liberal bias, using his relatively "wishy-washy" predictions to energize his mostly young and liberal audience to get out and vote. It seems that I've gone too far with this and started arguing against myself...

[Someone]

There is no guarantee that the effect of an almost certain victory/loss is identical for all parties. On the contrary, there is some data that indicates that supporters of some parties are more motivated to vote. See for example http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22065127, which shows that weather conditions can affect election results. I cannot find data on it, but I think it is not inconceivable this extends to 'going to the polling station even if it does not make a difference to the result'

However, in a winner takes all election, the effect would have to be huge. Let's say all polls indicate a 51%-49% result. Then, at least 4% of the winning party's voters would have to stay home 'because they already won' to change the result (and that assumes none of the other voters stay home 'because they already lost'). At a more realistic 60%-40% poll prediction, one in three voters would have to stay home.

[dagw]

If you want to go full on conspiracy mode, you could argue that Fox news' owners wanted Obama to win due to the belief that 4 more years of being able to lament the horrors of a having a Communist Muslim in the White House would be much better for their ratings. And that is why they pushed the Romney by a landslide thing so hard.

[waterlesscloud]

Just blowing smoke rings here, but it also could be possible that "undecideds" might break towards a perceived winner. If they aren't committed, they may just pick the winning side.

I have no evidence for this whatsoever.

[showerst]

It's worth adding that Nate is on the record as saying he'd have voted for either Romney or Gary Johnson, if he would have voted.

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/150042

[pronoiac]

Okay, I found the reference someone cited as "Nate Silver openly rooting for Obama". It's from March 2008, before he joined the NYTimes:

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008_02_24_archive.html

[rms]

I'm skeptical that that statement should be taken at face value. Nate Silver isn't the smoothest in in-person interviews.

[pronoiac]

That's weird - I thought I read that he was personally pulling for Obama somewhere on 538. I'll go look for that.

[figure8]

Here he says: "I would describe myself as being somewhere between a liberal and a Libertarian."

http://m.npr.org/news/Books/162594751

[mayukh]

Not just for voter turnout. Higher poll numbers are important for raising $$. People (especially those with large bank balances) want to back a winner.

[khuey]

Well Romney supporters were certainly predicting a Romney landslide, so it's certainly plausible that Obama supporters would predict an Obama landslide. That's independent of whether or not that's a good idea in the game theory sense, of course.

[FaceKicker]

You're definitely right, and it really didn't make sense to me that they were doing that. I guess it's probably just a human nature thing more than anything else.

I think my point still stands though: this doesn't showcase NPR's neutrality - perhaps they are in fact biased toward Obama and just lie more strategically than most Republican pundits. (Certainly not accusing them of that, only saying that I don't think we can glean much from the fact that they gave Romney higher numbers than he deserves.)

[genwin]

I don't think a prediction of a Romney loss would significantly spur Romney voters. As one example of many in my life, a co-worker voted for Romney because Obama "tanked his 401K". These are not people who (on average) read real news, IMO. They wouldn't see the prediction.