OT-Interesting Stats - Page 2

Appreciate your response maggiemae.

If "Professor Olson" is for real, he needs a leave to practice his reading and arithmetic skills.

Just look at the electoral map: http://www.npr.org/news/specials/election2008/2008-election-map.html#/president?view=race08

The GOP won 22 states -- not 29.

The GOP usually carries an advantage going into Federal elections, as Repubs tend to dominate in low population states and each state no matter the size gets a two vote electoral "bonus"  (therefore much bigger proportionally for Wyoming  than for California).

If the electoral college voted in proportion to actual registered voting populations, the election result would have been Obama 309 (=365-28*2), McCain 129 (=173-22*2) or Obama winning 70.5%, instead of the official 365-173 (Obama winning 67.8%)

So the electoral college voting was, as is usually the case, biased somewhat in favor of the Republicans.  Adjusting for fair representation, Obama won 70.5% of proportional electoral votes versus the 67.8% of actual electoral votes.

Of course, Obama did not win 70+% of the popular vote -- this is because the states in which McCain won, he tended to win very big (intensity of preference) and the states in which Obama won, he tended to win closer races.  (This is an argument for moving toward a popular and away from an electoral voting system, but it would not have made a difference in this election, as Obama won the popular vote by a wide margin.  A popular vote, however, would have elected Andrew Jackson over John Quincy Adams the first time, Grover Cleveland over Benjamin Harrison during Cleveland's re-election bid, and Al Gore over George W Bush in 2000.  No one can argue that all three of those decisions were universally good -- or bad -- as the right, the center, and the left were victims in each case.)

IMO what conservatives should be mad about is that McCain was beaten up unethically by Rove and Cheney in 2000, and then Cheney hijacked W's "compassionate conservatism" for a firebrand version of the unitary executive (what Jefferson called monarchism when he wrote the Bill of Rights in 1788-89).  Had McCain been the GOP nominee in 2000, he may have been president from 2000-2008, and he would probably have governed from the center-right instead of the far right, and the center would never have been so angry with the Republicans in 2008.

 

 

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The best compromise between a pure electoral vote (winner take all in almost all states) and a pure popular vote (subject to terrible manipulation in the counting) is often thought to be one congressional district, (CD) one vote.

That way, a collection of well defined people gets one electoral vote for president -- and there is no point, except in the rare cases of very close calls, that they would be incentivized to cheat (although it would probably happen -- even at the state level there have been conflicts, e.g. Florida 2000).

See this well constructed data: http://www.swingstateproject.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4161

Count for yourselves (I am counting right now).    I count 178 CD's for McCain.  That leaves 260 for Obama.  260/438 = 59% of the congressional districts won by Obama, which is much closer to a fair assessment of the election than the 67.8% of the electoral votes he received.  And closer to the 53-46% of the popular vote officially counted.

You can say that in this instance the one congressional district, one vote system seems fairer than the winner take all system in most states.

By my count, probably inaccurate, the vote was only very close (within 1%) in 13 districts.   In those CDs, I count McCain winning 8-5.  So even if we called super close districts a "tie" it does not change the election result.

I hope that in my lifetime the president of the US is chosen one CD, one vote -- it does seem fairer than the current system of winner take all by state and less prone to cheating than one voter, one vote.

RINO = ?  Republican in Name Only?

He could have governed from the center and been SUSTAINABLE for the GOP.  The far right cannot highjack the GOP any better than the far left can highjack the Dems -- not for long.   That's what was shown in 2008.  Just because you want someone on the far right, doesn't mean it is good for the right in general.

If W had not been tricked by Cheney into picking Cheney for the VP slot the world, and US politics, would have been very different.  I think better.  And W's legacy as a "compassionate" conservative -- which I believe was real -- would have had a chance.  According to White House sources who have since "come out", W had his presidency highjacked from 2000-2003, and woke up to Cheney too late.

MVF,
A very interesting idea on changing the electoral college. I like the possible idea of each congressional district receiving a vote. It could make a lot of sense.

Pure popular would never work. Can you imagine how long we would have been without a President after the 2000 election if we were on a pure popular vote system? It would have taken years to re-count (we would have to re-count the entire country) and we would have then been mired in litigation for who knows how long after that.

The only issue I would see with the one CD-one vote system is that you would end up with a lot of no brainer districts and then a lot of districts that could end up being so close that you would have many more re-counts and more litigation.
This system could also lead to Presidential elections having a much bigger effect on presidential year congressional elections. This might be something that the Democrats would want to stay away from. They have won only six of the last fifteen Presidential elections. With the present system they have been able to control the House most of that entire time. It could backfire on them.

OGBS -- Great points!  Instead of candidates spending excessive time in swing states, they would be in swing CD's -- which I have thought might be an improvement.  But you are surely right that this would lead to some very hot congressional races -- loaded with presidential candidate caravans, media in tow.  And those CD's would not change very often, so some seats would be hot every other congressional election year.

They closest districts may surprise you; they did me.  They are scattered throughout the country.  It would almost be worth moving to one just to be one of the "hot" voters who matter -- and to see the race up close.

The advantage of a one CD, one vote rule is that it finally removes the bonus votes each state currently gets -- grossly out of proportion to their populations in many cases.  This was, I think, a mistaken legacy of the construction of the Senate.

Interesting? http://www.uselectionatlas.org/INFORMATION/INFORMATION/electcollege_history.php