Another update on the presidential horse-race according to InTrade.com...

Republicans: Giuliani is out in front with a 43.2% shot at winning the Republican nomination.  He still seems like a bizarre choice to me, but then, they all do.  Next is Mitt Romney, with a 26% chance, and Fred Thompson at 11%.  McCain is essentially tied with Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul at around 6%.  Everyone else is a nonentity.

Democrats: Good news if you like Hillary: InTrade says she's going to win the nomination, or at least has a 72.8% chance.  Bad news if you like Obama: he's in a very distant second at 12.2%.   (He's gotten some bad press lately, including an incredibly stupid spat over whether he was wrong to skip wearing an American flag pin on his lapel at a public appearance.)  Al Gore is at 5.4% (though he still hasn't declared himself a candidate), John Edwards is at 3.9%, and everyone else might as well withdraw.

General: InTrade says the next president has a 63.6% chance of being a Democrat -- the highest that number has ever been.  (It's done nothing but rise for the past two months, in spite of some reports of progress in Iraq and the Dems' failure to push the children's health care bill through.)  The Republicans have a 35.8% shot, and the rest is third-party.  As far as individuals go, Hillary is very much the favorite at 47.6% -- nearly three times the probability of second-place contender Giuliani, who has a 16.8% chance.  Then comes Romney, then Obama, then Gore, then Thompson, all under 10%.

There has been some ominous noise about America attacking Iran.  (I'm agnostic for now about whether that's a good idea.)  It's hard to tell what will happen to the presidential numbers if an attack comes.  On one hand, Republicans always do better in wartime, because they play the daddy party to the Democrats' mommy party.  On the other hand, most Americans are so sick and tired of war that a new front in the Middle East might just be another strike against the Republicans.  And on the other other hand, Hillary Clinton refuses to commit to getting out of the Middle East, so why should a warsick public vote for her?  What a stupid contest Clinton vs. Giuliani would be from that perspective: do we want to stay in Iraq or stay in Iraq?  Attack Iran or attack Iran?  Expand executive power or expand executive power?  Torture or torture?  Prolong partisan bickering or prolong partisan bickering?

There are at least two large blocs of Americans who would be completely unrepresented in such a contest.  The first is the religious right.  Sam Brownback withdrew from the Republican race about a week ago; he was the last remaining credible devout Baptist in the race.  [Edit 01/16/08: Boy, was I ever wrong about this.]  Personally, I like keeping religious agendas out of government, but they don't even have a candidate to back in the primaries -- isn't there something wrong with that?  The second are limited-government fans.  I don't just mean libertarians; I mean anyone who thinks that checks and balances are pretty cool, that the president's power is finite, and that America should stay out of other countries' business as a general rule.  This group does have a candidate to back -- Ron Paul -- but his campaign is floundering in spite of an unexpectedly massive war chest, perhaps an indication that this group is just not large enough to elect a champion.  Which is a little sad, in my humble opinion.

The first primary -- actually the Iowa caucus -- is slated for January 14.  We'll see what happens.

Forward Slash Rant.

Last edited by satyreyes (01-15-2008 10:58:56 PM)

I hate your American government. I'm sorry, I just really do. I know more about your government than mine-- hell, most of us only knew of Jean Chretien cause he punched a protestor in the the face and then later another guy pied him, and Jean Chretien isn't in office anymore so I have no idea who's steering this thing. But I know the names of your candidates, I know their (rough) chances, I know the reasons behind why the parties' chances are the way they are, and I hate it. At least here my government doesn't bother me too much and certainly doesn't scare me, and that's not something I can say about the American government.

Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest.

Oh yeah, well, he's an asshole.

...'cause he just is, okay??





I got nothin'.

Someone somewhere said that he felt that if Hilary won, it would be like the Bush's and Clinton's were passing around the presedency like a party joint.

I think it was on Bill Maher >.>

I will probably end up voting for Hillary, because although I think Obama clearly kicks ass at every debate I've seen, I really do feel like I want a candidate with more experience.

But Hillary has, allegedly, been playing the politics game, taking money from lobbyists and so forth. Obama said something to this effect during the You Tube debate a few months ago. I just don't like that tinge that I might be tricked into thinking she's not so much into the borderline fascist policies of our government because she's a woman.

But then, I think I'm being naive. If you want to be successful...it's what you have to do. Right?

I'd consider Edwards but he gets so hedgy on the gay issues. Most of my best friends are gay and this guy has a problem with it that he's "working on"?

I really wish Al Gore would run again.

And the Electoral College is antiquated and should be abolished. We have mass media now. I don't remember ever hearing about or voting for this random dude that represents my state. Why isn't this gone? Why aren't the American people DEMANDING this be dismantled?

Last edited by Dross (10-22-2007 05:59:46 PM)

Ok...that's a really interesting well-thought out answer to my angry question.

I've been ed

Though I still believe it's a problem not a solution.

Last edited by Dross (10-22-2007 07:08:16 PM)

Unfortunately Maz, the major problem with the electoral college is the winner-take-all system most states have in place, not Alaska's three votes. And this is more of an issue in the senate than the house, because every state gets two senators, regardless. And while the winner-take-all system is decided at the state level, most state governments have no interest in changing it, so it might need a constitutional amendment to fix it too.

And just to weigh in on Obama v. Clinton, I have three problems with Hilary Clinton: censorship, censorship, and censorship. Call me a radical if you will, but I don't trust concerned parents to decide what I can handle reading, watching or hearing. OK, honestly, I do have two other problems with her, the first being her wishy-washy stance on Iraq, though I know that's just to appeal to more hawkish voters, and the fact that she's a Clinton. It may be that a woman will have to follow her husband into the Oval Office, but this is a bad time for that. Dynastic succession is thoroughly undemocratic. And as for Obama's inexperience...I don't mean to be combative, but I don't quite see what sort of experience he's supposed to have had that he's missed out on...and he will have advisers, after all. Seriously, could someone clear that up for me? I think I'm missing something important here.

On the plus side, Kansas' own Sam Brownback, and early favorite, has dropped out of the race. Thank god.

And Yasha, Satyr totally pwned you on that one.

mazoboom wrote:

But the senate votes are supposed to be there to make sure small states aren't ignored. The House votes are supposed to be proportional, but they are not.  The combination of these two things make the unpopulated states too powerful. The three votes that the rural states get are important when compared to the populated states.  If we were to increase the House size, then those 3-vote states would stay the same, with the populated states getting more. The House is currently acting as a second Senate since it is not proportional as it supposed to be.

Fixing that would have solved the problem of the 2000 election. However, the winner-take-all issue is a different debate, and it's an issue that I think each state should decide for themselves.  Although it would certainly change outcomes if implemented.

EDIT: I fear I may have come off as too combative?  All I know is that the House of Reps is disproportional because the states with 1 Representative have a Rep who is way too powerful.  It should constantly be adjusted so that each one represents the same amount of people.

This is a neat debate!  Let's inject some statistics.

Wyoming has one representative in the 435-member House, or about 0.23%.  The state contains 515,000 of the 303 million people in the U.S., or about 0.17%.  That means that Wyoming does have power in the House disproportionate to its number of residents -- but disproportionate by only six one-hundredths of one percent.

North Dakota also has one representative, for 0.23% of the total.  Its population is 640,000, or about 0.21% of the total.  North Dakota, too, is overrepresented by a tiny fraction.

California is the largest state, with 53 representatives -- 12.2% of the total.  Its population?  33.9 million, or 11.2% of the U.S.  Interesting -- California is overrepresented too, and by substantially more than either Wyoming or North Dakota.

The next largest state (which provides convenient partisan equity) is Texas, with 20.9 million people, or 6.9% of the population.  They have 32 representatives, or 7.4%.  Texas, too, is overrepresented.

Well, if some states are overrepresented, surely other states must be underrepresented.  Which are they?  I'm not sure, but apparently the statement that small states are overrepresented is an exaggeration, and not all large states are underrepresented.  What's going on here?  Has the population distribution changed that much since the 2000 census?

In any case, honestly, I think there are better things to worry about than the House turning into the Senate   On important issues, everything in the House splits along party lines.  With occasional shining exceptions (I'm looking at you, Ron Paul), Republicans vote Republican and Democrats vote Democrat.  Very frequently, this pits representatives against other representatives from their own state.  If big states get more clout in the House -- you know, in addition to the 45% of the vote that the seven largest states already control -- it will just mean that they will have larger delegations to split along party lines.  Worry about the dominance of political parties in America, or about gerrymandering of Congressional districts, not fractionally disproportionate representation in the House.

Mind you, I think that electing a president by popular vote is not a bad idea, and deserves more consideration than it is ever likely to get, ever.  At the very least, dismantling winner-take-all is a good idea, and I don't understand why it doesn't play well in states like Texas and California.  The way things are now, everyone already knows who's going to win those states; why don't those states repeal winner-take-all, incentivizing presidential candidates to pay attention to local issues that currently get ignored?

I was interested in knowing which states were underrepresented, so I crunched the numbers.  Here's what I found, using the most recent population statistics from Wikipedia.

First, when I properly accounted for everything -- the U.S. population statistic includes the residents of DC and Puerto Rico, for example -- the overrepresentation I cited in California disappeared.  Representation in California is almost perfectly proportioned to its population.  The stat for Texas changed too -- see below.

The most overrepresented state is Ohio.  It has 4.14% of the U.S. population, but only 3.84% of the residents.  If you work out how many more or less representatives every state deserves based on its population, Ohio is the only state that ought to lose one full representative.

The most underrepresented state is -- get this -- Texas.  It has 7.87% of the population and 7.36% of the representation.  It ought to gain two full representatives.  (The only other state that ought to gain one full representative is Florida.)  It's interesting to me that removing what seemed like minor statistical irregularities -- using slightly different population figures, excluding DC and Puerto Rico -- brought Texas down from severely overrepresented, as I said in my last post, to severely underrepresented.  A useful exercise in how statistics can be used to lie (though of course that's not what I intended!)

The ten most populous states are:
California -- well represented
Texas -- severely underrepresented
New York -- meaningfully overrepresented
Florida -- severely underrepresented
Illinois -- slightly overrepresented
Pennsylvania -- slightly overrepresented
Ohio -- severely overrepresented
Michigan -- slightly overrepresented
Georgia -- meaningfully underrepresented
North Carolina -- well represented

As you can see, of the ten most populous states, three are underrepresented and five are overrepresented -- not much of an argument for the "big states are underrepresented" hypothesis.  I think the over- and underrepresentation is more likely a result of people moving out of hellholes like Ohio and Michigan over the seven years since the last census into paradises like Florida and... um... Texas?

How about the least populous states?  There are seven states whose populations are so small that they have only one representative: Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Delaware, and Montana.  Of these, only Wyoming is overrepresented in any meaningful sense of the word.  (It has one representative; it ought to have 0.75 representatives.)  The next three on the list are overrepresented by a tiny fraction.  South Dakota is underrepresented by a tiny fraction.  Delaware is slightly underrepresented -- it ought to have 1.25 reps instead of 1 -- and Montana is even more underrepresented; it ought to have 1.38.  Again, small does not mean overrepresented.

Last edited by satyreyes (10-22-2007 10:40:17 PM)

Nice work there Satyr, and you point out something that bothers me even more...D.C.! No representation at all in congress! Oh, they do have a non-voting representative in the House, but she's just that. And she's pretty awesome too, but she still can't vote. That means that inhabitants of our nation's capital technically have no say in government. Puerto Rico is a slightly different issue, they're on the fence as to whether they want to be part of America at all or not. But I feel kinda bad for the D.C. folks.

satyreyes wrote:

Florida -- severely underrepresented

I disagree, Florida can only be overrepresented. For further information on why, see anything ever having to do with Florida and the government, ever.

Looks like, overall, there's some favortism going on as to who is overrepresented. There's a trend. I want to say the northeast, as though they're giving props to the original homies, but...Ohio? Michigan? Are these overrepresented states especially productive ones economically or something?

I agree with mazoboom.  The apparent over- and underrepresentation is a result of population movement since 2000.  Florida has gained a lot of people in the last seven years, but our number of representatives hasn't changed; that results in our being underrepresented, by the strict metric of whether our percent share in the House matches our percent share of the population.  Gio, you are of course right that Florida is overrepresented in a hundred other ways.  Comes from being the largest battleground state. 

EDITED TO ADD: Another way Florida is underrepresented will be at the nominating conventions in 2008.  The Florida legislature is a bunch of dicks who wouldn't follow party rules about when we're allowed to hold our primaries, so we are being denied all our delegates to the Democratic convention and half our delegates to the Republican convention (if memory serves).  That means that even if I were a registered Republican or Democrat, I'd have little say in who gets nominated.

satyreyes wrote:

EDITED TO ADD: Another way Florida is underrepresented will be at the nominating conventions in 2008.  The Florida legislature is a bunch of dicks who wouldn't follow party rules about when we're allowed to hold our primaries, so we are being denied all our delegates to the Democratic convention and half our delegates to the Republican convention (if memory serves).  That means that even if I were a registered Republican or Democrat, I'd have little say in who gets nominated.

Oh jesus, you mean they're actually keeping to that? Way to speak for the people. Not that it would matter, really, when was the last time individual Floridian votes mattered? Hell, my 2004 vote probably got swallowed by the magic disappeary voting machines that were quite popular in my area.