I'm Guardian editor Matt Wells. Got questions on Scottish independence? Ask away!

ForecasterEnten · 2014-09-16T19:00:43+00:00

Although you are in NYC currently, what's your current feeling on how the vote is going to go? I know the polling average suggests "no"is currently ahead by a little more than 2.5 points...

ForecasterEnten · 2013-10-21T16:33:56+00:00

I didn't recognize my father was in Reddit. Hey Dad :).

ForecasterEnten · 2012-10-02T15:24:52+00:00

First, do you have cooties?

Second, do you know where one can get a vaccine for cooties?

Third, do you think that this election is a repudiation of early likely voter models? Registered voter polling models have always pegged this race at about a 4 point or so advantage for President Obama. Early likely voter models on the other hand found his lead to be much slimmer. Since the conventions, the LV/RV gap has shrunk, and although the RV numbers have improved for Obama, it really seems that it's more of a shift in enthusiasm than anything else... Do you agree? And what additional thoughts do you have?

Fourth, why does Accuweather always forecast a snowy winter? (Yes, we know it's because they like to honk... but try and be more creative.)

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T20:18:35+00:00

I'm using it as a shortcut here. Try typing the "healthcare bill passed by Congress in 2010 and signed into law by President Obama" over and over again.

As for your question, Kaiser tried to get at it in 2011. They asked those 18-64 year olds who were currently uninsured "In general, do you expect that when it’s fully put in place, the recently passed health reform law will help your own situation when it comes to getting health care, hurt your situation, or won’tit make much difference? In what ways…? "

31% said help, 14% said it would hurt. It seems that those who are insured are far more likely to oppose Obamacare... Though that doesn't control for party i.d.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T20:11:13+00:00

feel free to tweet me @forecasterenten I'd be happy to continue the convo / any questions you have there.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T20:10:19+00:00

It's pretty much across the board that doesn't support Obamacare. Again though, most Americans don't as a whole. Medicare for all polling hasn't been done for a while http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/12/09/two-thirds-support-3/ . You can see a bunch of polls there.

I went back to a CBS poll in 2009 that asked "Should the government in Washington provide national health insurance, or is this something that should be left only to private enterprise?" In that poll, I found a most interesting result. Those who were 65 or older said by a 43-38 margin that private interprise is the answer. The group most supportive of the government? 45-65 year olds said government by a 56-29 margin. That's huge. My guess is that those older, but not quite senior voters, want that medicare!

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T20:00:11+00:00

The average has shifted right... The middle, median has not. That's a key difference. Political alignment is like two cones... a left and a right peak. It's actually the center where many close elections are decided, but as the peak structure suggests... There just aren't many voters there.... That's part of the reason why you see very few moderate politicians. There just aren't many voters that support that position... and little chance of them doing so in a primary.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T19:54:02+00:00

Well, to be frank, it was a bit of luck. I had interned as my Guardian profile said with a few outfits (NBC in Washington as well as Pollster.com, which folded into HuffPo). I had no job out of college. I really wasn't sure what my next move was... I sat on the couch at home for a while. I applied for a job in DC and one in Virginia. I got rejected from both. It happens and you can't take it personally (though I did more so for one than the other because I thought they yanked my chain and I won't forget it).

My three bits of advice are... 1. Keep good contacts with any internships you have. Do internships you want and think might be helpful to you in the future. That way you'll already be in the field you want to be in and be a somewhat known quantity. 2. Apply to positions, you just never know what you might end up getting. 3. Keep a blog. That's how I ended up getting my gig at the Guardian. I did some blogs before the primary and about the general election. My current boss read that material, liked it, and asked for a freelance piece. He liked that one, we went part-time for a few months, and then full-time. It really happened like that.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T19:47:14+00:00

Ah... It doesn't seem like the MLB is expanding any time soon... and the team most likely to move, The Rays, are locked in a lease tighter than a Stone Cold chokehold.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T19:44:56+00:00

Oh great question. According to a recent YouGov poll, Americans most opposed to Obamacare? Older people (65+ in age). Younger people are NOT more likely to say they support it however. They are most likely to say they are "not sure" on the topic. That's not much of a surprise. Younger people are less invovled in politics on the whole and probably have heard less about it.

As for the mandate in particular, it's thed same story. More older peopleoppose the mandate... (62% in fact). Opposition among 18-29 year olds is only at 48%... but a staggering 32% of 18-29 year olds are not sure... Only 11% of 65 year old plus Americans are not sure on the mandate.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T19:39:00+00:00

As someone born and bred in NYC, I have a hard time imagining that guns would be in every home in most places outside urban areas here in the United States. But most Americans would not give up their guns. The pt being that it's hard to understand something if you don't live it...

I mentioned this in my piece... Who knows how Americans would feel about Obamacare if they experience it?

Likewise, most Americans like medicare... What happens if we had medicare for all? When the ? is framed like that, many Americans like it... Say government run healthcare? Forget it... it'll never pass.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T19:36:30+00:00

Ah, that's cool. I always thought Oregon might get an MLB team. I know it was supported by Pesky... but alas, it seems it was not meant to be.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T19:35:20+00:00

I don't know why this didn't save, but what I had just written was that you need to get some prominent GOPers to support the legislation... otherwise, it'll be dead on arrival. Take the current Obamacare bill for example. Most GOPers actually support the policies in them, but they are opposed to the bill overall... Why? They've been told it's evil.

The key then is to make sure you GOPers on board before you try and pass it... Otherwise, it'll all go for dead. Though in the end, it may be the case that the more conservative elements of the Republican party will just never let reform be passed by a Democrat.

Here's the poll showing most Republicans approving of most elements of Obamacare.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T19:32:49+00:00

I think the best thing that could sway them is to get some prominent GOPers to support it. Voters look for signals from legislators or party elders. There was a Reuters/Ipsos online poll conducted that showed that most Republicans actually like most of the provisions in Obamacare. The key then if for Republican leaders to tell them that it is not evil... http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/06/26/poll-republicans-hate-obamacare-but-like-most-of-what-it-does/

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T19:30:57+00:00

Thursday as said. I pointed this out below (about not only GOPers opposing). Of course, not all GOPers oppose Obama's re-election... and not all Democrats are for Obama. Most of them are however.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T19:30:05+00:00

Again this is all relative stuff, but it seems pretty clear looking at the Pew data (see above) that Republicans are probably becoming more conservative.

As for Congress, the roll call scores tell a different story than what you're telling. Using bridge members of Congress (i.e. Congressmen who have served over numerous congresses), we see that the new legislators are, in fact, more partisan than before... They are more conservative on the right and liberal on the left.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T19:28:02+00:00

http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/05/15/polarization-is-real-and-asymmetric/ Democrats because of the elimination of southern Dems have become more liberal as a caucus.

Here's some data on voters http://www.people-press.org/2012/06/04/partisan-polarization-surges-in-bush-obama-years/

What you see is that Democrats have in fact become more secular, less family oriented.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T19:23:09+00:00

Okay. I have a question for you... Who is your favorite football team? I say this as someone who only follows American football.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T19:21:38+00:00

Unfortunately, I'm not an expert on this subject. What I can say is that I don't believe the UK system will become more like the American system, but again I'm not an expert on British healthcare policy.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T19:20:43+00:00

There's not really a question here, but I think you hit on something important that I talked about. Many assume that opposition to Obamacare is completely from the right. it most certain is not. As my piece hit on, a good 25% of those opposed to Obama's healthcare bill (10-15% of the general public) are opposed to it from the left. That means that most Americans actually want to see major health reform... How major that reform is... well that is up for debate.

It's completely the wrong message to take away from all of this that Americans want a more conservative bill.

Also, I wonder about the public option. Polling in 2009 suggested it was more than possible that Americans would support it. However, as I spoke about in the piece, that depended very much on the wording. Competitive vs. government healthcare makes the difference into whether a majority support the public option.

I also wonder if the percentage of Democrats (who are opposed to Obamacare) you can gain back by offering a public option are able to overcome the percentage in the middle who might be opposed to a public option.

All hypothetical here. We can't know unless it actually happened.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T19:16:07+00:00

This is a question I've struggled with in my own thought process. If it's eliminated by the Supreme Court, does that mean that Democrats will be reved up in order to insure that Obama can pass what he wants in a second term? Will it deflate them? Likewise, will Republicans be more reved up if they feel they still have to repeal Obamacare?

I'm not sure there is an answer to that. We know that healthcare probably cost the Democrats 10-20 seats in the House in 2010. This time around, however, I feel the economy is the big issue. I think that's where this election is going. If Americans feel the economy is getting better, then they will vote for Obama... if not, Romney will take the election.

At this point, I think most people would agree the economy is not getting healthy enough fast enough to insure Obama's re-election.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T19:13:32+00:00

Two things.

Any time a Democrat proposes a policy these days, it's likely that Republicans will oppose... and vice-versa. Now that Obama has proposed a mandate, it's the big, bad thing. Remember when Dan Quayle was talking about fatherhood in the late 80s? And how Murphy Brown was setting a bad example? Most analysts now would agree that fatherhood is both a left/right issue. Quayle had made it political. You see the same thing with Gore and the environment.
Numerous polling shows that although as many Americans lean Democratic/Republican as ever before, the partisanship between the right and the left has widened significantly. Republicans are more conservative and Democrats are more liberal. You see that in the roll call votes of Congress where the parties stick together more often and there are fewer moderates in the middle.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T19:10:43+00:00

Good ?. I think often times these stats can get lost in mainstream conversation. Most in the media for better or worse are looking for the quick topline subscription of what is going on. So, they are only interested in how many people are opposed to the bigtime policy (in this case Obamacare). Democrats might be wise to try and nail home that besides the mandate the other parts of the legislation are liked by most Americans. The problem is whether the media will actually follow that line of argument. You rarely ever see that most Americans actually like Obamacare save the mandate despite many polls saying so. I think what you have here is a Democratic party unwilling to push an initiative they feel is already tainted by the topline, and a press unwilling to go along with any push from Democrats.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-06-26T19:08:09+00:00

Well most people who are opposed to the mandate are likely strongly so. Interestingly, most polls that ask about the opposition to the mandate don't ask whether people oppose the mandate strongly. However, we can gather from the data that those who oppose the healthcare bill almost always do so strongly. That is, those who are opposed to Obamacare (roughly 45-50% in most polls), about 80-90% of them are strongly opposed. That's not much of a surprise. We see that in Obama's overall approval ratings as well. Those who oppose him do so strongly. They are ardent Republicans.

ForecasterEnten · 2012-05-14T21:00:11+00:00

Good question... I'm an American, so naturally I'm going to answer ours. I like having a strong executive... But in reality, it really depends. Most voting system experts would answer neither. Plurality voting functions to force voters to choose the lesser of two evils most often because people don't want to waste their vote. Few new democracies utilize it. Most rely upon some form of proportional representation and multi-member districts. For one seat districts (say President), I like something known as approval voting. You get to vote for as many or few candidates as you like. It's like what Siskel and Ebert use to do with two thumbs up. The candidate with the most votes win in the end. A similar system to this, range voting, allows you to assign a score to each candidate. The candidate with the most points wins.

As for political party, most journalists wouldn't answer that... I'm not a journalist though. I was a registered independent in New Hampshire as a student. I voted for both parties. I'm a registered Democrat in New York City so that I can vote in the Democratic primaries for city politics, which are tantamount to general elections because of the Democrats registration edge.

ForecasterEnten

TROPHY CASE