The upshot is that Kerry won 47%-45%, despite having a slightly larger percentage of Republicans versus Democrats in the sample base. Republicans felt overwhelmingly that Bush won, while similarly Dems felt the same about Kerry. Interestingly, undecideds went 53%-37% for Kerry.
Personally, I’m not a fan of the Gallup poll - it polls more Republicans in general than Democrats, and its polling numbers went from 11 point up for Bush to dead even in the course of a week, which strikes me as somewhat strange, probably the result of some flawed methodology.
Gallup’s been getting hit by professional polling observers of late for its questionable methodology, as you say. The problem is that people are been over-polled, right now, and it’s reflected by the fact that the polls are all over the map.
The respective candidates internal polling, which neither side refuses to disclose, would be the better indicator. Alas that we won’t see those, but a good way of telling big shifts in their internals would be to watch for the states that the candidates begin to pour ad monies back into, if they’ve previously pulled advertising out of them.
For example, if Kerry’s campaign suddenly decides to ramp up big ad dollars in Missouri, say, you’d know that his internal polling was showing a narrowing of the gap to statistical insignificance.
What I suspect will probably happen over time, depending on whether it favors the ruling party or not, is follow the lead of a couple of states, and possibly Colorado this election, in that they parcel out electoral votes based on proportional popular vote.
That is, if you win half of the popular vote in a particular state, you get half of the electoral votes. It seems like a fairer and more reasonable way than winner-take-all as it is currently in most states. In this way, you don’t have 500 highly contested votes determining an election in such a fractured way.
It would sort of render the electoral system moot, but it’s been pretty useless for some time now.
The proportional representation gag is just a way of getting around the electoral college and ensuring that California and New York get to elected each and every president from here on out.
CTL would be the better poster to handle the whole question, as he does election law as a hobby and I barely remember it from my own law studies ( I received an “executive JD” for business people, which makes me medium-incompetent, as opposed to fully-incompetent, to talk about this stuff :-))
I’m sure one side or another would seek to have the whole scheme thrown out through judicial review the minute one side thought the other was gaining some sort of “advantage” with it. Probably the Republicans, this time.
Actually, I think the impact would be that the narrowly contested states, which I guess are quite a few, would now be non-issues, while overall it would force more of a nationwide focus on campaigning.
“Not that useless, it put Bush in the White House.”
You are right, not that useless. It’s been completely useless, it has put in a President that did not win, by either electoral college or popular vote, who then proceeded to start a war which has no logical explanation and baffles anyone who has been paying close attention to the war on terror.
The electoral college hasn’t been “that” useless, after all it allowed for completely uneducated individuals to decide who should run this country for the next 4 years. God I love America, I’m so glad I became a citizen here (although sticking with my original label as a British Citizen wouldn’t have been any better.)
“It’s been completely useless, it has put in a President that did not win, by either electoral college or popular vote,”
Everytime, I hear this bullshit, it usually centers around Florida and the same old democratic inspired myth that there were ‘1.5 million disenfranchised black voters’ whose ‘votes did not count.’
Bullshit.
If that is indeed the case, lets have…say…10,000 names of the supposedly ‘disenfranchised black voters’ and do some research to prove that these people; actually attempted to go to a polling station to vote but were denied entrance. actually did vote (let’s see the records), but there votes were thrown out.
All the democratic myths about; 45 million Americans dont have health insurance=Bullshit George Bush is responsible for the loss of 2.7 Million jobs=Bullshit Tax cuts for the wealthy=Bullshit
What’s most frustrating is that no one on Bushes team (including the president himself) knows how to respond to all of these pathetic distortions of the truth.
The electoral system is the only way to go. What would you do if you had a razor close election? Turn the whole country into Florida 2000?
If a state like CA or TX is so one sided, then it probably should be ignored.
The electoral system was put in place by our Founders in order to insure that small states had a say in national elections. It has obviously done that. They structured the US Senate for the same reasons. Absent the electoral college, the election would be dictated by the four or five largest states.
"The electoral system was put in place by our Founders in order to insure that small states had a say in national elections. It has obviously done that. "
Really? I’m in RI right now, and I don’t think there’s been a lot of campaigning here. The Electoral process as laid out in the Consitution is a confusing messed up process. Electors are to vote for two people. One of the people they vote for has to be from a different state than the Electors is from. if two people get a majority of votes, and their vote numbers are the same, then the House of Representatives chooses the President, with each states Representatives having to decide on one vote for their state. What a mess.
What’s going on in Colorado is not an attempt to do away with the Electoral College, but an attempt by the national Democratic party to get a few more votes in the Electoral College than it would otherwise. Basically, they know they won’t win Colorado, but would like to pick up the four votes (I think) they would get from allocating Colorado’s votes proportionally to the percentage of vote.
We would have a much different election campaign if the election were based upon percentage of votes cast across the nation. For example, neither campaign is contesting Texas this year, and neither campaign did in 2000. But, if there were a straight percentage determining the outcome, a great deal of time and effort would be spent on increasing turnover, etc in Texas. The same is true of New York and California, which both have lots of voters, but not much chance of anything but the Democratic candidate winning. You would create a new set of problems, too. Suppose the election for President were so close that we needed to do a nationwide recount. Lawyers and other volunteers from across the country were flown into Florida because there were not enough bodies on the ground for either party to do the monitoring needed to do one state wide recount. It would be really hard to find enough people to monitor this sort of thing nationwide. There would also be a lot more chances for fraud to affect things.
Proportional allocation would also change elections a great deal, too. One really bad way would be the potential power than it would give third party candidates. With 54 electoral votes at stake in California, a third party candidate could focus on California, pickup 3 or 4 votes and then basically have the ability to decide an election if neither major party candidate won a majority of the electoral college votes. I think that such a result would be incredibly undemocratic. You see around the world how third parties in parliamentary systems can force a government to adopt a policy that might be favored by less than five percent of the country because they have the ability to bring down the government if it isn’t done. I think that’s a horrible system. Much worse than the one we have today.
Well, there is no campaigning in RI because it is a given how the state will vote. It will be nearly 2-1 for Kerry. RI will cast electoral votes that will be disproportionately large compared to its population, so what is your complaint?
Head up the road to NH. They are split evenly and the campaigning is furious. Same for NM, NV, MO and AR.
On the other side of the coin, we will hear from TX and CA. Does it really serve any purpose for the parties to flog an extra 100,000 voters in these states to the polls in order affect the nationwide vote total? I don’t think so.
“You are right, not that useless. It’s been completely useless, it has put in a President that did not win, by either electoral college or popular vote, who then proceeded to start a war which has no logical explanation and baffles anyone who has been paying close attention to the war on terror.”
And you claim your head isn’t up your ass? At no point and by no recount scenario did Gore ever hold the lead. Meanwhile, there are still several thousand military absentee votes that Florida never counted. Talk about disenfranchisment! And these are the people putting their lives on the line.
“…it allowed for completely uneducated individuals to decide who should run this country for the next 4 years.”
Yale educated. He’s also got an MBA. What’s your degree in?
“God I love America, I’m so glad I became a citizen here (although sticking with my original label as a British Citizen wouldn’t have been any better.)”
“If a state like CA or TX is so one sided, then it probably should be ignored.”
California isn’t that one-sided, it’s just that big. We have many millions of conservative Republicans. They just don’t count come presidential election time.
“I’m in RI right now, and I don’t think there’s been a lot of campaigning here.”
That’s because RI isn’t up for grabs.
“The Electoral process as laid out in the Consitution is a confusing messed up process.”
True, but not nearly as messed up as a nationwide popular vote election would be. The founding dads were a bunch of smart guys. We should spend more time getting in touch with their intentions.
We are not ignoring 60 million people. Together they cast nearly 1/3 of the electoral votes required to elect a president. Their voice is being heard. In both cases their voice is heard so overwhelmingly that it just gets taken for granted.
I guess you are arguing for a direct popular vote. If so, answer my question about how to deal with a close election. Do we turn the whole country into Florida 2000?
The election is dictated by the people. If you want to argue representation, give me a solution to the gerrymandering disaster with have with the US House. We don’t even bother to hold most of those elections anymore. The politicians choose their voters instead of the other way around.
I am hearing you, and your point is certainly valid. I am pointing out that the existing rules were drawn up for a reason. Those reasons also have validity.
We can’t count 100,000,000 ballots accurately. Can’t be done now, can’t probably be done ever. With the current system, we don’t have to worry much about voter fraud in 90 plus per cent of the country as far as a presidential election is concerned. We have very serious vote fraud problems now with all the money being dumped into “registration” drives.
Do you know that $100 plus million is being spent on that, mostly by unaccountable 527 organizations? Imagine what would happen if they could do this nationwide in jurisdictions so partisan as to turn the other way. With the current system, I really don’t have to worry much if a 527 registers 1,000,000 illegals in CA. It is a lot cheaper to buy an illegal vote than to pursuade a legal voter.
My point is direct election would result in a lot of problems that you ignore now since they are not an issue.
Seems like they could come up with something better. If you win electoral votes but you lose the popular vote, they should have a tiebreaker. I have no idea what the tiebreaker would be though…maybe whoever wins California?
You are going to have certain percentage of inaccuracy. It will come from a variety of sources. Fraud. Mistakes in voting. Mistakes in counting due to chads or mechanical or electrical problems with the voting equipment. Mistakes by poll attendants. Mistakes in voting locations and precincts. Mistakes or fraud by voters registered in multiple locations.
Voting has to do with people, and people make mistakes. You won’t drive mistakes to zero.
With the electoral college, at least any problem will be confined to the borders of one state. Most of the country will be unaffected since the problems will get lost in the noise of a decisive outcome within that state.
The 2000 election is the perfect example of how the electoral system was designed to work. Ignoring the FL issue, Bush won because the system gives a disproportionate weighting to the votes of the smaller states. That disproportionate weight was the margin of victory in that case.
The vote counting issues were confined to the borders of FL, rather than covering the entire country. The problems were resolved, more or less, according to established procedures.
You can disapprove of the proportionate weighting, but I like the reasoning of the Founders in incorporating it into our electoral process. You can certainly dislike the FL 2000 result as well, but it is hard to argue that we were not better served having the complaints and scrutiny contained within the state’s borders rather than spilling out over the entire country.
Bush basically won the 2000 election with a flip of the coin. No matter how the count had been executed, he won according to the media post mortem examination. However, Gore would have almost certainly won if his voters hadn’t disproportionately invalidated their own ballots by faulting voting procedures. These things just happen. No procedure is immune from such scenarios.
Well, I agree that you can try to drive some of the errors to zero, but that won’t really help the overall situation. The electronic voting machines they have just introduced in Broward County, Florida, for example, just look like the perfect vehicle for massive and undetected, sophisticated fraud. They systems are not secure and have no audit capability.
I do agree that improvements modeled after electronic slot machines in Vegas are possible, but they have not been implemented anywhere.
That doesn’t fix the problem of the machines being lost on the way to the counting location, for example, or any of many other potential problems either accidental or fraudulent. It obviously doesn’t help with the vote early and often fraud scenarios either.
I am not saying we can’t do better. I am just saying the process will never be perfect.
