Everyone hopes that their game will win. But right now, no one knows. Exit polls won't be useful in any remotely close states until the end of the day (beware of anyone trying to toss around any exit polls in battle ground states until the end of the day - whether they be for Bush or Kerry). We'll keep this blog running throughout the day and see how things go. 5pm EST: Only a couple hours left until the polls close in a few states. At that point, we'll be able to start looking and seeing ...
Conventional wisdom says that high turn out means victory for Democrats. While it is possible Kerry may win still, I don't think the pollsters have adequately taken into account just how high the turn-out is amongst Bush voters. Today my wife and I voted. And unlike 4 years ago, the lines were long. Not only were they long but looking at the pages of marked off voters, even at 10am this morning, most registered voters on the pages I saw had already voted. Incredible. Never seen anything li...
With the election tomorrow it's time for predictions. Based on using The Political Machine's issue based predictions and looking at polling data and trends, this is what I'm concluding: Kerry victory with 306 electoral votes to Bush's 232. This is a much clearer victory for Kerry than any of the polls and pundits are showing here. But then again, they don't have The Political Machine. So what do I base this on? The Iraq war isn't a positive for Bush but in fact a negative. ...
Here's a link to an interesting article where the writer puts his endorsement in a series of images.
If you lived in a house that had a rat "nuisance" you might tolerate it. But if one of your children died from a rat bite, you might be tempted to start going around killing all the rats in the house and getting rid of the rat holes. After 9/11, there were a lot of rat holes in the world. You don't worry so much about which rat bit your kid as getting rid of all the rats. The most obvious infestations were Taliban Afghanistan and Saddam's Iraq. So goes the thinking in this article. Check i...
Well known blogger Andrew Sullivan has argued that a Kerry victory might be a good thing because it would force the Democrats to finally get serious about foreign affairs. That the war on terror would be a wake up call for them and their constituents about the ways of the real world. I think that's a dangerous assumption. Imagine if the election today was between George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. Would you vote for Carter over Bush? Even given what we know about his first presidency? If n...
A couple months ago I wrote why Bush may not get my vote . I'm still not thrilled with Bush but I do know I won't vote for John Kerry. Some of my reasons for not supporting Kerry are straight forward philosophical disagreements on his views on foreign policy and his view of the role of the federal government. Others are less tangible. So let me go through my reasons why I don't support Kerry: 1) I don't trust Kerry to be an effective leader in foreign policy. Will Kerry see th...
The strange thing is that the press seems to treat illegitimate votes as a kind of noise, a kind of tolerable if unfortunate democratic static, while intimidated no-shows are a travesty against all that is holy. Yet, and this should be obvious, in terms of the aggregative democratic procedure, an unnoticed illegal vote for one guy (in a two horse race) is EXACTLY EQUIVALENT to scaring off a voter for the other guy. If somebody's dog manages to vote for John Kerry, then, in effect, Velma T...
Imagine if we hadn't invaded Iraq. How would the election be different? Well, first we now know that the oil for food program was a total scam. We also know Saddam was in the process of bribing France, Russia, and China in the hopes of ending sanctions. We still wouldn't have gotten Osama Bin Laden in all likelyhood so there would be this terrorist dictator in Saddam who was openly opposing us who, by all accounts in 2003, was in possession of WMDs with every intent to aid terrorists. T...
Polls are interesting things but statistical analysis is my thing. And based on our models in The Political Machine, Kerry is going to squeak out a victory in November barring a sudden change in events. The Florida of 2004 may be where you least expect it - Iowa. Ohio and Iowa are going to be the key states this time. But it is Iowa that people should be keeping an eye on even more so than Ohio or Florida. It has a relatively low population which creates all kinds of opportunity for mes...
Kerry's decision to use Cheney's daughter as a political prop in the last debate may come back to haunt him. Non-parents don't seem to get the big deal but most parents I know (left or right) are pretty outraged by it. It may turn out to be the blunder that costs Kerry in Ohio which is the key state in this election. One good article on the issue can be found here: http://thoughtsonline.blogspot.com/2004/10/james-taranto-and-others-may-be-right.html Imagine if Bush had talked about how t...
Stephen Green is pretty ticked off with how Democrats are trying to undermine the US election with their shenegans. Read it for yourself. And here's a running tally of voter fraud. Slate has some interesting views on the whole Cheney's Daughter is gay thing . My own point is fairly succinct: If Cheney's daughter were suffering from Parkison's disease, would it have been acceptable for Kerry to bring her up as a reason to fund fetal stem cell research? Perhaps you would think that's oka...
Kerry seemed a bit off his game today and Bush seemed very much on his game. This time I give Bush the edge. He seemed relaxed, strong on the issues, and got all his points out. Kerry wasn't that bad but he was a lot more defensive than I would have thought. I don't think it will make much difference though. Bush blew the first debate so badly when the audience was so big. The audience here was much smaller than it was in the first debate. Kerry also played a bit of dirty pool wit...
So far both Kerry and Bush look pretty good. What do you think?
I wish I were more excited about this election. It's a sad commentary of our political process and its overall nastiness that the best we can do it a John Kerry or George W. Bush. Two guys who wouldn't have made it through a first round of interviews at most companies. And so that's what we end up with - guys who can't get real jobs end up becoming politicians. Ever heard the saying "Those who can't, teach"? They should add a corollary to that: Those who can't, teach. And th...