Variables in '08 electionFollow

How the hell are we supposed to know?

Edited, Jan 9th 2008 6:13am by Atomicflea

Dean's "shout out" was an overplayed bit of media fluff. The audio played from it was taken from his own microphone channel and doesn't account for the fact that he was trying to shout above the din of his supporters. ABC News played a copy of it taken from different mic and it was much different although not as good of a story. With years behind it and the spin, even the version everyone played sounds far from the banshee-warrior screaming it was made out to be.

The media rescued Clinton's NH bid with their "Clinton sheds a single tear" coverage. Even the Clinton camp recognizes it.

I thought everyone was content giving this election up to the hanging chad?

In a nutshell, the popular vote for each state wins that state's "electors". The number of electors a state has varies by its size (map) and whoever gets 270 wins the whole game. The winning party for that state gets to send its electors to Washington for the "real" vote so if Clinton is the Democratic nominee and she wins Illinois, the Illinois Democratic Party sends 22 of its finest to go vote for Clinton. The official electoral vote occurs in December although you know the winner in November through who won which state. Well, unless it's the year 2000 and one state remains in the air for over a month.

There's some minor quirks and exceptions to it. For instance, a couple states allow a division of their electors based on percentage of popular vote so if the state has ten electors and you get 70% of the vote and your opponent got 30%, you get 7 electoral votes and he gets 3. Also, it's generally assumed that the electors will vote for the candidate who won that state's popular vote but sometimes you have a "faithless elector" who throws in for someone else. This has never affected an outcome and it's usually some silly protest vote. Since the winning party sends its own electors, you wouldn't see a blue state suddenly swing for the Republican candidate or anything.

Anyway, the same popular/electoral discrepancy can happen here. Pretend that only six people vote in California and the Democrats win that state's 55 electors. By a bizarre twist of fate a hundred-thousand people vote in Wyoming for a Republican and win that state's 3 electors. Obviously the Democrats are still ahead on the electoral votes although they've lost the popular vote.

Edited, Jan 9th 2008 12:37pm by Jophiel

The new RNC guy, who is he and what does he bring to the GOP attack machine?

He's not new.

He doesn't bring anything. GOP attacks are coordinated by outside third parties, just like Dem ones are.

The RNC chairman's job is PR is just to spin things back to message. That's it. It's a step below deputy assistant communications coordinator's lackey. That same is true of the DNC. You don't really think that Howard Dean is sitting in a room determining election strategy do you??

What are you, like 11?

The Ohio Secretary of State has mandated paper ballots after investgating its touch-screen machines and finding them "defective" in terms of secure voting.

Speaking of last night and "Variables", CNN gave me a terrible fright when it originally labeled its video link "Major Nevada union endorses Clinton." in regards to the Culinary Workers' endorsement.

A few minutes later, it quietly changed to "Major Nevada union endorses Obama"

I love the commentators that say things like "but Obama isn't out of it yet!!!" as if we knew anything for sure yet.

Well, first things first:



On what planet do you watch your News? Or do you mean "The media didn't do enough parroting of far left conspiracy theorist websites with regard to the Iraq war justification"? Cause that's a bit closer to the truth. To be as fair as I can on this issue, the media didn't go overboard on this, but it's certainly covered it to death.

Seriously. That was 4 years ago. It's also "done". Bush isn't running for office. Aside from your own personal views, why should this even be a news story in any way related to the coming election?



I'll be fair here again and say that they have at least mentioned it. Certainly with no where near the fervor as the debate over WMDs in Iraq, but it has been talked about in passing along the way. Usually in a "Look at those evil Republicans blocking this bill to feed homeless children dying of untreatable diseases" manner, but it's been there.



Lol. Seriously. It's that or 12 pages proving you wrong.




Sure. The media loves Obama. Cause he says things that sound great, and they get to put that on their networks and get ratings. I suppose that makes him seem better in the polls, but that's an echo chamber at work. It doesn't translate into votes.

Media shows exciting clip of Obama and talks about how great he is. Viewers see this, don't know much about him, but the guy on TV said he's great, right? Some viewers take part in a survey and when asked who they think will win say Obama, cause he looked pretty good on TV, right? Poll results are shown on TV, with "surprisingly good" response for Obama. Media talks about that and gushes some more. Repeat process and you end up with polling results that are double digits off from how people will actually vote.

The media loves this cause it gives them the first set of stories, and then it gives then another set as they talk about the surprising difference between the polls and the votes. Yup. The business really is that shallow...




As to the broader question? That's hard to say. The X-factor can come from anywhere. Each candidate has their own strategy, and there's a lot of things that can happen to affect them. Obviously, some candidates are playing the "get big numbers early and use the media attention that draws to propel me onwards" strategy. Obama did this pretty well. So did Huckabee. I think this *was* Ronmey's strategy and it made sense 8 months ago when they planned it and he was sitting firmly in third place behind McCain and Guiliani. I think it was a mistake though, since in the time between then both of the other two lost ground and he was actually looking at a lead position. Not a good thing when you planned for a third place "need an early bump" strategy.



Another big x-factor are issues. IMO, this is forgotten quite often, to many candidates detriment. It's a bigger deal after the nomination of course, but it's huge. IMO, the single biggest reason Kerry lost in 2004 had nothing to do with the Swiftboat people, nor specifically with Rove's "plan". It really was Kerry himself. And honestly, it's a problem that all Dem candidates face just due to the structure of the party's platform.

The Dem platform is designed to appeal directly to a bunch of different groups. That works wonderfully at winning district seats in the House and even state seats in the Senate, because each candidate can focus their issues on issues that the people of that state/district care the most about. But when it comes to trying to come up with a single national position on a set of issues that will resonate equally in as many states as possible, it's a hard sell.

Republicans tend to have a simpler approach that focuses on a small set of key positions that tend to resonate nationwide. They wont pick up as many voters in one particular spot as a focused issues candidate will, but they also don't have to change their message depending on where they are.

That last bit is critical (and I suppose the media plays into it, but not in a traditional way). What beat Kerry was that he was seen as inconsistent and deceptive. That was largely because he'd give 5 different speeches in 5 different states and say 5 radically different things. Now in the day's before the internet, this may not have been noticed. Each state would focus it's local coverage on the local events and only give a shallow amount of coverage to the national picture. But with the internet, every voter could read or view the speeches candidates were giving anywhere. And not just snippets, but the whole thing. And it became really obvious that Kerry was promising the voters in Georgia things that were completely different then what he was promising the voters in say Ohio.


Bush, meanwhile, had a very simple message. He basically repeated the same 4 or 5 points over and over everywhere he went. So, not as tailored to each location, but also not obviously tailoring to each location. Nationally, that made him appear more believable and trustworthy.


That's obviously my personal opinion on the subject, but I think it's *huge*. The Dems will have to figure out how to present a message that isn't so obviously constructed and tailored to each group of voters. They'll need to find a common message that will resonate with voters. Because today's media is pretty good at spotting and reporting perceived inconsistencies. If they can pull that off, they'll likely win the Whitehouse. If they can't, they'll lose.