Interesting look back at what was happening at this time 4 years ago. Kerry was ahead by 2-3 points in most polls, with only Zogby and Rasmussen showing Bush ahead.

Presidential Election Polls 2004 RNC Zogby Presidential Election Gallup Polls Press Releases Democratic Presidential Campaign Polls

FiveThirtyEight.com

The likely voter screen on that is pretty strong pro-republican. The registered number is 47-37 Obama.

After looking at the cross tabs I'm sure this is what I was polled on a few days ago.

That page only shows SUSA and ARG polls favoring Kerry. SUSA is solid, but ARG has a well earned reputation for being unreliable.

Why is it that you guys still use the electoral college thing?

It's in the Constitution.

To make sure the redneck voters in Western Pennsylvania still have a say in the final results.

It keeps New York and Los Angeles from deciding who the next President will be...

Plus it's fun fucking with all the people who can't read a poll.

fuck murtha.

Of course, to do that you have to make the vote of a citizen of Montana worth four times as much as the vote of a citizen of California...

Because Democrats in Texas and Republicans in New York are subhuman thus their votes shouldn't count.

Hey! And Chicago! :D

I bet he provides at least four times as much food :D

I never understood the electoral college until I saw the map of the 2000 election results and went "oh, now it makes sense".

I worked as a poll person in 2000, and we used the Optical Scan. By far the best way to go. I just can't understand why more States didn't go to that over this mess they are using.

Was it this map?



As a country, we've decided that all that red is worth SOME kind of bonus, even though the actual votes behind them were basically a tie. You need broad popular and geographic support to win a presidential election in the US.

I've never decided if that was a good idea or not, though I lean towards it. It kind of just fits in with the rest of our system, and the importance of states (small states have incredibly disproportinate senate representation, for example, and nobody seems to be up in arms over that).

(This one's actually 2004 - 2000 didn't work for some reason).

Here is the analogy I was thinking about. Assume I make the statement, "if the Green Bay Packers play an NFL game in Mexico, there will be a big fan turnout". I think in general we can assume this is a true statement. You definition of "big" may be different than mine, but it is hard to find fault with the statement.

What I haven't said is that if and only if the Packers play in the NFL game will there be a big turnout. You could replace the Packers in my statement with the Bears, or the Patriots, or just about any team in the league (maybe not Miami) and that statement would still be true. The fact that I only gave one example doesn't mean that is the only true example.

Now assume that I am the assistant coach of the Bears and a Packer assistant coach delightedly calls a Chicago talk-radio station to parrot my quote that "if the Green Bay Packers play an NFL game in Mexico, there will be a big fan turnout". It probably doesn't make me look good to the Chicago media. I may have been speaking about the Packers specifically for another reason, but because I didn't give more than one example, people can accurately quote me with just the one.

This isn't a perfect analogy, but I am like Biden in this story. (Forget the fact that there are 2 presidential candidate and way more NFL teams.) Biden says that if Obama is elected, he will face a crisis from people who will want to test him. He didn't say that it is any different for McCain, but he (foolishly) didn't say anything at all about McCain. Now Palin can say the same thing Biden did with a changing around of the words which really doesn't change the meaning. Palin also hasn't said that the same wouldn't be true for McCain because she is just quoting Biden. When you hear 'if' from her, you associate that with 'if and only if' because she is on the side opposite you and you are expecting the attacks to be as strong as possible.

That is the beauty of this situation for the Republicans. The Biden quote was pretty unambiguous. Reps can repeat the quote without embellishment and it sounds harsh. The Democrats have basically responded in two ways. 1 - it was a perfectly reasonable thing to say because every president faces challenges. 2 - if you parse the words in just the right way, you might see that the statement really wasn't about Obama.

1 is fairly weak because "every president faces challenges" doesn't address the "electing Obama will cause a crisis" statement. 2 is pointless because you can't parse away the words because it is fairly unambiguous.

The real response should have been that Biden did in fact say that electing Obama will result in a crisis brought on to test him. Since the whole speech was about Obama in particular, his is the only name that was brought up. Had the discussion also included McCain, Biden would have commented that a different crisis would have come up to challenge him.

A second decent response would have been to say that Obama will face a crisis because he is young and people will want to test him. Obama will show everyone that he knows what to do and he will win the challenge. I think this is really what Biden was going for, but he didn't say it very well.

In the current state of "gotcha politics", the first reaction is always to deny. Once you deny, you look worse when you keep denying. Had they thought a little more and owned their statement with an amendment to make it more clear, they would have been better off.

you are right in the above and I take back everything I said. Thank you for taking the time to explain the positions.

I don't think the whole quote thing is a big deal, but I heard the audio of Palin's response this morning, it wasn't really a hardcore attack, she said, "Why is he saying that, if I had said that you guys would be clobbering me. I'd like to hear him explain what he meant". Pretty reasonable sentiment.

Cheap, easy and reliable. What's not to like?

Some people are uptight about the government "collecting data" like that (whether or not that info is actually retained). Like they'll be able to track us or something.

I agree it's the right thing to do though. It's not that friggen complicated. We've accomplished much more impressive stuff as a species then have a reliable voting process.

I had a problem with the 'if' and attached an existing 'and only if' that didnt exist. When analyzing that the second part actually was attached in my head and hence forth removed and than reanalyzed, I realize that I was wrong.

I agree that she wouldve been hammered for it but only due to the bias towards ratings/readers.

Okay, but what's silly about this argument is it still happens on the state level. For example, look at California. Look at all that red, but the state still went to Kerry. Also look at Pennsylvania, Oregon, or Washington. The electoral college doesn't force you to have broad geographic support. You can still take the entirety of a state's electoral votes by appealing to the urban areas.

I still can't figure out how on earth people think it's okay to say people who live close together deserve less voting power than people who live far apart.

There's another map I saw that painted a more realistic picture. That one is absolute, 100% or 0%. I'll see if I can find it again, but it showed shaded boxes depending on the closeness of the vote, with white where there was a 50/50 split, and gradually getting darker blue or red as it went towards 100%. There were a lot of light colored counties on that one.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't electoral votes based on population? Its not so much that Wyoming's votes are worth more. It's just that a close win in a state is just as valuable as a landslide win.

Here is the "Purple America" map of the 2000 Election...

Well, it doesn't work out exactly tied to population. Every state gets a minimum of 3 electoral votes, no matter how small they are, so some states are getting more than they would if there was a flat population per electoral vote ratio.



That is one of the silliest parts of the electoral college. If we really had three viable partoes, people would be winning all the electoral votes in a state with less than 40% of the vote.

Electoral votes are the sum of a state's Senators + Representatives. Since all states have 2 senators, smaller states have a very slight over-representation in the electoral college relative to their populations.

No wonder I'm voting for Obama, he has secretly been hypnotizing us!

http://www.pennypresslv.com/Obama%27...s_Speeches.pdf

That's up to the states though. They could proportion it out by county, congressional district etc. (Maine and Nebraska do the latter, though they've always had sweeps and have never split the vote).

I like those shaded maps except I think they're too easy to give a "split" color. 60/40 is a pretty dominant margin, but the map just gives slightly varying shades of red-blue.

There's a proposal I've seen from some states meant to make the electoral college meaningless. The idea is that the state will allocate their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. However, it doesn't go into effect until enough states (that make up 270 electoral votes) also pass the law.

the bottom thing is neat: 2008 Electoral Map Predictions: 10-14-2008 | Political Maps (found it from the purple map above)



EDIT: Embedded

What happened in Maine and Vermont?

A third party would capable of preventing both of the two main parties from achieving a majority would have a huge impact on the electoral college itself. It's very likely that if a third party could do that, they could demand almost anything from the main parties....In a close election, that party might only need to win one or two states.

To me, the election has boiled down to a simple view:

I will not vote Democrat because of substance.
I will not vote Republican because of style.

There are more ways than one to vote against a one-party government and I may exercise that right. But I will not I will not help the Republicans carry Colorado for the presidency.

Another Election Prediction:

45% of the population would vote for Obama (including those against McCain).
45% of the population would vote for McCain (including those against Obama).

The key will be what percentage of the population will actually get out and vote for (or against) a candidate.

I'm not sure I follow. Do you mean that 45% of the population would vote for Obama if they voted? And the key is seeing how many of those who would vote for Obama actually show up to vote for Obama?

Yes, I meant "would" (as in theoretically). My brain said 'would' but my fingers typed 'will'.

Another election cycle, another instance of Republicans telling me that I'm anti-American. As Jon Stewart said, "Republicans love America, but just hate half the people living in it."

I've been called a racist, a fascist, a corporatist, paranoid, delusional, evil... and that was just the last phone call with my mom the Democrat! :D

Seriously, again I feel the need to point out that the emnity on the right is equaled by the emnity on the left, and good people on both sides become targets of it.

I have no idea since im a guy but I heard Palin spent up to $150K on clothes....is that a lot for a Pol? i honestly have no clue and since I got married I even have less of a clue and have stopped buying clothes for myself entirely (mostly since what I buy gets met with shakes of the head and disapproval which is repeated when I attempt to wear said item(s) and then get pushed into something bought for me.....by her.) plus Im not a Pol..

It seems to be unprecedented. It's also fun to note that the RNC had to foot the bill because McCain-Feingold made that sort of purchase with candidate funds illegal. It's another thing that doesn't really matter substantively, but Lord does it make the McCain team look even more inept.

A power blackout due to the damaging energy crisis.

Here are three fake commercials for McCain done by Hollywood directors. The first one isn't great, but the last two are pretty good.

Male candidates spend thousands of dollars on suits, but nobody cares. If she didn't get more fashionable clothes and upgrade her appearance, we'd here the cries of how poor her appearance was. Female politicians walk a tightrope of fashion at all times. Male politicians put on one of their 20 navy suits with a red tie and think nothing of it.

How is Palin's wardrobe any worse than John Edwards' haircut? Both were stupid stories and not a big deal at all. Sure it probably hurts their attempts at the "common person" feeling like that candidate understands them when they spend more on clothes or a haircut then many people can spend on things like food... but otherwise does it really matter? Of course I probably feel that way about 85% of the random things people bring up against Democrats or against Republicans in this thread trying it to make the candidate look like the worst person ever :)

their not any different. The haircut I have a point of reference on and KNOW that that is a ridiculous way to spend your money! I dont even know how much a suit costs and the one time I had to buy one was years ago and I was absolutely blown away by how expensive they seemed to be. If someone only bought suits I could easily see how you could get to 150K....That might only be about 35 suits....which 35 suits is a lot IMO but perhaps suits can be even more expensive than I imagine.

Please tell me you are kidding with the redneck comments?

It's as I always suspected- there are no people in Maine or Vermont :D

SI

Once again, one of the many reasons I'm glad I'm a guy. I open up my closet for work and it's just two sets of clothes: one of solid colored shirts and the other of solid colored pants. So, when I'm not really awake and getting dressed in the morning, the only thing I have to do it make sure I don't pick ones that are the same color. :D

SI

But if it were a straight-up popular vote, everyone would still have a say in the final results, right? One vote is just that, one vote.

I'm assuming that given the electoral college system that you have, you've got horrible voter turnout all over the country.

Lies. Everyone knows that people in Maine and Vermont get power from pine sap.


This is the same Sarah Palin who at the GOP convention (which was before the shopping spree) got so much attention in part because of her appearance? And she needed another $150,000 on top of that to look good?

Look, I understand they needed to get her more clothes for the campaign trail. Unlike guys, who can have a bunch of suits and white shirts and ties (and at least the shirts and ties can be pretty cheap), women on the campaign trail really need different outfits so as not to repeat outfits too much, which is not a concern for men.

However, $150,000? From Saks & Needless Markup? There are thousands of professional women who go to work each day looking good and professional who don't spend that kind of money and/or get very good looking clothes from much less expensive retailers.


That's basically why it matters. It's an image thing. It begins to look hypocritical to be a champion of the common man when you spend more on clothes than the common man makes in a year (or two, or three). Plus, if I was a donor to the RNC (not even a donor to McCain/Palin) would I be 100% happy with this use of my money?


Or Rhode Island, apparently.

Anyone who votes based on petty things like haircuts or suits...needs to have their vote revoked.

No joke...

Heaven forbid things get discussed such as who has the better plan to turn around the economy, or discussion of each candidate's foreign policies or what will be done about health care, etc. Lets discuss instead who spends too much on suits or haircuts, or if such and such candidate once upon a time walked on the same street as someone else.

To put the amount in perspective, that 150,000 is just a little under what the RNC spent on advertising last week in MO and WV combined.

But "needs to" and "has had" are two very different things. Therefore it's an issue the realistic pol has to be aware of and deal with.


If it's toward the effort of winning, I really don't see it as an issue. After all, that's the overriding purpose of the donation presumably (ignoring the whole donate in order to have some advantage in the event of a victory thing).

Well, that's the thing. Is the money better spent on Sarah Palin (who already looked good, or at least could have continued to look good with less of an outlay on clothes from two very expensive retailers), or on media buys?

I, personally, don't have a problem with it. I regularly present/interact with C-level executives, so I know the value of dressing well and looking good on a regular basis. I find the result of the RNC's ham-handed handling of this to be funny and the resulting media backlash predictable. But if anyone wants to claim that this won't have some effect amongst the electorate (ironically the part of the electorate the GOP ticket has been courting strongly for at least the past week), well, good luck with that. :D

Man, the attacks on Palin are reaching a new high. I checked Yahoo, CNN, MSNBC and even MSN last night- all had negative stories on Palin at the top (most on the 150K outfit and how Palin is killing McCain's chances). I just don't understand why so many are so angry at her. Is it really this "a woman being pro life" issue?

It has nothing to do with her being pro life. As mentioned, John Edwards had the same treatment regarding his haircut. It is really a "Media just reports on anything stupid and unfortunately for the most part the american public enjoys reading it" issue

I think it depends on the media outlet. The dumber ones are attacking Palin on the $150,000 because it's easy and will generate a lot of viewers. The smarter ones are attacking Palin because of the theory that all she's done is solidify the base, whilst alienating the parts of the electorate McCain needed to add to win the election.

I'm surprised no one has posted this yet:

http://www.journalism.org/node/13307


It's going to be pretty tough to make a charge when 6 in 10 are negative. Not that McCain has run a wonderful campaign, but I'm beginning to wonder if he was going to be behind the eight-ball no matter what.

The amount of media $150k buys, depending upon the market of course, can be pretty negligible, and at this point the impact is pretty questionable with regard to anything other than turnout so ... a coin flip AFAIC. Palin is the only thing positively energizing the voters that absolutely must turnout for McCain to have any chance at all, so yeah, I can see investing it in her rather than him as being a reasonable decision.

The other thing we aren't privvy to is what research may have been behind the decision. I have to suspect that there was something coming back indicating an issue and this was an attempt to address the situation (remember, once upon a time there was analysis of the impact of Hillary's hairstyle on voters) Even as little as I think of a lot of the strategy I've seen, I have a tough time picturing this being entirely the result of someone saying "hey, why don't we take Sara shopping?". That just doesn't ring quite true to me. And if it was just totally random then let's face it, the people spending the money wouldn't likely to be smart enough to do anything worthwhile with it anyway.

They seceded

Fair enough.

Well Palin is killing McCain's chances. Her selection has become McCain's number one negative among those polled and as Palin's favorability rating has plummeted the percentage of people who view McCain's age as a negative has risen.

People aren't angry at her as much as they don't feel she'd make a capable president.

As for the clothes thing, yeah that's been overblown but some people find it amusing.

My guess is that the map was done prior to the certification process being completed.

New England is different from most of the rest of the US, in that election results are tabulated and certified at the town level, not the county level. I suppose that the map maker wanted to use certified results to create the map, and there were probably some straggler towns in those states that certified late--which would make county calculations difficult (if you wanted to use apple-to-apples certified data)...

I think a decent amount of it is hypocrisy as well (as Jon Stewart alluded to last night). She (and her campaign) are going through great lengths to portray her as an average woman, an outsider who doesn't play by the rules of the "Washington elite", and will bring the issues the voters really care about (family values, etc). Then they go out and spend more in 6 weeks than the average family makes in 3 years to make her look good. I believe it's a non-story and they are donating everything to charity once the election is over (so they say), so really it's not a big deal. But it is a stark contrast to the message they are trying to send and that's why it gets airtime.

GO PHILS!

No, it's a person being unqualified, holier than thou, and hypocritical. From the media's standpoint, it's someone that's unprepared and, as a result, inaccessible to media. It took 55 days before she was interviewed on NBC Nightly News (per Brian Williams). And, the Republicans are so afraid of what'd she say, John McCain had to be there. She has a hard time giving the same answer twice, and can't stay on message. I think the media view it as an added bonus that even a lot of conservatives view her as the most unqualified person to be nominated for veep.

Good point on the outfit, but it's more about the stories on her hurting the ticket. I watched NBC news while at a hotel and they referenced this poll:

http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/do...oll_102108.pdf

Here's the exact quote from the newscast:

Now, if you look at the PDF poll above and the history of the poll, you find that 40% had her "qualified" in September 19-22, 41% in October 4-5 and back to 40% in the new poll. This is somehow a "dangerous" trend. Quite honestly, given the mugging she's received over the past month, it's almost shocking that the qualified number hasn't changed.

Maybe she just spent some of the savings from the Bridge to Nowhere.

Maybe she should be more concerned about repeating speeches than repeating outfits.

But seriously, this is a male-dominated board, and the votes the campaign wants her to get are women -- I'm guessing they notice this stuff more than we do.

If there was one group of people who could be blamed for nearly all of the country's ills today, it would definitely be the liberal media! Why must they be so mean to the Palin drones?

I think they're referring to how the percent that had her "unqualified" went from 50% to 55%.

I just saw this, and while I don't think it is relevant to Palin's ability to run the country, it is absurd. And I think making a separate thread would be even worse than posting it here and rolling my eyes (that is, make it seem more newsworthy than it is).

Palin says she considers herself intellectual - washingtonpost.com

She shouldn't have said that, intellectuals don't poll well with the Republican base. The "voracious reader" quote is especially damaging because she didn't mention the Bible afterwards.

That is a remarkable statistic, especially given the MSM's love affair with John McCain that lasted for years and years, basically ending after the GOP convention.

Of course, when your campaign admits publicly that it can't win on the issues, runs a 100% negative smear campaign, and picks the most unqualified running-mate in political history, it's tough to find something positive to say.

;)

Excellent analysis.

I also believe the MSM has picked up, not on the whole shopping spree per-se, but how spending that amount of money appears in complete contradiction to so many things McCain-Palin has campaigned on.

Joe Six Pack, Joe The Plumber, Small Town Values, Obama is an Elitist - all of those kind of sound hypocritical when you drop 150 large on clothes.

But Palin looks good. MILFy, even.

Knowing the cost of a typical market research study, someone saying "hey, why don't we take Sara shopping?" in the first place would have been cheaper. :)

But isn't anyone who actually believes for more than a few seconds that a national level politician lives in a world that remotely resembles the majority of the voters pretty much a damned fool from the get go?

It seems pretty likely to me that the people who claim to be the most offended by the spending on the clothes are also among the most likely to be influenced by self-same clothes ... further proof perhaps that we're so FUBAR at this point that it may not matter much who wins what this year.

In the words of D-Von Dudley "Oh my brutha ... TESTIFY !".

Do you think Obama shops at the Men's Warehouse? I'd be shocked if his wardrobe expenses aren't in the same ballpark.

Murtha much?

Since I have no clue whether you're kidding, Rep. Murtha was widely criticized in recent days for saying that Western Pennsylvania has a lot of rednecks. I was merely playing off that. I honestly have no idea whether there are rednecks in Pennsylvania.

I feel like I'm a politician and should publicly apologize for Mr. Murtha's comments.

I would be very surprised. Even if he bought $5,000 suits he would need to be 30 of them. Let's say he buys $1,000 shirts to go with them, and he has, I don't know, 30 shirts, then that's 30 shirts (one for each day of the month) and 24 suits. Unless he is buying $30,000 suits, that still seems very excessive for a man's wardrobe.

Exactly. An intelligent media would note that big players like Obama and McCain are spending 2,000-5,000 per suit on their wardrobe (which is similarly paid for by the party) and that their suit/shirt/shoes costs easily exceed 100K when all is said and done. They are not buying $200 suits on sale at Men's Wearhouse.

non-dola: I assume McCain, Obama and Biden spend a similar amount of money compared to one another on clothing for the campaign trail.

With all due respect, you're a naive fool. I have a friend that is a lobbyist for Northrop Grumman in DC and knows how the political machine works. The amount of money spent on clothes by some of these big players is outrageous (both male and female). I'm surprised that Pelosi or Clinton's wardrobe hasn't been similarly catalogued (by surprised, I mean not surprised at all).

His suits cost WAY more than $5k.

I don't care either way, except when someone starts criticizing how much one of the other candidates spends and calls it "hypocritcal".

Some people who have delved deeper into the RNC's accounting are finding, apparently, that part of the $150,000 also went to accessories, like $1,000 handbags, some of which have also been used by Palin's daughters.

So there's how you get to $150,000, anyway.

In comparison, Gore in 2000 got suits donated to him, and was able to list them as contributions at material/labor cost($500 or less a suit) because designers get free advertising.

You really think with Palin's image being such a big part of public consciousness right now, that she couldn't find some designers to donate if they looked for it? I find that hard to believe.

The RNC took the quickest and easiest way out, throwing money at the problem. Not what you would expect from Conservatives. Is it a big deal? Of course not. Is it another minor screwup when the campaign needs to be a near playing perfect game right now? You bet.

It isn't catalogued because it wasn't financed with donations. The reason this came to light is that it was disclosed on campaign expenditure forms. It isn't a media conspiracy.

The news media apparently.

And several posters in this thread.

Seriously crazy polls today:

Quinnipiac:
Florida: Obama 49, McCain 44
Ohio: Obama 52, McCain 38
Pennsylvania: Obama 53, McCain 40



Big Ten:
Illinois: Obama 61, McCain 32
Indiana: Obama 51, McCain 41
Iowa: Obama 52, McCain 39
Ohio: Obama 53, McCain 41
Michigan: Obama 58, McCain 36
Minnesota: Obama 57, McCain 38
Pennsylvania: Obama 52, McCain 41
Wisconsin: Obama 53, McCain 40



CNN/TIME:
Nevada: Obama 51, McCain 46
North Carolina: Obama 51, McCain 47
Ohio: Obama 50, McCain 46
Virginia: Obama 54, McCain 44

It's a crock of filth is what it is. The intent of digging for this information was solely to paint Sarah Palin as being a Paris Hilton type who will spend dollars at the drop of a hat. At the same time, no one went about mentioning just how much some of the other politicians spent on the race. Why? Because they only wanted to report the portion of the story that fit their billing rather than doing proper reporting and noting that Obama, Biden, and McCain all have wardrobes that dwarf that $150K value. It's just more class warfare.

Kudos to liberal supporters for finding a way to mask negative and sexist campaigning in the cloak of 'searching for the best interest of the Republican donors and taxpayers'.

BS. Michelle Obama got negative press and attention from conservatives over a lobster and cavier dinner at a hotel. The problem? She never even stayed at that hotel! So don't even bring that weak crap in here about woe-is the scruitny against Palin spending money.

I saw the Obamas at Arby's yesterday.

Maybe when (best selling author) Obama was bragging that he only had 1 house v. McCain's 5

I bet they got the 5 dollar subs instead of ordering 99 cent value sandwiches. Fuckin elitists.