Posts by Andrew Geddis
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Bevan Shortridge,
Politico.com has them at 50.0% each (77.9% reporting)
Bachmann has a lead of 1700, with 81% reporting. But her lead has been slowly growing ... unless there's some precincts out there with lots of Democrat votes in them, she may survive.
Alan West, however, has lost ... .
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread,
Couple of fun House races involving "Tea Party" darlings to keep watching, while we wait for Romney to stop sulking and just concede so that Obama can give his victory speech ... Alan West is behind by a few hundred votes, while Michelle Bachmann is leading by a similarly small margin.
Could be the cherry on the top of a quite pleasant evening (over here).
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I’m really fucking sick of hearing from people who should know better – not least Jon Johansson on One – that Obama won’t have a “real mandate” unless he wins the popular vote.
Obama is going to win the popular vote - handily. The outstanding votes are in California/Oregon/Washington. He'll end up with a "mandate" of over a million votes in the popular vote.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Luke Williamson,
87% reported for Florida and Obama with 0.5% lead.
Can I just go on record here as saying that Obama is going to win Florida (the bulk of the remaining votes are in Miami-Dade, which he's winning by 2-1)? And so Obama is going to be the next President of the USA.
You can all turn off your computers/TVs now. I have spoken.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread,
Elizabeth Warren just called the winner of the Massachusetts senate race.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
Everyone should be voting on the same basis with the same information.
Which is why Canada has a law prohibiting the announcement of any election results until the polls close in British Columbia. Couldn't do it in the USA, but. That pesky 1st Amendment (as interpreted and applied by the Supreme Court, of course).
Plus, you have the Hawaii problem. Do you try and keep a lid on results until it closes its polls?
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Looking at the results map I have noticed that those called for Romney tend to be the larger States whereas those called for Obama are smaller ones.
Purely coincidental. Note that these calls are being made without any votes (or, only a small proportion) of votes being counted at all ... it's being done on exit poll information. It just so happens the states with data showing a certain Romney win are in the South/mid-West (which happen to be large geographically), while those for Obama are in the Northeast (which happen to be small).
Watch what happens when the polls close in California - the biggest state in the nation. It'll immediately get called for Obama.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Miche Campbell,
I’m beginning to wonder what’s going on with that map. They’ve coloured Oklahoma for Romney and given him the Electoral Votes, but they’re at 0% reported.
It's done on exit polling - the data from talking to people who've actually voted (as opposed to asking people how they plan to vote) is so overwhelmingly in favour of a candidate that you can predict the result without even counting a vote.
Note it is illegal to conduct such polls in NZ ... which means we don't know for sure how things will turn out until we see how they turn out.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Russell Brown,
I cannot understand how the “World’s Greatest Democracy” can be so bad at the basic provision of voting.
To understand this, you have to understand how incredibly decentralised the process is. You are dealing with 50 different states, each of which can (by-and-large) make their own rules around how the vote will be held. Then, within those states, the actual mechanics of holding the vote is devolved down to the very local level, so that responsibility for setting up polling places/staffing them/running the process lies with a local election board (often consisting of members of a particular party). This, quite obviously, can create wide discrepancies in the basic competence of those involved.
Why do this? Well, if running an election were centralised under a single agency (like it is here in NZ), someone would get control of that agency and manipulate it to get themselves (or their guys) elected. (This is not a fear, it is treated as being a given.) So, it is thought better to have lots and lots of local folks doing an often incompetent job than one big agency competently screwing the process in someone's favour.
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Hard News: The Big 2012 US Election PAS Thread, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Craig,
Not sure you can say Brown has "bungled" Massachusetts - it's more that he performed well against a poor candidate in the 2010 special election, while this time around the State has returned to form in favouring the Democratic candidate (who happens to be a very strong one). It's worth remembering that prior to Brown's victory, Massachusetts hadn't elected a Republican to the Senate since 1979!
As for other Senate races to watch, Salon has a list of them here: http://www.salon.com/2012/11/06/ten_senate_races_too_close_to_call/