Tag: US elections

Seems McCain will win Ohio - and election

NB Sun Sep 07, 2008 at 02:38:03 PM GMT Print-friendly version Facebook

Whatever our personal wishes, if we look objectively at the US Presidential Election we can see 3 possible outcomes:

  1. Big win for Obama
  2. Big win for McCain/Palin
  3. A close-run thing.

M/P is now 3 points ahead of O in the polls (according to Zogby) and it's really unlikely that Palin will blow up (anything bad about her is already known in Alaska where she as 80%+ approval ratings) so it's between 2 and 3. For Obama to win he has to take Ohio (or all of New Mexico, Idaho and Colorado).

Now in Ohio McCain was already about 4 points up pre-Palin (according to Rasmussen). Whether you dislike/like Palin correlates strongly with whether you are Liberal/Conservative, Big City/Small Town, and University Graduate/High School.

Guess what: In Ohio  (20 EC votes) there are no cities over 1M, and only 6 over 100k, which between them account for just 19% of the inhabitants, and only 21% of the population over 25 are university graduates. And in Iowa (7 EC) it's the same portion of graduates but only 11% live in cities > 100k.




50 States not 42 Days

malcolmclark Wed Jun 11, 2008 at 06:57:00 PM GMT Print-friendly version Facebook

This is a theme I intend to explore over the coming months. It's about how to expand the electoral map; about how to build up the party base and win down-ticket races; about how to encourage more people to turn out to vote and be convinced that they have a stake in the political system.  Its about all of those things and more. 

In the American context, the 50 State strategy / campaign was first raised by Howard Dean and is now taken on by Obama, who has just promised to open up campaign offices in every single state.  As Kos explains:

"It doesn't mean Obama will win 50 states, obviously. But it does mean a commitment to 1) an expanded presidential battleground, 2) long-term party building, and 3) attention to the down-ballot races that will ultimately decide whether the Obama Agenda will see the light of day. The more seats Obama's Democratic Party can amass in the House and in the Senate, the stronger his influence and the bolder his legislation can be. In other words, this is much bigger than the presidential race, and I'm extremely encouraged that a presidential campaign has decided to take such a broad approach to these coming elections."



Nobel Peace Prize Goes to Al Gore

Wilberforce Fri Oct 12, 2007 at 12:07:56 PM GMT Print-friendly version Facebook

The Nobel Peace prize has just been awarded to Al Gore for his work on Climate Change.

Do you think this will further help the global warming movement, or will it be dismissed by the US right-wing global warming deniers as 'politicisation' of a scientific issue?

I sincerely hope that Al Gore sticks to this global issue and does not use this to enter the Presidential race now. He will have more influence on this now than he could hope to have as President.




US mid-term election discussion thread

Graham Tue Oct 24, 2006 at 05:43:52 PM GMT Print-friendly version Facebook

There doesn't seem to be much in the way of discussion of the US mid-term elections, so I thought I'd start an open discussion thread.