Polls always leave open the question of their methodology, making their results inherently a bit suspect. I like to look at RealClearPolitics.com's polls summary, since they take an average of the polls and post them for both the three-way and two-way scenarios. Here's the link: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/polls.html .

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One can argue that the loaded race of candidates Kerry faced in the primary, allowed him to go unknown. Now that people know him, they don't like him. Edwards would have been a better choice, but sadly the brain trust in the DNC, thought you could run a campaign based on being a war hero.

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Meanwhile, the perfect storm season continues to errode Florida...

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American politics will continue to be a contest of mediocrity until we get rid of the damned Electoral College.*

That's the first step to getting real politic back into politics. Until then, we'll have to settle for the limp sorry excuses for men that we have now.


* The Electoral College is a complicated nasty thing that prevents a third party candidate from becoming a serious condender to our current ruling parties.

With it firmly in place, each state is given a number of delegates to vote on November 11th. This means a candidate wins an entire state, not the individual voters. Thus, if Bush gets the majority vote in California, he gets all of California's electoral votes. That means candidates won't campaign in states they know they can't "win."

Without it, California's votes would go directly to each candidate. If Bush wins 41% of the vote, he gets 41% of the votes rather than zero.

This means a third-party candidate (or fourth-party or even fifth-party) could win a significant number of votes. It also means the candidates like Bush would have to campaign in California (a given for the Democrats to win) or lose his precious percentage of the vote.

Until we get rid of that damned thing, we're all doomed. :(

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American politics will continue to be a contest of mediocrity until we get rid of the damned Electoral College.

And before you could do that, you'd have to deal with way in which the administration of the electoral system, from districting to ballot access, is left directly in the hands of the politicians, rather than being given over to a truly non-partisan (as opposed to bipartisan) entity. Foxes in charge of henhouse and all that.

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This has little, if anything to do with the Electoral College. Two states already (possibly soon to be joined by a third) portion out their elecotral votes on a roughly proportional basis. That's something decided on a state-by-state basis, by the state legislatures or the voters. All fifty could go proportional without doing away with the College.

If California went proportional, a candidate could pick up an electoral vote with 2% of the state's voters.

The truly pernicious effect of the College is that it inflates the voting power of small states by giving each state two extra electoral votes not based on population. Thus Wyoming (pop ~500,000) gets 3 electoral votes (~167,000 people/vote) while California (pop ~34,000,000) gets 44 (~773,000 people/vote). A person in Wyoming has four or five times as much influence over the presidential election as a Californian.

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That's the thing, though. We need to get rid of states voting for candidates.

No more California votes for Bush, Mass votes for Kerry, etc. People vote for the candidates, not the states.

(And, I agree about the "truly pernicious effect.") :)

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True, but they have to live in Wyoming. All in all, I'd call that a clean break. And I wouldn't even want to live in CA again.

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But the Electoral College was specifically designed that way, as a compromise between the Senate (rep by territorial status) and House of Representatives (rep by pop), no?

Personally I've always thought that's an entirely appropriate way for a large continent-spanning nation to set itself up. In what sense is it "democratic" for 7 million people in New York City to be able to dictate laws for entire central states?

If there's a real problem with the Electoral College, it seems to me it's that so many states make it an all-or-nothing deal instead of dividing the electors between all candidates. But then, we have the same problem with the "first past the post" approach in our Parliament, where the Liberals are able to form a majority government (read: dictatorship of five years) with approximately 40% of the vote.

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In what sense is it "democratic" for 7 million people in New York City to be able to dictate laws for entire central states?

What are you talking about? Those central state people get to send their own Representatives and Senators to Congress to make laws. The president is the Chief Executive, not a legislator.

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The electoral college, however, is a mechanism by which the individual voter has a greater say in the outcome of the election. See http://www.avagara.com/e_c/reference/00012001.htm

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interesting, but very flawed, mostly by failing to consider the human factor. Districting an election also increases the number of 'safe elections' which in turn demotivates voter participation. I can't accept that any system that maximises voter apathy as being an effective one.

Essentially, the "ability of an individual voter to swing an election" that is cited here is itself a guise. This "ability of an individual voter" is not evenly apportioned to all voters - it is an average of many different voters. A voter in a close district is more able to swing an election than one in a "safe" district.

And finally, I don't think "ability of an individual voter to swing an election" is in any way a worthy goal. It makes an election process less stable and less likely to represent the will of the electorate. When I vote, I want the outcome to be determined by the majority of my fellow voters; the more power I, or any of my fellows, have to determine the outcome *individually* the more flawed the system is.

In other words, you haven't convinced me of the value of the electoral college :-) But then, I'm a New Zealander, and we have a direct proportional representation system. You crazy Americans are, like, bone-club wielding political primitives compared to us... ;)

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I agree that the electoral college system is not perfect. The distribution of electors among the states is not even, for example.

You say, " When I vote, I want the outcome to be determined by the majority of my fellow voters...." I would suspect that you would like to be among that majority. This is equivalent to the "swing voter" argument of the article.

And rather than encourage voter apathy, the electoral college provides greater incentive for candidates to encourage voter participation. Witness the courting of the Hispanic vote by both major parties in the U.S. The reason they do this is because those voters have a chance to swing states in the candidates favor. Thus, these parties have a reason to include minority issues in their platforms. The result is candidates that try to appeal to a broader base and, thereby provide greater representation to minorities than they would receive under a direct election scheme.

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>> You say, " When I vote, I want the outcome to be determined by the majority of my fellow voters...." I would suspect that you would like to be among that majority. This is equivalent to the "swing voter" argument of the article.

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Nope. If I weren't in the majority (and often I'm not) I'd prefer having less chance to swing the election my way. I want the elected to reflect the mass preference of the electorate, even at the expense of my political convictions. The power of the invidual *should* be minimised in an election, in the sense of it being opposed to the power of the collective. My greatest power as a voter should be in influencing others to vote like me. I still think the "most powerful vote" is an inappropriate and unhelpful goal.

Nevertheless, you're right that the electoral college isn't perfect - and that these imperfections are recognised, at least in part, in the article. It's very interesting stuff and I'll continue to think about it. (Chiefly I want to figure out if it actually means what I think it means, or if I'm reading it wrong!)

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I want the elected to reflect the mass preference of the electorate, even at the expense of my political convictions.

You abandon yourself, then, to the tryanny of the majority. While this may not be an issue for you, imagine if you were a black man in the U.S. South. Without some way to counter the will of the majority, politicians would have no reason to make any concessions to the minority.

The electoral college system ensures that politicians must have an appeal to more than their favored constituency if they want to become President. This leads the Executive branch of the U.S. government to be lead by those who espouse more moderate views.

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I'm thinking about this, btw. Particularly this bit:

"Without some way to counter the will of the majority, politicians would have no reason to make any concessions to the minority."

I'm not sure it occupies the place in this argument that you're giving it. But it'll take some thinking before I can be at all confident of that...

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I don't much trust that article. First, it rambles on for fucking ever before getting to the point.

Second, when ti does get to the point, it repeats old, untrue claims like the one about how the Founders "wanted an electoral college simply because they distrusted the mob." Since electors were originally chosen by the state legislators rather than popular election, anti-populist arguments were irrelevent. In fact, if you go through the minutes of the Constitutional Congress, you'll see that the anti-mob point doesn't come up in the arguments over electing a president, but in a different context.

Third, it falsely claims "A presidential candidate worthy of office, by the same logic, should have broad appeal across the whole nation, and not just play strongly on a single issue to isolated blocs of voters", and that the Electoral College helps insure this. In actual fact, candidate take the states for granted where they have the strongest support, and constantly engage in targetted issue campagining and legislating aimed at voters in swing states. Florida is pretty evenly divided between the two parties, and it has a large population of the elderly, so we hear a lot about prescription medication benefit plans. Pennsylvania is a swing state, so Bush signed steel tariffs designed to appeal to that state's workers. And so on.

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Fourth, even if we accept that voting power is amplified by grouping voters, there's no reason the grouping has to be geographical. Parliamentary systems group voters by interest and political alliance, which is much more flexible. There are about 13 million people living in what was called Virginia at the time of the adoption of the Constitution. Why should they get four additional electoral votes just because they've split up into three states along the way? Especially since the issue over which one of those splits occured (slavery) is long settled?

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As to your first point, the article aims, I think, to educate about the electoral college and to introduce the physicist in addition to making its point.

An electorate chosen by the state legislators actually supports the idea that the Founding Fathers distrusted the mob. Can't have those unwashed fellows electing directly, you know.l

Your third point supports the idea that the electoral college promotes candidates with a broad appeal. Yes, the targetting in individual states may be specific, but the overall result is a candidate that plays to the majority in the states that will give him a majority of electoral votes. Do you think Bush, a strong supporter of business, would do anything to appeal to workers (in swing states or elsewhere) if he was not required to do so in order to get elected? Another good example is the courting by both parties of the Hispanic vote. So, by breaking the electorate into areas where smaller groups can be responsible for swinging larger numbers of electoral votes, the electoral college causes candidates to pay attention to minorities of voters where they would not otherwise have reason to.

I agree that the electoral college system is not perfect. You go on to point out that grouping by geography is, perhaps, not the best method of grouping, for example. My point is simply that any system we look at to replace the electoral college must retain some way of grouping voters in order to prevent the oppression of minority voices.

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Oh, I don't dispute that the Founders distrusted common people. That's why they instituted a representative Republic. But that was already a settled issue by the time discussions of electing a president came around.

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Also the main obstacle to a third (or fourth or fifth) party candidate that the electoral college represents is the fact that if a candidate fails to achieve a majority of electoral votes, the president is chosen by the House of Representatives (where members of other parties are scarce). A serious third party, therefore, would do well by concentrating first on achieving representation in the House. Once they had a significant presence there, they could field a Presidential candidate with the goal of preventing either other party of securing a majority of electoral votes.

The process would be a slow one, of course, but seems to me to be the only sure way to pursue meaningful change.

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who are outside the US. Our ability to see ourselves clearly in the mirror is poor, at best.

One poll issue that I read of last week is that some polls included all registered voters while others only include those who count themselves as "likely to vote". These two samples deliver markedly different results, but few read past the top line summary with the percentages.

I agree with your assessment of Kerry vis a vis how he's run his campaign - he blew the response to Swift Boat and has still failed to articulate a positive vision for what he would do rather than simply a vision for what he wouldn't do.

On that front, he hasn't said he wouldn't have gone into Iraq, only that he would have gone about it differently. Personally, I think that's weak. While it is manifestly clear that the Dubya approach was wrong (current state of affairs in Iraq is a posteriori evidence of this), Kerry's response begs the larger issue of whether or not it was strategically wise or necessary to go there at all.

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On that front, he hasn't said he wouldn't have gone into Iraq, only that he would have gone about it differently.

You're right; I inadvertently clarified his position for him.

Though I think it's fair to say he creates the implication that he wouldn't have gone into Iraq, because he would have waited for more international support, and, with that added time, time diplomacy would have averted the war.

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re-reading your "clarification", I think that is right. Part of the issue with Kerry is he tries to find positions that are so nuanced that everyone can agree with him. The result is rather different though....

Those who only see surface stuff are inclined to see him as opposed to Bush and therefore opposed to the war in Iraq. Those who read deeper see someone one trying to walk the tightrope in a blatant vote-trolling effort. And are unimpressed.

Color me less bored than simply depressed this time around.

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On that front, he hasn't said he wouldn't have gone into Iraq, only that he would have gone about it differently

When I was listening to his interview on NPR last week, I thought he made it fairly clear that he had plans, but a lot of them get scrapped because of something else that Bush does. The only thing Kerry can really stick with is bringing in international help, because that's one of the few things that he can consistently promise that he will attempt to do. On January 20, Kerry is going to be stuck with whatever BushCo does up to January 19, and he can't do anything to stop them from doing stupid things up until that point.

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Perhaps I just don't understand hockey, but your Flyers v. Flyers matchup sounds a lot more interesting to watch than, say, the 1970s Chicago Blackhawks vs. the 2000s Chicago Blackhawks, which is what we got in 1996. Now, there was a long, dull election -- lots of fancy skating and shooting by one team while the other just stood there and occasionally skated into the glass on purpose, until the third period, when they managed to go into a defensive crouch and run out the clock to save some tiny margin of face.

Plus, there's way more blood on the ice this time, which is what I watch hockey for. If you're watching it for unpredictable shifts, wild scoring swings, and last-minute bench changes, maybe you should switch to watching the Italian elections -- or drill down and watch our Senate races, which are pretty compelling this year.

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Though I wouldn't enjoy a steady diet of it, I do occasionally enjoy watching a campaign dominated by one finesse player. Add in the novelty factor of the role reversal, in which the Dems had the A game and the Reps suddenly became the gang that couldn't shoot straight, and I found 96 kinda interesting. You know, as a change-of-pace episode, where an alien virus makes McCoy hyper-rational and Spock all crusty and emotional. I see why a Reps supporter would find 96 long and painful, however.

Senate races are hard to follow because the polling seems less reliable. There's Thune/Daschle. Any others you'd point to as especially interesting?

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Thune/Daschle is fun, if only because Daschle ran that weird "President Bush hugged me" ad and Thune smelled blood.

And apparently it's still possible for a Democrat to win in Oklahoma -- Coburn/Carson seems to have developed a weird kink in it what with a former patient accusing Dr. Coburn of sundry badness, and Coburn cursing in speeches to small-town Baptists. (But Coburn is from the Dems' stronghold district! What to do?)

And speaking of weird kinks, for fans of the "Kirk is dead and Lieutenant Commander Decker has the Space Madness" type episode, we have my own Illinois "race" -- a Stan Mikita vs. Stan Laurel shootout.

Louisiana has two Ds tearing each other to shreds while a R hopes to sneak in without a runoff.

There are dark-horse possibilities in Alaska, Washington, and Wisconsin; Florida is in total turmoil with four hurricanes and the first-ever Cuban-American senatorial candidate, and the heir to the Coors fortune is neck and neck in demographically weird Colorado.

The over/under seems to be no change; I'm betting we add four seats (SC, GA, LA, and any one of the weird or tossup ones) and lose one (IL) for a net gain of three seats.

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