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Tuesday, June 22, 2004
General Election Cattle Call, June 22
Posted by Chris BowersNational Two-Party Vote Projection
Kerry: 51.04
Bush: 48.96
Status: To close to call
Electoral Vote Projection
Bush: 274 (237)
Kerry: 264 (301)
State changing hands from 2000: New Hampshire
Yikes, talk about a replay of 2000! It is disturbing to think that Kerry could win the popular vote by 2% and still lose, but it is not impossible. Right now, I have Bush up by 0.04% in Florida, and 1.6% in Ohio. If he can squeak out both states, even a 2% national win (arond 4 times what Gore won by) will not be enough to put Kerry over the top. Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania--three states for the three Elven kings. The Electoral College to rule them all.
Man, I hate the friggin' electoral college. Time to throw it into Mount Doom. I, for one, would much rather have the national popular vote determine the winner.
Posted at 06:59 PM in General Election Cattle Call | Technorati
Comments
i have to disagree with your latest report because the latest ABC-Washington Post Poll has Kerry ahead by 4 with Nader and ahead by 8 in a two man race. Also 2.004k.com has Kerry at 270 Electoral Votes. So I think the race still is a slight lean for Kerry.
Posted by: Alan Snipes at June 22, 2004 08:03 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
It seems to me that at this point the thing is just plain old up in the air. We may be stuck here until one of them pops open a 6 point lead late in October.
Posted by: steve at June 22, 2004 08:17 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
I saw that ABC/WP poll too but if you'll notice the sample, it says they selected random adults. Nothing about likely or registered or even qualified voters.
Posted by: webgirl at June 22, 2004 09:37 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
For what it's worth, Zogby has posted the results of its latest interactive pole and GW has jumped even further ahead in the Electoral College. Granted the interactive poll has several methodological problems, but the fact that previously Zogby has been saying Kerry was outpolling GW is in itself interesting.
Link :
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=836
Posted by: Gene at June 22, 2004 09:49 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
Why change the Consitution and make the popular vote the deciding factor for President? This is absurd. Doing this will take away power or any voice the country has. All a Candidate would have to do is win New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago and be president. An Electoral College gives a somewhat equal voice to the entire nation with larger states having a bigger voice. Remember that our country was founded on the rights of states to govern themselves but to be part of one larger nation. It has worked for over 200 years.
Posted by: Howie at June 27, 2004 09:26 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
Well, let's see, the combined population of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago is about 14.6 million people. In the last election, national turnout of the voting age population was 51.3%, which means we would expect a little under 7.5 million votes to be cast in those cities, so to "win" there a candidate would have to get 3.75 million votes.
In the last election, Bush received 50,460,110 votes and Gore 51,003,926. Nader got 2,883,105 (2.73% of the vote) and others got about a million.
Does it seem likely to you that there is any scenario in which someone who received just 3.75 million votes -- the supposition you're making -- would win a presidential election based on popular vote? Or even one who got 7.5 million votes, every single vote in the three biggest cities?
No, of course not.
As for "working", what makes you say that the Electoral College works? Didn't we just live through a particularly egregious example of how it *doesn't* work? You're worried (unnecessarily, it turns out) that the three largest cities in the country, representing about 5% of the country's total population, might determine the outcome of the election, but in 2000, the vote in Florida, which has 16 million people (about 5.4% of the country) actually *did* determine the outcome.
So rather than the straw man you've thrown up, which isn't an issue, why not fix the problem we've been saddled with for 180 years?
Posted by: Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) at June 28, 2004 09:13 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
If it wasn't for the electoral college, states like West Virginia, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Oregon would not get the kind of attention from the election campaigns that they currently do. Yes the Electoral College does mean that the potential for the popular vote winner to lose exists, it ensures that people living outside the 20 most populous states at least are given attention by the candidates as they seek election. It's not perfect, but the potential alternative would have results that I think would be even worse for the future of democracy in the country.
Posted by: Gene at June 28, 2004 05:42 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
West Virginia, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Oregon have an aggregate population of 8.3 million people (only slightly larger than the population of New York City alone), which is less than 3% of the population of the entire country. Certainly, time should be spent there (no state should be overlooked), but there's no particularly good argument why, all things being equal, they deserve anything more than 3% of the candidate's attention. This year, because they are "swing" or "battleground" states whose electoral votes can be won by either side, they will receive considerably more than %3 of the attention, and money spent, by the candidates, while states like New York (19 million people, 6.64% of the population), California (35 million people, 12% of the population) Texas (almost 22 million people, 7.5% of the population) and Illinois (12.6 million people, about 4.3% of the population) will get very little attention at all, except as places from which to raise funds.
So, because of this basically undemocratic system we have in place, 3% of the population in four contested states receives many, many times more attention than almost 40% of the population in four other states.
This makes sense to you as a system worth keeping? Not to me -- and that's regardless of whether going to a direct popular election system (or one in which electoral votes are awarded more proportionately to the populat vote) hurts the Democratic party or not.
Posted by: Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) at June 28, 2004 10:04 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
Posted by: link- at August 28, 2004 03:33 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
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Posted by: Missy at November 12, 2004 05:00 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment