Reality-BasedTM Political Numbers from Nicholas Beaudrot
Electoral Math
Reality-BasedTM Political Numbers from Nicholas Beaudrot
The end of Old Glory | Home | Weekly News Roundup, February 29th-March 5th
I don't understand.
First, who are the 6% of registered voters who want to vote for Ralph Nader? Did they not learn their lesson last time? Do they really think that there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican agendas? I mean Nader polls at 4% in Florida. Have these people lost their freaking mind?!?
Second, why do the economists keep getting it wrong? Experts forecast a payroll job growth of 125,000 jobs; instead they got 21,000. This has happened again and again for the past few months. I can't believe that investors are just stupid, so what numbers are they looking at to make these projections, and what numbers should they be looking at instead?
John Kerry has released the schedule for his first round of fundraising. This is probably the first hint as to his general election plan, and it looks like he has a decent understanding of how this game works. He has 16 visits planned (I'm counting the four California stops as two visits, and the Providence/Boston stop as one visit). So where is he going? The electoral college value of each swing state is included. And as always, my trusty red-state, blue-state map is of great importance.
Here are the missed swing states, from bluest to reddest:
There are three big elements to this fundraising swing, as far as I can tell.
The last trend is the most disturbing. The biggest exceptions are Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, two smaller, relatively conservative cities. But as I mentioned before, Kerry seems to equate "going to Atlanta" with "going to Georgia". At a time when the Southern Heritage folks are writing letters to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, complaining about the "city-state" of Atlanta and its tyranny over the state's constituents (these constituents, by the way, voted to reject the Confederate battle flag), Kerry needs to be spending time outside the city, proving that he's not just there to win over the city-folk, but that he can be the man for the country-folk too. To put it another way, In a battle between the City and the Country, the Country wins. In any state where the non-urban population outnumbers the urban population, or where the city residents might be somewhat conservative, the Republicans can win by appealing to conservative social values, not raising taxes, and railing against the slick-talking city folk, especially with a folksy-acting incumbent President going up against the intelligent and well-spoken but frequently wordy Kerry. Since the flyover states and much of the Deep South are more or less impregnable, this spells disaster for the Democrats. If Kerry does not understand this, he may be well and truly doomed in the national election. But we shall see.
Other than the thought of starting the campaign from San Francisco -- think of the fun the right will have with "Mayor Newsom kicks of Kerry's fundraising tour" -- this is what I'd call a good but not great plan. I would have added a stop in Las Vegas, Phoenix, or Albuquerque; replaced the stop in Miami with a stop in Jacksonville, Tampa, or Orlando; and added a secondary stop to a smaller city, like Youngstown, Dayton, Louisville, Norfolk. Columbia, Harrisburg, Flint, Ann Arbor, or something like that.
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updated by Nicholas Beaudrot on 05:28 16 February 2005
