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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kodiak_bull who wrote (21872)	10/15/2004 2:04:35 PM
From: kodiak_bull	Respond to of 23153

Ha, the law of unintended consequences. By taking the Republican Convention bounce and ridiculing Kerry before the debates (flip-flopper, disloyal), the Republicans set him up with the public with such low expectations that, in the debate, by coming out and exceeding the low expectations (the political equivalent of walking and chewing gum at the same time), Kerry not only looked good but great. Did the Republicans forget the lesson of the Reagan Carter debate, where the Dems caricatured Reagan as a grade B actor and a lightweight? Apparently so. The wiser strategy would have been to have allowed Kerry more of a build-up and let George work with the lower expectations, his natural habitat. This could end up being a mistake which might cost the Reps the election. So, why did they do it? Ignorance certainly played a part, and probably the fear of Kerry building too big a summer lead (he was ahead in July as I recall) might have made them panic. They should have waited and let the debates set up first and then gone with the attack. But would that have left them with enough time? Politics is a difficult game. I did a little pre-election calculation based on those sites I put up in the last note. If you take the Democratic site (nota bene, they have now REMOVED the final projected results page!) electoral-vote.com and accept their numbers for the "strong" and "weak" electors, you get Bush leading Kerry 222 to 198. Now, for the "barely" numbers, go to the futures site and see how they are playing. One thing emerges, that NM and NV seem to be reversed. This is more or less harmless error, since they each have 5 electoral votes. NM will vote for Kerry and NV will vote for Bush. If you decide that the futures site is accurate if a candidate is sporting at least a 60 or better value, then you award FL MO AR VA and NV to Bush (62 votes), which brings him to 284. You then give ME PA NM (30 votes) to Kerry. Now you are left with 3 states supposedly exactly tied, NJ NH IA. Only Iowa seems to be exactly tied, however, so award all these votes to Kerry (26) and the results, in this methodology, would be: Bush 285 Kerry 254 For Bush to lose / Kerry to win, 16 electoral votes have to change hands. Kerry has to keep all of these electors, hold onto Iowa and, most likely, take Florida (27 votes). FL (at a futures value of 63-64 for Bush) is the closest candidate (MO, VA and AR seem out of reach). On the Bush side Pennsylvania is a 65 value for Kerry; it is unlikely to reverse and fall into Bush's lap. No landslide here, a very close election. And it all boils down to Florida, again. Kb