In my day job I'm a neuroscientist. Usually this does not intersect with politics, but today's an exception.

In June, my book co-author Sandra Aamodt and I wrote for the New York Times about how our brains lie to us, allowing the formation of false beliefs. Examples of false beliefs include rumors about Barack Obama's religion, or about John McCain fathering a mixed-race child. We didn't realize at the time just how relevant our topic would be in this year's campaign.

Dan Froomkin asked us if brain science could be translated into practical lessons for journalists on how to prevent false belief formation. The answer is yes. So we wrote a piece for him that outlines four principles to guide journalists.

(cross-posted at the Princeton Election Consortium)

A recent story tells about McCain's focused ad spending in battleground states, and Obama's broader spending pattern. McCain is focusing on battleground states, while Obama is spreading resources more broadly.

Why the mismatch in strategies? Here I will give a quantitative argument that in terms of optimal resource allocation, both patterns of behavior make perfect sense, given the campaigns probably think their best strategies are for winning.

[Cross-posted at election.princeton.edu]

This post continues my discussion of how to meta-analyze state polls. My most recent post was on Saturday morning. Today I’d like to focus on a particular strength of meta-analysis, its use as a precise tracking tool.

Meta-analysis of state-level polls allows one to make an estimate of where the race stands at any given moment. As a biophysicist and neuroscientist, I use simple yet powerful statistical tools that reduce the complexity of state polls to a single snapshot, the Median Electoral Vote Estimator. Its effective margin of error (MoE) is currently 35 electoral votes, equivalent to less than 1.0% in units of popular votes.

This exceptionally small MoE outperforms any other publically available measure, including fivethirtyeight.com. Poblano’s resource is valuable and fully deserving of its popularity. However, his work does contain a flaw that introduces unnecessary error - one that I fixed four years ago in 2004. My repair is available at election.princeton.edu for your use between now and November.

Long-time readers may recall when I unveiled the first Meta-Analysis of State Polls during the 2004 campaign. It was one of the first analyses of its kind. The response was overwhelming. The act of reducing the vagaries of state polls to a single number, the Median Electoral Vote Estimate, attracted hundreds of thousands of readers and coverage by The Wall Street Journal and even Fox News.

Now we’re back as election.princeton.edu, or the Princeton Election Consortium. It’s automated and safeguarded against biases. It has information others cannot provide, even Poblano. As November approaches I will feature Princeton colleagues’ research that pertains to the election - and perhaps entice a few of them to guest-blog.

So...Does the onslaught of state-level polls have you dizzy? Do outliers leave you distracted? Have you ever wanted a way to reduce the confusion? Then read on.

This diary's title is a tribute to neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat chronicles ways in which brain damage can affect our perceptions in odd ways. But our brains can also lead us astray when they are working normally, in everyday life. A case in point is the now-infamous New Yorker cover that features false views of Barack and Michelle Obama taken by their fiercest opponents.

In today's Washington Post we have a piece on left-handed presidents. The next president will be left-handed, since Barack Obama and John McCain are both southpaws. Since 1945, 5 of 12 presidents have been left-handed: Truman, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton. Since only 10 percent of the general population is left-handed, we wrote about whether there's something about the brains of left-handers that qualifies them for leadership. The answer is maybe - and in a way that may help explain Barack Obama's gift for language.

I posted a previous op-ed from the New York Times here on DailyKos, giving literature support for key scientific points. That piece was based on our book, Welcome To Your Brain. In this case the published article was condensed, partly to accommodate a picture of Ned Flanders's Leftorium. And now, a more detailed version...

In today's New York Times, I have an editorial on the brain science of why people form false beliefs, co-written with my co-author, Sandra Aamodt. It's timely because of the many rumors that have sprung up around Barack Obama - for instance, the false idea that he is a Muslim.

Unfortunately, the Times editorial format doesn't allow links. I know many readers of Daily Kos are like me and want to see the supporting literature. So we thought we'd provide the text here, complete with embedded links to key papers. You can read more on the website for our book, Welcome To Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life.

Today on C-SPAN, Senator Joe Biden is making/has just made a speech on the proposed rule change on filibusters of judicial nominations - the "nuclear option." He made an interesting statement, that "we [i.e. Democrats] represent the majority of the American people." This is interesting and true, and deserves more explanation.

The following entry replicates information posted at my election site, election.princeton.edu. The main point is that pre-election polls match what happened in Ohio and Pennsylvania, but not Florida.

I have been looking at the party-ID numbers in the Gallup data. I find evidence that party ID is not fixed over time. Here is the argument.

A close statistical look at Gallup's results over time proves clearly that party ID can fully account for the variation in their results.

Dear Kossacks,

Here is an updated version of my meta-analysis of state polls. It's a calculation that takes advantage of all the state polls we read in small dribbles, reduced to a single confidence band. As of today it predicts a very close race, but perhaps surprisingly, it favors Kerry. The bottom line: Kerry 278 electoral votes (95% confidence band 247-317 EV), Bush 260 EV.

Dear Kossacks,

Here is an update of a calculation I first posted on this site two weeks ago. The permanent link is here and includes all the details.

It's a snapshot of many recent state polls taken all at once. The basic idea is to use the statistical variation among polls to calculate the likelihood that Kerry or Bush will win a state. This is similar to the margin-of-error concept, except that it takes into account not only sampling variation, but also variations among pollsters' methods.

Dear fellow Kos readers,

I am undertaking a meta-analysis of state polling data to calculate a current snapshot of the probable range of election outcomes. Like most of you, I have a strong bias about how I want the presidential election to turn out. However, I wanted a measure that did not have that bias. Read my preliminary findings here.

The upshot: if the election reflected recent state polls the probability of a Kerry win would be 98%. With 95% confidence I predict between 270 and 322 electoral votes.

Hey, what happened to that lame new blue Israeli-looking flag that the CPA cooked up for Iraq? At the hand-off ceremony they had the old flag.