Opinion of West Wing's Electoral Maps

[Phony Moderate]

I watched The West Wing election 2006 two-parter the other day, actually (not for the first time). Laughed fairly hard when South Carolina was called for Santos and even harder when Vermont was called for Vinick. The entire election results in fact provided great comic relief to make up for the tragic death of Leo McGarry/John Spencer.

[Phony Moderate]

Actually, there are quite a few errors in the two 2006 election night episodes:

- No Vinick concession speech or even a reference to one.
- Santos' election night rally hall was said to contain "two thousand people"; there are clearly no more than a hundred or so.
- Vinick's staff being very upset at losing Texas, when earlier it was implied that they were expecting it, plus at the time of its call Texas was irrelevant to them - they needed California and one other.
- Just before Maine was called, the Jeanne whatshername character stated that the gap between the candidates was 0.1% and that the networks shouldn't call it and that the staff should call the networks and tell them not to (does any campaign actually do such a thing?). Then 30 seconds later Maine was called for Vinick and he was shown to be ahead by a 52-48 margin.
- North Dakota was said to be leaning Santos in the exit polls, but it was called the moment the polls closed there.
- Oregon was won by 2,000 votes by Santos ("anything less than 3,500 is an automatic recount" said the DNC Chair). No mention of any recount requests, and Vinick's campaign team instead focused on Nevada, which he lost by 30,000 votes - quite a decent margin for a state with a relatively small population.
- It was mentioned on about four or five seperate occasions that MN, WI and OH had been called.
- Very little talk about Florida, despite being one of the five "big states" of the campaign,

I'm sure there are others. A good show overall...but...yeah, flaws.