2004 Democratic Primary

[ElectionAtlas]

Lots of posts from me tonight: I just tested IE5 on Win98 (my PCI IDT 400 Winchip! in the 9600 who-hoo! - for those of you who might know what that gibberish means ) and was also able to upload a map from the desktop... no permission changes required.

Also fixed a bug that I introduced this afternoon where the home page had the incorrect link on each username.

Dave

[Canadian observer]

I've just learnt from my cousin(who by the way has got the hell out of BC and is currently in Winnipeg), that David Miller(in effect NDP) has won the Toronto mayoral election.
But he doubts that it'll have a lot of effect on the federal election.

Not at all...  If it would, almost all Ontario's urban seats would be orange (I mean in NDP terms, not in Northern Irish .

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Although 60 years ago NI Orange would have been about accurate...

Just how incompetent was Lastman? I've heard some pretty bad things about him(calling people in Africa "cannibals"!), but I'm not sure what is true and what is myth.

As an aside is their going to be a by-election in Ottawa Centre(which is a safe LPC seat if I remember correctly)?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Paint works; I've been using it to make maps of UK election results for ages now

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Results according to Psephos:

DP    37.4   177
LDP  34.9    237
Kt     14.8      34
CPJ   07.7       9
SDP  05.2       6
Oth.   n/a      17

[Michael Z]

Am I reading this correctly? The LDP got 237 seats with a 34.9% share of the vote whereas the DPJ only 177 with 37.4%?

[NorthernDog]

NorthernDog - are you predicting the exact same map as 2000?  Notice you left the EV totals out.  BTW, what platform (OS, browser) did you use to upload?
Thanks,
Dave

Wow, I screwed it up - a Luddite at heart.
I'll try to fix it in a couple days.  Same as 2000?  That'd be fun.  Another Electoral College/Popular Vote criss-cross.

[Michael Z]

Does anyone have a list of the states where members of the other party and/or independents can vote in either or both parties primaries??

Am I right in assuming that's an unfinished sentence which ends with "...so maybe I, as a Republican, can vote for Dean?"

I mean no disrespect to Howard, he's an awfully nice guy and would make a fantastic President in my opinion, but really I could have said the same about McGovern or Mondale. As uncomfortable as the reality of the situation is, this is the guy most Republicans want to see the Democrats nominate. I like Dean, but, realistically, can I see him beat Bush? No.

Either way, I'm slowly starting to veer towards the concensus that Edwards has the best chance of winning. I previously thought he'd be more suited as a running mate (in a way I still see him at the same stage Al Gore was in during the '88 primaries - "Yes, you look like a future President, but... please, not just yet."), but deep down I feel he's the only one who looks remotely Presidential out of the current selection.

So at the moment I would say Edwards, then maybe Gephardt. At the start I was rooting for Kerry, but frankly his campaign has been hapless beyond belief (Jim Jordan, etc). Honestly, he makes Bob Dole look suave. Fortunes can change of course, but even Bill Bradley looked better at this stage for 2000.

[b_rules]

Only twice in the 20th century have Presidents been elected directly from Congress - Warren G. Harding in 1920 and John F. Kennedy in 1960, both coming from the Senate.  Seven Presidents were governors (including 4 of the last 5), and five vice presidents were elected in their own right after serving as elected vice presidents.

If a Democrat were to beat Bush, based on history, it would be hard to see it be Gephardt or Kucinich.  These statistics don't bode well for Edwards, Kerry, or Lieberman either.  In my mind, if there is a new President, it could very well be another former governor, Howard Dean.

Anybody want to read more into these statistics?  Do Americans today like their Presidents to have executive branch experience or is the recent trend of governors just coincidental?

[Ryan]

At the start I was rooting for Kerry, but frankly his campaign has been hapless beyond belief (Jim Jordan, etc). Honestly, he makes Bob Dole look suave. Fortunes can change of course, but even Bill Bradley looked better at this stage for 2000.

Charlie Cook has done a good piece on how Kerry has screwed up and How Dean has hurt him the most. I had actually thought of the many of the same points and noted them down but I think you would prefer to get Charlie Cooks read on it

Think about Kerry's career. He came back from combat duty in Vietnam,
testified against the war before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
and later became a leader in Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Once
elected to the Senate, Kerry seemed to get himself into virtually every
liberal cause that came through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
If there were three Democrats in the Senate that one might guess would
be opposed to the war in Iraq, Kerry would be one of them. In voting for
Iraq resolution, Kerry voted against everything he had ever represented
and effectively cut himself off from his own base. This has become a
particular problem for Kerry because he and Dean share a constituency --
younger, well-educated, more affluent liberals, especially in New
England. Just as Gephardt's appeal has been strongest among older, more
populist and more unionized -- particularly industrial union -- voters,
and Lieberman's appeal is to older, more conservative and Jewish voters,
Kerry and Dean have been fighting over the same turf.

These Democrats saw many of their party's leaders "abandon them" and
sought out the most visible opponent of the war they could find, and
they had to look hard before they found Dean. Until the war issue came
along, Dean had been using Vermont's civil unions law as a way to show
that he wasn't just another politician who just licked a finger and put
it up in the air. The irony, of course, is that Kerry took what he and
many other Democrats thought was the politically safest course of action
rather than what almost everyone believes his conscience told him to do.
This is certainly not to suggest that every Democrat in Congress who
supported the war was violating their conscience. Does anyone really
believe that Lieberman's position is anything but his own? But for some,
their behavior on the Iraq vote was completely inconsistent from
everything they have ever been and done.

While polls show that a majority of Democrats prefer a candidate that
voted for the war but don't like how President Bush has conducted the
war, these are not the voters that Kerry was going for and that Dean
got. Those Democrats are the ones driven to vote because they are
against the war and of course they are choosing Dean over Kerry and doing it in droves.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well... Carr is not sure how accurate the figures are, but it's the closest the anglophone world is likely to get...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Paul Martin has been elected leader of the Liberal Party of Canada with 94% of the vote.

A source close to Chretien has said that the Prime Minister is to resign in 2 to 4 weeks.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Final prediction LA:

GOP 52.5%
LA 47.5%

[Michael Z]

Hmmm, perhaps something did get lost in the translation. I need to brush up on my Japanese. Konyaro! But to be honest I thought the reason the figures are so muddled are due to some bizarre idiosyncracy within the electoral system. After all, Japanese democracy is notorious for being muddled in bureaucracy and red tape; which, now that I think about it, is probably one of the reasons young people there tend to show such extreme political apathy. That, and the fact that Japan is effectively a one-party state.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It'll depend on which candidate can get a late swing towards them.
Right now it looks like Jindal but because of above reason I'm not prediction either way.

Either way, it'll be a step forward for Lousiana.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think it's more likely to be the result of Japan's WEIRD electoral system than anything else...

Still the Democrats polling 2 million more votes than the LDP(first time that the LDP have been out-polled I think) is a positive.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Final prediction LA:

GOP 52.5%
LA 47.5%

ooops...I meant:

GOP 52.5%
Dem 47.5%

[Michael Z]

I think it's more likely to be the result of Japan's WEIRD electoral system than anything else...

Definitely, although that's more or less what I was implying.

Still the Democrats polling 2 million more votes than the LDP(first time that the LDP have been out-polled I think) is a positive.

And yet the DPJ still lost. Makes you wonder whether the electoral system is geared to benefit the LDP in any specific way, doesn't it?

[DarthKosh]

Prediction

Jindal: 54
Blanco: 46

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's beyond reasonable doubt(ie; it would be enough to get sent down) that the Japanese electoral system is biased in favour of the LDP.
But what can anyone do about it?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Er... is that an exit poll or your prediction?

[DarthKosh]

Er... is that an exit poll or your prediction?

My prediction.

[Kevinstat]

Japan today uses a two-tier system for elections to it's House of Representatives.  300 of its 480 members are chosen by single-member districts while the other 180 are chosen by proportional representation.  It is possible that many voters voted for parties other than the LDP in the proportional vote but voted for the LDP in the single-member-district vote.  In 2000, the LDP received only 28 percent of the proportional vote but received 41 percent of the single-member-district vote, probably enough to win a large majority of those seats since there were several sizable other parties.  Are the percentage results shown above for the proportional part of the vote, the single-member-district part, or some average of the two.  My guess is that they are for the proportional part, and that the LDP won a higher percentage of the nationwide single-member district vote than the Democratic Party, thus making it easier to understand why the LDP won the most seats, since over 60% of the representatives are chosen from single-member districts.  I may be mistaken, however, and if someone knows better please correct me.

Sincerely,

Kevin Lamoreau

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I'm not sure... I think it's the PR totals, but I'm not really sure...

However the DPJ giving the LDP such a scare might(just might) shake the political system up over there.

But I'm a pessimist...

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Wow, I've only had 3 wrong out of the last 50 some odd elections I've predicted and 2 of those 3 misses were in LA.

Never did care much for the state. Too much French influence!