Month: October 2005

I was just informed that there is an existing dailykos chat on EFNet.  shall I keep the room and rename it?

Keep in mind, as you listen to the Reports, or if Reporters are able to get Enough Protection to leave the Green Zone, watch the Coverage on Iraqi’s Voting Tomorrow, Saturday 10-15-05.

That the Borders are Closed, Curfews are in Place, All the Armament will be Brought Out, not by Iraqi Military, But Overwelming Foreign Forces, Blockcades will be Set Up All Over, War Planes and Choppers will be Flying the Sky’s All Over Iraq, Every Military Troop Will Be Heavily Armed and Those Troops Will Be Foreigners Not Iraqi!!

When was the Last Time you Observed a Country, large or small, Voting On A Constitution[?], and for Freedom[?] and Democracy[?] with ALL of the above taking place? [it has taken place for Puppet Governments with U.S. Backing]

Here is something interesting I learned today at the voting fraud debate at the University of Pennsylvania between Walter Mitofsky and Prof. Steve Freeman (.pdf). Take a look at these numbers from the 2000 and 2004 elections:

From this data we can see several things. First, there was much higher turnout in 2004. Second, there were many fewer third party voters. And third, Bush improved his numbers more than Kerry improved on Gore’s. So, where did Bush get his votes? To try to figure it out, Prof. Freeman looked at the exit polls. One of the questions on the two-page exit poll asked who the voter voted for in 2000. There were four possibilities: the voter did not vote in 2000, they voted for Bush, they voted for Gore, or they voted for someone else (other). Here are the results, cross-tabbed for the 2004 election:

Looking at these numbers we quickly see that Gore voters stuck with the Democratic Party at 90%, and Bush voters stuck with Bush at 91%. There is no evidence of movement from one party to the other. So, it seems unlikely that Bush picked up his new voters by attracting more Gore voters than Kerry could attract from Bush’s voters.

So, maybe Bush picked up the lion’s share of new voters and that explains his advantage? But, no, Kerry picked up 54% of the new voters.

Well, then, maybe Bush took advantage of the fall-off in third party voting?

No. Kerry got a whopping 71% of third party voters from 2000.

So, where is exactly did Bush makes his gains? The only possibility is that many 2000 Gore voters stayed home in 2004, while very few 2000 Bush voters stayed home.

Yet, it is hard to see how this could account for Bush’s 3,500,000 million differential improvement when Kerry did so well with former third party voters and new voters.

I’ll write more about the conference tomorrow. This is just a warm up.

A version of this originally appeared on the supernatural blog, The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire as Haunted Treehouse.

At the suggestion of someone in the comments, this was going to be my return to writing Got a happy story? but the digital camera got sand in it at the beach.

Within the next three months, Alan Greenspan will retire.  Personally, I don’t put him in the complete “political hack” category, although I will admit he has made some questionable calls for what appear to be purely partisan reasons.  My main complaint with Greenspan is his failure to raise interest rates in the 1990s and 2000’s to prevent asset bubbles from bursting.  But, that is not the reason for this essay.