Akkam’s Razor

A friend of mine forwarded me an email from a columnist by the name of Jack Tymann, detailing the share of votes Obama and McCain received from a variety of constituencies.  The gist of the numbers was that McCain LOST every demographic EXCEPT white males.

I thought back to Karl Rove’s interpretation of ‘the math’ and why he expected an outcome extremely different than the 2006 mid-term electoral results, famously quipping the following on NPR (via the Raw Deal):

“You may end up with a different math, but you’re entitled to your math,” Rove said. “I’m entitled to ‘the’ math.”

What led him to make the assumptions he made, and why were they wrong?  Rove believed that voters would respond to allegations of Democratic corruption, so that was the campaign he ran.  It also plays a role in the US Attorney Scandal as well as the prosecution and conviction (and subsequent appeal) of Alabama governor Bud Siegelmann.  It is quite possible that Rove was correct, and that the electorate did recognize corruption; Unfortunately, they had come to associate lawbreaking with the majority party and minority party.

I’m going to say that there may be far more simple indicators than black-box explanations of voter behavior. 

Popularity: 4% [?]

Would you believe me if I told  you that white supremacists and American Nazi’s were supporting Obama [Esquire via Political Irony]?

Rocky Suhayda, chairman of the American Nazi Party:

White people are faced with either a negro or a total nutter who happens to have a pale face. Personally I’d prefer the negro. National Socialists are not mindless haters. Here, I see a white man, who is almost dead, who declares he wants to fight endless wars around the globe to make the world safe for Judeo-capitalist exploitation, who supports the invasion of America by illegals–basically a continuation of the last eight years of Emperor Bush. Then, we have a black man, who loves his own kind, belongs to a Black-Nationalist religion, is married to a black women–when usually negroes who have ‘made it’ immediately land a white spouse as a kind of prize — that’s the kind of negro that I can respect.

Popularity: 4% [?]

I’m fairly comfortable stating the following predictions regarding the election. I base this after parsing the aggregate polls at fivethirtyeight as well as electoral-vote.

My logic was that any state where Obama has a lead of 10-points or greater could safely be assigned a Democratic win, with all others going to McCain. The 10-point margin assumes the presence of a “Bradley Effect” of 6-points and being on the high-side of the margin of error (usually 2.5-3.5%).

Under this scenario, the split for the Electoral College votes is 309 Obama, 229 McCain. This represents McCain’s best-case scenario.

The more-likely scenario, with Obama taking New Mexico, Georgia, and Florida, gives an outcome of 309-229, as pictured below (created with a screencap from 270towin):

The absolute worst case scenario, with Obama taking every state in which he has any measurable lead as of current polling, delivers a result of 415-123. If this should occur, be wary of falling Republicans.

The remaining uncertainties are the effect of cell-phones on polling, the specter of the Bradley Effect (and I suppose the Palin Effect), Republican voter-suppression efforts, the effect of early voting, the impact of new registrations, and turnout, particularly among minorities and youth.

Popularity: 6% [?]

see Sarah Palin pictures

It’s not even election day, and already the GOP is taking out the long knives. I’m unsure if McCain picked Palin as a stunt to woo the unicorns PUMAs, as a dog whistle to crazy-baselanders, or as a patsy for his increasingly probably defeat. In any case, the coalition of convenience formerly known as the GOP three legged stool of social conservatives, policy and pundit conservatives, and fiscal conservatives is rapidly coming off the rails. We can only hope that the GOP is too busy dealing with their own insurgents to pay attention to any of the real work getting done in picking up the pieces of eight-years of GOP-rule.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Popularity: 7% [?]

Here’s the headline for the article:

AP presidential poll: Race tightens in final weeks

Followed by the ‘lede’ and following paragraph:

The presidential race tightened after the final debate, with John McCain gaining among whites and people earning less than $50,000, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that shows McCain and Barack Obama essentially running even among likely voters in the election homestretch.

The poll, which found Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent, supports what some Republicans and Democrats privately have said in recent days: that the race narrowed after the third debate as GOP-leaning voters drifted home to their party and McCain’s “Joe the plumber” analogy struck a chord.

This weekend, the entire family went down to the Parkway for the Pulaski Day Parade. Certainly a nice enough way to spend the day, but I’m still unable to escape the election.

A local McCain campaign staffer was handing out “Polish-Americans for McCain” signs to anyone who would be on TV. Maybe 1 out of every 50 took them. It was a brilliant, low cost, high visibility stunt for the local McCain camp to use.

Slate:

[As] a crowd bludgeon in modern political speechmaking, “my friends” can be laid at the feet of one man: William Jennings Bryan. His famed 1896 “Cross of Gold” speech at the Democratic National Convention invoked the phrase a mind-crushing 10 times. Inveighing against “those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below,” Bryan declared, “My friends, the question we are to decide is: Upon which side will the Democratic party fight; upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital or upon the side of the struggling masses?” Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” is historically considered to be among the most viscerally powerful speeches ever made by an American politician, with one New York World journalist reporting the crowd’s reaction as “tumult—hills and valleys of shrieking men and women.” The temptation to bottle that kind of lightning again is alluring.