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...
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...
With the first debate over, I think it was pretty clear that Kerry gained more than Bush. Neither scored any knock out blows on the other and the # of memorable sound bites is going to be minimal. But overall, Kerry did what he needed to do. Expect to see the polls narrow considerably.
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...
The CO2 level in the atmosphere is now 372 parts per million. Before the industrial revolution, which began the widespread use of fossil fuels (coal and oil mainly), that number was only 227 parts per million. That's a 30% increase. CO2 is a green house gas. It is not a pollutant. When you burn something, anything, your best case scenario for non-pollution end result is water and carbon dioxide. There's no magic bullet to solving that as long as are relying on energy so...
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...
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...
Here's a link to an interesting article where the writer puts his endorsement in a series of images.
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...
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. ...
FoxNews has just called Ohio to Bush. That essentially means it's over. Bush has won.
The call has been made. Bush has won the election. It was more decisive than anyone would have believed. Bush: 286 Electoral Votes to Kerry's 252. Bush also won 51% of the overall popular vote, a definite majority of the overall vote. What's also significant is that turn out was very high this year. More people voted this year than any previous election by a significant margin (about 115,000,000 votes). Bush won by almost 4 million votes overall. For those who dislike the Republic...
Controlling land is meaningless but it is still telling the way non city voters tend to vote. Courtesy of USA Today