re: #138 goddamnedfrank

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You do this a lot, just dismissively wave off all evidence that runs counter to your preconceived thesis without presenting anything concrete to back it up. The fact is that the ups and downs of national sentiment track very close to the state by state data, which is why aggregators like Silver, Wang, and Linzer use it. Each state has a more or less predictable deviance to the national norm, which is what makes state by state polling predictive. If what you want to believe was true, that it’s all just a meaningless artifact, there’d be no advantage to using it versus national polling data.

Sure, each state presently has a predictable deviation from the national norm. Silver et al. use these for short term forecasting. However, as you indicate above, those deviations change over time. E.g., TX is expected to shift closer to blue from the national norm.

Since who can win the EC despite losing the popular vote depends very much on these state vs. national deviances that change over time, it follows that the advantage the EC delivers to either the Democrats or the Republicans is also subject to change over time.

For example, GW Bush lost the popular vote in 2000. So as recently as 2000, the EC did not deliver a significant advantage to the Democrats.