Tuesday, November 09, 2004
So briefly: obviously this result sucks, but this post isn't about that.
While I didn't blog them, my predictions were in terms of probabilities: -which
were more ranked and relative than they were absolute- thusly, legal action,
70%; Bush to win popular vote, 65%; Bush to win electoral vote, 50.01%.
The surprise was in the very small extent of legal action: there have been
rumblings in a couple of places, but this prediction, as everyone else's
similar, has to be said to have failed. I figure that this is self-ablating
prophecy in two main ways. Everyone predicted legal chaos over the vote, and so
it was scrutinised to a much larger degree than usual, with armies of lawyers on
both sides. Secondly, and maybe more importantly, as observation of problems is
correlated with intensity of observation, in a way which could over-ride a low
occurence of problems: there is sentiment. John Kerry conceded pretty quickly,
all things considered, and I think that concern for American democracy, and
desire not to be Al Gore, were important. A fiasco where no one expects one is
powerful; one where everyone expects one is not; there not being one where
everyone expects one is powerful in the opposite direction. I have more to say
later on corruption: which it is hard to believe that there wasn't.
The popular vote then: Kerry's campaign was very focussed on the electoral
college. While both candidates ignored the safe states, Bush did seem to make a
more national effort on TV, and with his message. Apparently his campaign also
advertised on lots of specialist networks to reach certain types of voters: i.e.
motoring channels to reach beer-swilling jocks (or "lads" as we'd call them: who
may or may not predominate in the audience of motoring channels: I guess rather
than judging) or whatever: using channels with specialist demographics to tailor
one's demographic reach. Bush's message was about terrorism, religion, and
tax cuts. The first and last aren't that favourable or disfavourable by state,
while Kerry's appeals on manufacturing jobs very much were.
The other big point on the popular vote is that apparently 4 million
Evangelicals stayed at home last time, when Bush lost by 0.5 million votes. This
time, banning gay marriage was on the ballot in 11 states, abortion is an issue
due to the likelihood of new Supreme Court appointments, and there have been 4
years of Bush using huge amounts of religious rhetoric, etc. I think that it
would be worthwhile trying to test the popular vote swing from last time,
according to those 11 states, and I'm on the lookout for a state by state tally
of votes, but something scary is immediately apparent: Bush won this time by 3.5
million votes, i.e. - 0.5 million + 4 million. Anyhow, he got the biggest
popular vote ever, which amounted to around 52%, so I was hella right.
The electoral college vote is explicable by the state-targeting reasons
above: Kerry lost the electoral college by about 150 000 Ohians (<-- is that
the word?). That is close, although the statistical margin of error of the
election was around 10 000: so it's nothing like last time's absurdity. I think
that here, I was again hella right, unlike some
people...
For comfort, I've been offered this. It is excellent.
