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How Close Were US Presidential Elections?
Mike Sheppard writes "I'm a graduate student in Statistics at Michigan State University and spent some time analyzing past US presidential elections to determine how close they truly were. The mathematical procedures of Linear Programming and 0-1 Integer Programming were used to find the optimal solution to the question: 'What is the smallest number of total votes that need to be switched from one candidate to another, and from which states, to affect the outcome of the election?' Because of the way the popular and electoral votes interact, the outcome of the analysis had some surprising and intriguing results. For example, in 2004, 57,787 votes would have given us President Kerry; and in 2000, 269 votes would have given us President Gore. In all there have been 12 US Presidential elections that were decided by less than a 1% margin; meaning if less than 1% of the voters in certain states had changed their mind to the other candidate the outcome of the election would have been different."
Yeah I'm fairly certain Obama will be the next president, and while everyone seems to love him now, come 2012 they'll be despising him almost as badly as they despise Bush. The current state of the economy and $100 oil is beyond the fixing of any one man, and things are not going to improve.
FDR tried and failed to fix the 1930s recession..... it ultimately took a world war to bring-back full employment. Without the war, FDR would have been voted out of office in 1940, and the recession would have stretched through most of the 1940s.
Obama faces what FDR faced, and Obama's not going to be any more successful. (Unless a war saves him.)
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
>>>>>>"did not have enough ballots according to Florida legal standards (where hanging chads are called null votes).
>Ahh, but that would have ignored "voter intent"....
>
Yes true, but I'm sorry, the law is the law. You don't change it after the fact (although bleeding-hearts like to ignore the law). If the law states hanging chads are "null votes" then that's what you follow. No exceptions.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
When you kill all of the secularists, the only ones left will be the fundamentalists.
Apparently you're not aware of how the US military, especially the Marine Corp, operates. They're job is to kill people and break things. They don't discriminate, they're equal-opportunity. When it comes to anyone, fundamentalists or secularists, taking up arms against them it's "kill 'em all and let Allah sort 'em out"!
You make it sound like Iran in the 50's or something. Its not like we led a coup against a secularist leader who dared to nationalize their nation's oil...
oh wait... well at least Mossadegh was elected, whereas Hussein killed his way to the top of the Ba'ath party.
Yes, and every other country and people throughout history has done bad things to other people and countries, especially if you're looking at it from the losing side. That's human nature. Life, the world, and the people in it generally aren't fair. Countries change allies, make new friends and new enemies. Interests shift. The US and Russia were allies in WW2.
At least the US has tried, for the most part, to be a force for good in the world when it could without damaging it's own interests too badly. Most other countries don't, haven't, don't care what happens to any other peoples/countries, don't even pretend to try to be "good guys", and ruthlessly pursue their own interests and power.
I'd say that most other countries, if given the power that the US has been wielding for the past 60 years or so, would have been on a total blitzkrieg-like war campaign to completely conquer the world. How do you think things in the world would be if the US had collapsed and the USSR had been left as the sole superpower? Or China? Maybe the US isn't all sweetness and light and kumbaya, but trust me...it could be much worse! Could it be better? Sure. But let's try to have a little perspective here, although I know that US-bashing is the cool thing to do, especially here.
Yeah, I know this will get modded to extinction for violating the group-think and group-hate. Someone has to say it though, and I've got the karma.
Cheers!
Strat
Thanks for proving me right! US-haters with mod points...priceless!
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.