Electoral-Vote.com Returns for 2006 Elections

Klaus writes "In the 2004 Presidential race, the website electoral-vote.com tracked individual state polls, providing a map of the changing political scene. The map, updated daily, was a phenomenal success. The site is back for the 2006 Congressional elections. It is providing descriptions of the top 40 House races, and all 33 Senate races, as well as valuable information for prospective voters." Remember, your vote counts. Make it out there on November 7th.

Comments

How do poll results help (real) voters?

[ScentCone]

Are we talking about people who need to see what other people are saying they'll do so that they know what they should, themselves, do with their vote when the time comes?

*sheep sounds*

Re:Almost.

[Somatic]

Remember, your vote counts.

Sure. Out of the entire country, I get to choose between TWO people, neither of whom represent me. Then this idiot will be in charge for the remainder of his term, and every time he does something I don't like (all the time), I'll be told it's my fault because "it's a democracy".

Then, I'll have to hope the election doesn't get hijacked.

A party system isn't democracy, it's crap. Washington was the only one who had it right: "It serves to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration....agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one....against another..."

Re:Think Happy Thoughts, Ignore Reality

[smittyoneeach]

it's extremely improbable that your one vote is going to matter one way or the other.

No, but generalized apathy helps no one.

What we really need to do is:

• Encourage everyone to view voting as a civic duty
  
• Stigmatize treating Democracy as some kind of spectator sport
  

Hate W? Great, get out there and vote against his party!

Please, let's have sufficient turnout that, irrespective of the outcome, we don't have one side whining on, at great taxpayer expense, about how the other thugged the election.

Not that facts would dissuade anyone from exercising their First Ammendment right to complain, but facts make a great sound buffer.

Success?

[Keebler71]

The map, updated daily, was a phenomenal success.

What exactly does this quote from the summary mean? What does one mean when one says that a election polling site "was a pehnomenal success"? I think that this an excellent site and visiting it many times each day during the 2004 election. In the end, the final prediction turned out wrong (no fault of the site, as it is an aggregate of all the polls which themselves were wrong). But this does raise the following question... what is the point of tracking polls and why do we political junkies savor them so? I'd be curious to see a survey on the the historical accuracy of polling, as it seems to me that Republicans consistently outperform (or alternately Dems underperform) their polled-predicted performance. The reasons for this could range anywhere from Republicans "stealing the vote" or emocrats just not being as motivated as they say there are, or even a biased polling system.

Heck, I'd even suggest that this obsession with tracking polls hurts the country, in the sense that it conditions the population toward and expected outcome, and when that outcome does not come (e.g. 2004) the losing side's rage is amplified and it forments conspiracy theories where there may be none. None of this helps us as a society. So I ask again - what does "success" mean in terms of polling?

There is only one poll that matters - and it occurs at the ballot box.

Re:Success?

[sheldon]

It's interesting, when unaffiliated groups monitor elections in countries which are just finally getting around to voting, they use opinion polls to track whether or not there is fraud going on in the election. That is if the polls say X is going to win 60/40, and he loses 49/51... that flags that something's wrong.

That being said, polls have a margin of error and are pretty worthless when the results are close.

Re:Think Happy Thoughts, Ignore Reality

[smittyoneeach]

By voting for advocates of fiscal conservatism and the free-market who are Republican, I can be "voting against" President Bush just as much as someone who votes for a candidate who believes in an even more gargantuan national government and a far greater socialized economy can be "voting against" President Bush.

"The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than in theory"
Part of the compromise inherent in our representative democracy is that you're guaranteed some bathwater with your baby.
We end up voting not to maximize the baby, but minimzed the current and projected bathwater.
Perhaps the internet can eventually provide better feedback, as http://porkbusters.org/ would seem to indicate.
One hopes.

Re:It's Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Lieberman is running as a member of the Connecticut for Lieberman party. He can call it whatever he wants, but there is only one Democrat in the race and his name is not Joe Lieberman. That's why we have primaries in the first place.

Re:Think Happy Thoughts, Ignore Reality

[Mr. Slippery]

Trying to indirectly slap Bush in the face by voting against someone simply because they are in the same Party is petulant and immature.

For good or for ill - mostly for ill - the rules of the Congress are set up so that the majority party has a great deal of power.

By voting for advocates of fiscal conservatism and the free-market who are Republican, I can be "voting against" President Bush...

Sadly, so long as the current leadership of Republican party remains in place, a vote for any Republican candidate for Congress is a vote for empowering neoconservatives and theocrats, even if the individual candidate is a reasonable human being.

Re:Think Happy Thoughts, Ignore Reality

[MSTCrow5429]

I don't know, to me, anything not Constitutionally mandated is a bigger problem than pork. I think returning the national government to Constitutional legitimacy would mostly take care of the pork issue.

Re:Almost.

[CastrTroy]

I live in Canada, and we have a parlimentary system. It works a lot better, because you don't vote for the guy on top. You vote for a guy who's supposed to be looking out for the people in his riding. Naturally, it doesn't always work out perfectly, but I think in this system the people we we voting for have a much closer connection to the people who voted for them.

Re:that's OK

[Mr. Slippery]

It's easy to undo a law that makes cocksucking a felony, but very hard to undo a law that makes a large segment of the population (individuals, car companies, whatever...) depend on some sort of handout.

Not at all. First, budgets (including "handouts") are renewed, revised, and renegotiated every year (or perhaps in some states every n years?); the criminal code is not. Second, if what you suggest were the case, laws against cocksucking would have been stricken long ago, while economic policies would endure; in fact, anti-cocksucking laws remain on the books in many states, while economic policies come and go.

Third, anti-cocksucking laws mean that people get locked into cages and that police pry into people's personal affairs; economic policies mean that money gets shifted around. If offered a choice between a 10% paycut due to some economic policy, and the possibility of the police staking out my bedroom to arrest my girlfriend and I for unsanctioned sexual activity, I'll take the pay cut, thanks.

Hardly ever is a law simply removed.

Simply removing a law is not a guarantee that liberty is increased. Were the Fifth Amendment to be repealed, for example, that would be "removing a law", and certainly removing that guff about "due process" would streamline the government.

An election mechanism that makes sense

[Turadg]

You do get to choose between more than two people. The current problem is that if you choose anyone other than the top two candidates, you effectively remove a vote from the candidate you prefer of the top two.

The solution is a mechanism in which you can express your preference for the candidates you believe in and still express your preference for the guy who has a chance but isn't your favorite over the one other guy who has a chance who you really can't stand.

This mechanism is called Preferential Voting, Ranked Voting, or Instant-Runoff Voting (IRV). Where we to have had it in the 2000 presidential election, Nader supporters wouldn't have put Bush in office. If your politics are on the other pole, consider that if this were in place in 1992, Perot supporters wouldn't have put Clinton in office.

It's a no-brainer. Get involved.

Re:An election mechanism that makes sense

[Jeremi]

The problem with those is that they're either riggable, or fail the condorcet winner criterion. So either voters can rig the election by putting in things that aren't their real preferences, or the person who would beat every single other candidate one-on-one can loose.

It's true no system is going to be perfect. However, even a system with all of the problems you describe above (which are mainly theoretical and unlikely to be a factor in real life scenarios) would still be preferable to the deeply flawed system we have now.

Re:Almost.

[Jeremi]

The far-left is already wreaking havoc in the Democratic party

How so? As far as I can tell, the thing that's wreaking havoc on the Democratic Party is (a) being completely out of power, and thus almost completely ineffective at governing, and (b) until recently(?), not having figured out a way to respond to the Republican Party's relentless demonization of all things non-Republican.

The only saving grace for the Democrats is that the Republicans' skill at demagoguery is surpassed by their incompetence at running the nation.

Re:Think Happy Thoughts, Ignore Reality

[sheldon]

The Party is not President Bush, and President Bush is not the Party. Vote for or against policies. Trying to indirectly slap Bush in the face by voting against someone simply because they are in the same Party is petulant and immature.

This is rather idealistic and misses reality. In the United States, if a party has a President in office that President is regarded not just the leader of the country but also the political leader of the party. Given the President's power of the Bully pulpit, the influence on policy direction is extreme.

By voting for advocates of fiscal conservatism and the free-market who are Republican, I can be "voting against" President Bush just as much as someone who votes for a candidate who believes in an even more gargantuan national government and a far greater socialized economy can be "voting against" President Bush.

I'm not aware of any Republicans who believe in fiscal conservatism or free-market capitalism.

If you're involved in the process,

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

You can use polling data to allocate your limited resources strategically.

Sometimes this works too well and the winner will have spent just enough effort and money to get fifty percent of the vote plus epsilon, which since epsilon is within the margin of error will create bitter fights over the results.

Re:Wrong

[MarkusQ]

Your biases are showing.

• When I point out that what you said was incorrect you reply "I know that" and then reassert the same false claim in different words.
• The different words include (twice, in under two dozen words) the phrase "the Democrat Party" which Rush Limbaugh endorses as a way of expressing his belief "that the party has nothing to do with democracy".
• You respond to my second point with a second lie (or, to be charitable a bald-faced unsupported claim which turns out to be factually inaccurate), that Leiberman is one of the most liberal Senators in office, even though this has nothing to do with the point you are rebutting or with the basis on which you are rebutting it. But it has been a canard or right-wing talk radio for years, so in it goes.
• You turn around and conflate any disagreement with Lieberman or his positions with "Hatred for Bush", another of Rush's talking points which, when you think about it, makes no sense.
• You conclude by bundling one state's Senate race into the Bush crew's "you're either with us or against us" thought-stopper, which gets dragged out to "explain" everything from global war to local school board elections...but only when looking at the facts and honestly thinking about them would lead you to a different conclusion.

--MarkusQ

Re:Almost.

[cheezedawg]

Here are some (admittedly biased) differences that I can think of. Of course, this is all speculation:

• The Iraq war: I agree that it is unlikely that Al Gore would have invaded Iraq. As a result, Saddam Hussein would still be in power supporting over a dozen terrorist organizations and trying to direct terrorist attacks against the US. He would still be developing illegal WMD in contravention of his UN obligations, likely without any UN inspectors in the country (we found over a dozen illegal weapons programs that the UN did not now about, and the only reason he let the inspectors back into Iraq in late 2002 was because we parked 150,000 troops at his doorstep), he would have been able to finance these weapons through the continuing corruption of the Oil-for-Food program. The citizens of Iraq would have no say in their destiny, and instead they would still be living under a brutal dictatorship, and Saddam would probably have killed another 100,000-200,000 of them (based on his 20 year history of killing almost 2 million people). On the brighter side, we wouldn't have lost almost 3,000 of our own soldiers fighting over there, we would have saved some money, and the country would be more stable than it appears right now.
  
• Libya wouldn't have voluntarily given up its hidden WMD programs.
  
• The seed of democracy wouldn't have spread into Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt leading to the most democratic elections these nations have ever seen.
  
• North Korea would have still been pretending to abide by the NPT and accepting international aid and support while secretly working on nuclear weapons and long range missiles. I can't imagine Al Gore confronting North Korea about this, let alone successfully organizing 5-party talks with North Korea like President Bush did.
  
• Iran might not have felt as much motivation to pursue a nuclear program, but its hard to say.
  
• It is very unlikely that Al Gore would have pushed through tax cuts in the face of the economic slowdown that started Q3 2000 and was exasperated by the Sept 11th terrorist attacks. These tax cuts have been responsible for one of the longest periods of economic expansion in decades. Instead, I imagine Gore would have kept the stifling tax rates of Bill Clintons presidency, trying to funnel money into his Social Security "lock box" and compounding our economic problems.
  
• Based on his stance on the environment, I bet Al Gore would have tried to implement the greenhouse gas targets found in the Kyoto protocol even though the US Senate defeated Kyoto by a vote of 95-0 during Bill Clinton's presidency. This would have caused us to have even higher energy prices and would have further restricted our economy.
  
• Many Europeans would probably like us more now, for whatever that is worth.

Re:Almost.

[fotbr]

You've also got to avoid being sent to die in a pointless foreign war,
Drop the fear-mongering about a draft, we don't have one, and its not coming back anytime soon.

drowning in a gulf coast city,
If you choose to live there, then you deal with the consequences of living below sea level on a coast with a history of hurricanes.

or dying of disease after the EPA lies about air quality,
The EPA can only lie about what was told to them. If they told the truth as it was told them it'd still likely be full of lies that the EPA was told.

among other dangers.
Life has danger. You can't escape risk, so you might as well accept that its there, and continue living life instead of living in fear.