Comments on: A mathematician reads the election

By: Dan Simon

Dan Simon — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 09:17:57 +0000

It’s true that the election was very close, but then the candidates’ positions were also very close—forced towards the center by the need to appeal to independent, moderate and undecided voters. The interesting question is, “to what degree is each party reconciled to the centrist positions that both major candidates were obliged to embrace?” More here.

By: Michael Blowhard

Michael Blowhard — Sat, 20 Nov 2004 00:04:10 +0000

Sorry: just needed to get that off my chest.

By: Michael Blowhard

Michael Blowhard — Sat, 20 Nov 2004 00:01:10 +0000

Look, Bush is a lousy, maladroit President who’s pushing lots of policies that lots of people disagree with. Yet the Dems still managed to lose. That’s pretty sad. My own hunch: it had less to do with slightly more than half the people voting for Bush than it did with slightly more than half the voters not liking what the Dems were selling. You really should do better than that. So, yeah, sure: you do deserve to have some doubts, a crisis of confidence, and a deep self-reevaluation. Can’t hurt. Lots of people out there just don’t like you. It may be worth wondering why. And can I humbly suggest that deciding that the reason they dislike you is that they’re stupid is a wrong, or at least unproductive, tack to take? (And that your tendency to call them stupid may be part of the reason they dislike you?) I didn’t vote for Bush myself, so don’t look at me that way.

By: abb1

abb1 — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 18:32:24 +0000

Mark Ames’ take on what the Democrats need to do now: The eXile Solution to Middle America Lol. He is so right.

By: Sebastian Holsclaw

Sebastian Holsclaw — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 16:35:24 +0000

“if the difference in this election is that Democrats weren’t able to match the Republican 72-hour GOTV storm, then Paulos is perfectly right to say there’s little evidence for a “seismic shift” promising an era of Republican dominance.” If Democrats couldn’t match Republican get out the vote efforts this year, with one of the more unpopular Republican presidents in recent history, with a war going on that is highly unpopular with Democratic voters, with the largest youth vote in the history of the US, with more money coming into the Democratic coffers than ever before, how can you fail at least suspect that something is going on?

By: kharris

kharris — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 15:14:07 +0000

Some responses here seem to take Paulos’ comments to mean he thinks the result was random. I thought he was warning against drawing strong conclusions, given that the undecideds could decide in a different direction in some future contest. Saying that the election was “about” the get-out-the-vote effort is to take it from the perspective of what the campaigns did. While the campaigns had an impact on the outcome, the number of undecided voters in the weeks prior to the election was sufficient to determine the outcome of the election. That doesn’t mean either part can let down in its GOTV effort. However, calls for making big changes to the complexion of the party in a post-loss bout of self-flagelation are not supported by the numbers.

By: J. Ellenberg

J. Ellenberg — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 13:48:15 +0000

Just thought I’d chime in since I have a rare chance to say that I’m in complete agreement with Brett Bellmore: this election was a get-out-the-vote contest, not a convince-the-ditherers contest. But I think this supports, not debunks, JAP’s conclusion: if the difference in this election is that Democrats weren’t able to match the Republican 72-hour GOTV storm, then Paulos is perfectly right to say there’s little evidence for a “seismic shift” promising an era of Republican dominance. The question for Democrats now is then “What’s the best way to knock on doors and make sure people vote?” and maybe “How can we block redistricting and other procedural changes designed to keep Democrats out of office?” not “How can we overhaul our party so as to appeal more strongly to religious voters/ Hispanics / religious security soccer Hispanic moms?” I think Paulos’s own reason for his conclusion is weaker—I’m just not confident there are enough data points for him to place any weight on the discrepancy between the regression analysis and the actual result. But I haven’t thought much about that analysis, so maybe it’s sturdier than I imagine. No one’s mentioned what I thought was the best thing in the article—JAP’s observation that we’re biased against believing that really important things happen by chance, even when this is true. I’ll bet ogmb upthread is right to say that the weather in Cleveland was a bigger factor in the election than almost anything people have been writing op-eds about.

By: Brett Bellmore

Brett Bellmore — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 11:01:24 +0000

Bunk. He ignores a fundamental point: This election wasn’t a contest to see who could win the undecideds, the coin flippers. It was a contest to see who could get more of their decideds to actually show up at the polls. Which is why we had such a high turnout.

By: james

james — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 02:05:35 +0000

Paul Gottlieb – Just what is the Democratic Party expected to about Senate representation? It’s constitutionally guaranteed. Removing Senate representation from a state requires the express consent of the State. Even if you had permission from an individual state, other states of similar population makeup are required to pass any constitutional amendment. Then there is the political component. Forget party viability for any political party even seriously suggesting this. Who in their right mind would vote for the party that advocates removing elected representation?

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 00:31:27 +0000

Paul said that 'In the Senate the problem is simple: little, almost uninhabited states like North Dakota get the same two Senators as New York or California. And most of these little empty states vote Republican... The Democratic minority in the Senate probably represent at least half the population.' Well, if you assume that on balance each senator represents half the population of his or her state, you find that there are 55 Republicans for 143 million Americans, and only 44 Democrats for almost 147 million Americans. In other words, if you live in the backarse of beyond your vote counts for a lot more than if you've got more than a handful of neighbours. As I've said on my site, it only takes 2,601,589 people to elect a Republican to the Senate, but you need a whole 3,337,420 people to get a Democrat there.

By: George

George — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 22:24:00 +0000

Chance the Gardener: your argument is undermined by the fact that the results were closer (both in absolute numbers and in percentages) in other states, and not always in Bush’s favor. Take Wisconsin: Kerry won the 10 electoral votes there by about 14,000 votes—less than half a percent of the total. To say that Ohio’s 130,000 is the only margin that matters is silly.

By: Fabio Rojas

Fabio Rojas — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 22:05:59 +0000

Paulos article omits important additional information: you can deduce something about an election if you have a lot of other information as well – the Cognressional shift to the GOP since 1994, the rise of GOP governors in otherwise democratic states (like New York and Mass), etc.

By: George

George — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 21:54:49 +0000

Interesting idea, but I think its premises… There is a large bloc of people who will vote for the Republican candidate no matter what, and a similarly reliable Democratic bloc of roughly the same size. There is also a smaller group of voters who either do not have fixed opinions or are otherwise open to changing their vote. …are becoming less true, if they were ever true. Both parties are coalitions of interest groups. The constant aim of politics (at least in the American winner-take-all system) is to broaden the coalition without creating or exacerbating internal inconsistencies, which give the other party opportunities to split off disaffected groups. Thus the system tends toward 50/50 stability. Case in point: the GOP used to be the party of fiscal discipline. But partly in an effort to win over some traditional Democratic interest groups (like seniors and African-Americans), they’ve spent huge amounts of Federal dollars things like on Medicare and education. So in response, the Democrats appeal to Republican voters disgusted by the soaring Federal deficit. I think the blocs that will vote Democratic or Republican every time, regardless of candidate or platform, are getting smaller, while the bloc of undecided voters is getting larger. But I also think “undecided” misrepresents a large chunk of this bloc: many voters are more conflicted than undecided. For instance, some voters (including me) were turned off by Bush’s social agenda, but supported his foreign agenda. These voters had to decide which issue was more important to them. Lastly, Paulos’s article ignores a rule that I learned in college poli sci class and have found quite instructive ever since: most people who develop an attachment to one party or the other do so because of some major life event. Millions of Americans became lifelong Democrats because of the Depression and FDR’s New Deal; millions of others left the Democrats for good because of the civil rights struggles. I believe 9/11 was just such a momentous event, and may have altered the political balance in this country for generations. One other thing: I believe the closeness of the election can be chalked up to the weakness of Bush as a candidate. If it had been, say, John McCain in the White House these past four years, and events had unfolded exactly the same, the Republicans would have won by 10 or 15 points, rather than 3 and a half. Thus I’d say the only real strategy for the Democrats is to sit back and wait for the GOP to overreach, which they almost certainly will do. If they pass the FMA, or overturn Roe, they will push a lot of “national security” Republicans into the Democratic camp, and the pendulum will swing right back the other way. That’s about all the Democrats can do, anyway.

By: Chance the Gardener

Chance the Gardener — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 21:35:54 +0000

The election was not lost by 3 million votes. The election was lost by less than 150,000 votes in Ohio. Possibly much less- I will let you know if we ever get a count out of Katherine Blackwell. If the 3 million number meant anything, we would have been saying President Gore for the last four years.

By: Lindsay Beyerstein

Lindsay Beyerstein — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 21:01:55 +0000

Paulos is writing at a time when Democrats are wondering whether we need to radical reform the party or compromise our principles to remain electable. Paulos is asking evidential questions. Should we conclude that the Democratic party is in terrible trouble because we narrowly lost this election? Do these results prove that we need to do something dramatically different next time? Not necessarily. People are talking about this election like it was an ignominious defeat. It wasn’t. We nearly beat a wartime incumbent in a non-depression economy. We must have done a lot of things right. Obviously, mistakes were made. But we only lost by about 3 million votes. We’ve got to keep things in perspective. We don’t need a scorched earth policy to pick up another 3-4 million votes in 2008. I want radical reform in the Democratic party, but not as a reaction to a relatively minor electoral setback. If Bush had won in a landslide, I’d be wondering about the future of the party. Losing by a 3% margin is hardly a resounding rejection the Democratic party and its values, despite what the mean spirited pundits would have us believe.