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    • For Democrats still stinging from the 2000 election—that is to say, any Democrat born before about 1985—2012 could be the year of retribution. There is a distinct possibility that former Gov. Mitt Romney could win the popular vote and still lose the election to President Barack Obama.

      In roughly 45 clinical trials, American democracy has produced four presidents who did not win the popular vote: John Quincy Adams in 1824, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, Benjamin Harrison in 1888 and George W. Bush in 2000. (There have been 56 presidential elections, but popular vote data doesn't exist for the first 10 or so.) The Food and Drug Administration would soundly reject a drug that caused some horrible disfigurement upward of 10 percent of the time, but Americans appear to tolerate a constitution that rewards the overall loser this often. Consensus on the subject is difficult to build. Even though a majority of Americans support abolishing the Electoral College, the present system only punishes one side or the other in a given year.

      National polls swung dramatically in Romney's direction after he trounced Obama in the first debate. The odds that Obama will secure re-election under the Signal's model dipped in tandem, but never below about 60 percent. The reason is so familiar that the O, H, and I keys on my keyboards are wearing thin.

      Sources: Betfair, Intrade, IEM, HuffPost Pollster and RealClearPolitics

      To be clear, we don't necessarily think Romney will win the popular vote. Standing in national polls does not predict actual vote share, and those polls are swinging back in the president's favor. Romney's odds of winning a majority of the ballots, however, are higher than his odds of winning at least 270 electoral votes. This year, the Electoral College unfairly favors Obama: Romney must carry Florida, Virginia and Ohio, while Obama needs only one of them.

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    • Woody Allen is often quoted as saying that "80 percent of success is showing up." Hackneyed though this expression has become, it applies quite accurately to the election as it stands today. President Barack Obama showed up at the debate on Tuesday night and stabled his teetering campaign.

      Given the wide consensus that Obama did not mentally show up for the first confrontation with former Gov. Mitt Romney, his combativeness and general vigor appeared to convince the television audience that he still has some fight left in him. Instant polls suggest that Obama scored well overall and, more critically, with undecided and leaning voters. Polls of overall voters are not that meaningful, because most people will say their candidate won. But surveys of undecided and leaning voters, like those from CBS and Xbox/YouGov, give us valuable clues. Obama clearly outperformed Romney in both.

      The Signal's real-time forecast, heavily influenced by prediction markets at this point in the campaign, ticked up nearly 3 percentage points during last night's debate.

      Obama vs. Romney before and after the second debate

      Sources: Betfair, Intrade, IEM, HuffPost's Pollster, RealClearPolitics

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    • The six-year terms in the Senate produce a curious electoral quirk: The party that controls the chamber going into the election is not necessarily the one in the best position to control it coming out of the election, even in a neutral political environment. This is because the 33 or 34 seats up for election each cycle are usually unevenly divided between the parties. In 2006, for example, Democrats took control of the Senate by a hair, even though 40 of the 55 Republican seats were not up for election that year.

      The Democrats currently control 53 of 100 seats in the Senate. Nearly half of those—23—are up for re-election this year, while the Republicans are defending only 10 seats. That fact, combined with an electorate none too pleased with incumbents, made for a grim picture for the majority party at the start of this cycle.

      And yet, the Democrats now have a 75 percent likelihood of controlling the next Senate, possibly by a comfortable margin.

      In early September, we saw four critical races shifted to the Democratic column: Missouri, Wisconsin, Massachusetts and Virginia. Today, the Democrat is up in all four races, though three of the four remain competitive. Now, we're seeing five other races once considered safe for the Republican showing signs of equivocation: Nevada, North Dakota, Indiana, Arizona and Montana.


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    About The Signal

    The Signal is the Yahoo! News predictions blog featuring real-time forecasts and sentiment on politics, economics, and more. MEET THE TEAM: David Pennock, David Rothschild

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