Monday, November 29, 2004
Bush's Victory Makes him Legitimate?
Despite the disproving of the vote fraud theory that my analysis in the previous blog has just demonstrated, there is the question as to whether Bush's victory makes him legitimate. In my opinion, Bush was not legitimately elected in 2000. All the states in 2000 were either irrelevant or were decided definitely in favor of Bush or Gore except Florida. The final count in Florida, Supreme Court approved, favored Bush by 537 votes. However, I feel that many African-Americans were prevented from voting, and that the ballot in Palm Beach County was improper. Correcting for that ballot makes Gore a slim but easy victor in Florida, and especially with Gore getting the popular vote, I think Gore should have been President in 2001 instead of Bush.
Now the 2004 election has occurred. Bush won by 3.5 million votes, and in the Electoral College, Bush just barely squeaked by with 286-252. If Florida or Ohio had gone Kerry, so would have the Presidency. However, the 2000 election was illegitimate; instead of facing Senator Kerry, Bush should have faced President Gore in this election. So if Gore had been President in 2001, would he have won the 2004 election against a repeat run of Bush? The keys seem to suggest no. Gore would have lost the Mandate Key (2002 elections), the Long-Term Economy Key, the Policy Key, the Foreign/Military Failure Key, the Foreign/Military Success Key, and the Incumbent Charisma Key. Many of these keys were those that Bush lost and were events over which the President would have had little control. I believe that Gore would have invaded Afghanistan but not Iraq. If so he would not have overcome Hussein nor would he have gotten stuck into a quagmire. So he would have lost the Foreign/Military Success Key. He would have lost the Failure key because of the 9/11 Attack (unless you are one of these conspiracy kooks who think the 9/11 Attack was set up to give Bush an opportunity to take over the oil lands of the Mideast). So Gore would have lost six keys, and Bush would have been elected.
But does this make Bush legitimate now? It seems to. However, there is some argument that if Gore had been President, the nation would have rallied around him after the 9/11 Attack and so the mid-term elections would have favored Democrats and so he would have had the Mandate key. Also, without Iraq's failures, and with Afghanistan's modest successes, maybe Gore would have taken the Foreign/Military Success key. It's hard to say if either of these would have happened. In any case, although it is a little shaky, I guess Bush has been legitimately elected.
Now the 2004 election has occurred. Bush won by 3.5 million votes, and in the Electoral College, Bush just barely squeaked by with 286-252. If Florida or Ohio had gone Kerry, so would have the Presidency. However, the 2000 election was illegitimate; instead of facing Senator Kerry, Bush should have faced President Gore in this election. So if Gore had been President in 2001, would he have won the 2004 election against a repeat run of Bush? The keys seem to suggest no. Gore would have lost the Mandate Key (2002 elections), the Long-Term Economy Key, the Policy Key, the Foreign/Military Failure Key, the Foreign/Military Success Key, and the Incumbent Charisma Key. Many of these keys were those that Bush lost and were events over which the President would have had little control. I believe that Gore would have invaded Afghanistan but not Iraq. If so he would not have overcome Hussein nor would he have gotten stuck into a quagmire. So he would have lost the Foreign/Military Success Key. He would have lost the Failure key because of the 9/11 Attack (unless you are one of these conspiracy kooks who think the 9/11 Attack was set up to give Bush an opportunity to take over the oil lands of the Mideast). So Gore would have lost six keys, and Bush would have been elected.
But does this make Bush legitimate now? It seems to. However, there is some argument that if Gore had been President, the nation would have rallied around him after the 9/11 Attack and so the mid-term elections would have favored Democrats and so he would have had the Mandate key. Also, without Iraq's failures, and with Afghanistan's modest successes, maybe Gore would have taken the Foreign/Military Success key. It's hard to say if either of these would have happened. In any case, although it is a little shaky, I guess Bush has been legitimately elected.
Vote Fraud: Rampant but Not Enough to Throw the Election
Today I investigated more closely the votes in Florida's counties. I used the data I referred to in yesterday's blog. I included the Bush and Democratic 2004 and 2000 votes, and computed for each county the percent that each of Bush and the Democrat won between each other (that is, I excluded the minor candidates). I also included the attribute of "Machine", whose values were Computer (for the new computerized touch-screen voting) and Op-Scan. I then computed for each county the amount by which Bush and the Democrat gained between 2004 and 2000 (in percent). I ordered the data by descending Bush gain and found that in the upper half, where the Bush gains were greatest, there were only three "Computer"s and the rest were "Op-Scan"s. In the lower half (smallest Bush gains) there were ten "Computer"s and the rest "Op-Scan"s. To me this tells me there was vote fraud. I would have to make a statistical analysis to see the probability of a 10-3 split, but I think it is low. Something put Bush votes into the Op-Scan machines.
But did this fraud throw Florida and hence the election? To check that out, I made a new table. For Bush I took the 2004 vote if the county is a Computer county; for Op-Scan counties, I took Bush's 2000 votes times the total vote (Bush and Democrat) for 2004 divided by the total vote for 2000. Thus I took the 2000 split, adjusted to make it comparable to 2004 figures. I did the same for the Democrat, yielding a vote for Kerry. I then totaled the votes and came up with Bush 3,713,029 votes, and Kerry 3,510,944 votes. This is a victory for Bush by 51 to 49 percent. The margin shrunk, but not enough to make Kerry the winner. I therefore conclude that although there was fraud in this election, it was not enough to throw Florida and the Presidency to Kerry.
Therefore, I think that this whole vote fraud thing about the 2004 election should be ignored. It's a conspiracy theory; it is hopes pinned somehow on these little irregularities that they might upturn the election. Maybe someone can show me how the figures show somehow that Kerry should have won Florida, Ohio, or the election, but right now I think the vote fraud theory has been debunked.
But did this fraud throw Florida and hence the election? To check that out, I made a new table. For Bush I took the 2004 vote if the county is a Computer county; for Op-Scan counties, I took Bush's 2000 votes times the total vote (Bush and Democrat) for 2004 divided by the total vote for 2000. Thus I took the 2000 split, adjusted to make it comparable to 2004 figures. I did the same for the Democrat, yielding a vote for Kerry. I then totaled the votes and came up with Bush 3,713,029 votes, and Kerry 3,510,944 votes. This is a victory for Bush by 51 to 49 percent. The margin shrunk, but not enough to make Kerry the winner. I therefore conclude that although there was fraud in this election, it was not enough to throw Florida and the Presidency to Kerry.
Therefore, I think that this whole vote fraud thing about the 2004 election should be ignored. It's a conspiracy theory; it is hopes pinned somehow on these little irregularities that they might upturn the election. Maybe someone can show me how the figures show somehow that Kerry should have won Florida, Ohio, or the election, but right now I think the vote fraud theory has been debunked.
Sunday, November 28, 2004
No It's the Next One
Today I read an article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch Commentary section from Michael Barone describing George W. Bush as the successor to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt in handling crises, and in particular, wars. To me it seemed that he was implying that Dubya Bush will be a Crisis President. No, Michael. It's the next one.
Take a look at my Periodic Presidents chart. The chart shows that the Idealist Presidents (or Optimist Presidents) were Polk, Wilson, and Reagan. These all made Americans feel good about themselves and the nation. These Optimist Presidents were followed by two other types of Presidents, namely Popular, having a way with people, including Pierce, Harding and Clinton, and Held-Back, or Laconic, not innovating too much, as with Fillmore, Coolidge, and George H. W. Bush; although he won a war, the elder Bush did not do much domestically. The next President after these is a Nero or an "Ostrich" President, as in Buchanan and Hoover, has been one that does not recognize an upcoming crisis in our nation. And I feel that George W. Bush is also in this category. The real crisis in the next few years is oil, not terrorism or cruel dictators. It is the next President after Bush, to be elected in 2008, that will become a Crisis President and will be recognized as one of the best in US History, following the footsteps of Washington, Lincoln, and FDR.
As far as Dubya Bush being a Nero President is concerned, I realize from commentary that he is a different type of Nero than Buchanan and Hoover. Those latter two were passive Neros. They just simply let things happen. They let the nation or the nation's economy fall apart and did nothing about it. Bush is doing things about the upcoming crises. But he is doing the wrong things. He is taking us the wrong way. I call such a President an Active Nero. But he still is a Nero President, and only if he radically changes the way he does his work, to the extent of being practically a New President, can he convert from Nero to Crisis President. I don't think this will happen. I think instead that the next Crisis President will be elected in 2008, and this President will more likely be a Democrat than a Republican, although that is not certain.
Take a look at my Periodic Presidents chart. The chart shows that the Idealist Presidents (or Optimist Presidents) were Polk, Wilson, and Reagan. These all made Americans feel good about themselves and the nation. These Optimist Presidents were followed by two other types of Presidents, namely Popular, having a way with people, including Pierce, Harding and Clinton, and Held-Back, or Laconic, not innovating too much, as with Fillmore, Coolidge, and George H. W. Bush; although he won a war, the elder Bush did not do much domestically. The next President after these is a Nero or an "Ostrich" President, as in Buchanan and Hoover, has been one that does not recognize an upcoming crisis in our nation. And I feel that George W. Bush is also in this category. The real crisis in the next few years is oil, not terrorism or cruel dictators. It is the next President after Bush, to be elected in 2008, that will become a Crisis President and will be recognized as one of the best in US History, following the footsteps of Washington, Lincoln, and FDR.
As far as Dubya Bush being a Nero President is concerned, I realize from commentary that he is a different type of Nero than Buchanan and Hoover. Those latter two were passive Neros. They just simply let things happen. They let the nation or the nation's economy fall apart and did nothing about it. Bush is doing things about the upcoming crises. But he is doing the wrong things. He is taking us the wrong way. I call such a President an Active Nero. But he still is a Nero President, and only if he radically changes the way he does his work, to the extent of being practically a New President, can he convert from Nero to Crisis President. I don't think this will happen. I think instead that the next Crisis President will be elected in 2008, and this President will more likely be a Democrat than a Republican, although that is not certain.
Vote Fraud
I still haven't had time to go into this in any depth, but I have compared returns from 2000 (look for "County by County Presidential Vote Data") and 2004 for a few counties in Florida. I notice that in Florida, many counties with a lot of Democrats in it went heavily for Bush. However, news organizations have said that these counties go for Bush anyway. So I decided to take a look at a few. What I saw amazed me.
Take Dixie County. In 2000, Bush took 2698 votes and Gore 1825. That's OK. Maybe some heavily Democratic counties go for Bush. But now take a look at 2004. Kerry got 1979 votes. That's OK. That's somewhere around 1825. But look at the Bush total. It waas 4433. That is much larger than the 2698 votes in 2000. It turns a mild Bush lead into a whopping landslide. I looked at a few other counties and found similar patterns. I note that the voting machines in Dixie come from the controversial vote machine maker Diebold. To me this opens up the possibility of fraud.
One fraudulent swallow does not make a summer of vote fraud, but this tells me that one should look closer at this data. First of all, are the data correct? For registration of parties, and for the vote count in 2000 and 2004? If so, find out how well the 2000 and 2004 patterns fit. They should fit in a reasonable fashion. If indeed there is a Bush tendency, it should be uniform across the board. If not, maybe a few vote machines started with Bush leads at the beginning of the day.
I think this bears looking into more. Do we indeed have a Ukraine here in this country?
Take Dixie County. In 2000, Bush took 2698 votes and Gore 1825. That's OK. Maybe some heavily Democratic counties go for Bush. But now take a look at 2004. Kerry got 1979 votes. That's OK. That's somewhere around 1825. But look at the Bush total. It waas 4433. That is much larger than the 2698 votes in 2000. It turns a mild Bush lead into a whopping landslide. I looked at a few other counties and found similar patterns. I note that the voting machines in Dixie come from the controversial vote machine maker Diebold. To me this opens up the possibility of fraud.
One fraudulent swallow does not make a summer of vote fraud, but this tells me that one should look closer at this data. First of all, are the data correct? For registration of parties, and for the vote count in 2000 and 2004? If so, find out how well the 2000 and 2004 patterns fit. They should fit in a reasonable fashion. If indeed there is a Bush tendency, it should be uniform across the board. If not, maybe a few vote machines started with Bush leads at the beginning of the day.
I think this bears looking into more. Do we indeed have a Ukraine here in this country?
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Voting this year
A little later I will voice my opinion on these charges of vote fraud that have been spreading around on blogs like this one. My opinion so far is that there probably was none but the chance of it can't be ruled out.
I would like to note what happened on Election Day itself, 2004 November 2. First of all the line was really long, going outside the school where the polling place was. It took me 46 minutes to get through this; in a normal year, it takes only about 5 minutes. I thought it was important for everyone to vote, however, and I thought this was a good sign - good turnout favors Kerry.
Sample ballots were handed out. Of course the Democrat's sample ballots say vote for all the Democrats; the Republican ones say vote for all the Republicans. But they agreed on the two questions and five bond referendums on the Chesterfield, Virginia ballot. Vote "Yes" on all of them. The one irregularity I saw was on the Republican sample ballot, for U.S. House Representative. The Democratic candidate was Jonathan R. Menefee. The Republican ballot said it was "Jonathan R. Menace". Sounds like childish namecalling to me. But I never reported it - did not have the time.
The exit polls seemed to indicate an easy victory for Kerry. There were a few hang-ups, such as the fact that one of these was 59% women. Women tend to vote Democratic. When the results came in, they indicate all the usual obviousnesses, namely Indiana for Bush, Vermont for Kerry and so forth, although the 60-39 margin for Bush in Indiana did concern me a bit. But what startled me later that night was CNN's reporting that all of Florida's central counties were going for Bush, and furthermore, they were going for Bush more than they were in 2000. So I checked all the states out and found the vote going pretty much as in 2000 or more in Bush's favor. When southern Florida came through, it was for Kerry but only by the same amount as for Gore in 2000. That told me that Bush was wining Florida. It finally boiled down to Ohio, the very last pertinent state to be decided. Bush won it by 3 points and also the Presidency. Further, although New York and New Jersey went for Kerry, there were huge Bush gains in these two large states (as well as in California). These gains in huge states caused the fairly large popular plurality for Bush, 3.5 million votes. If it had been slightly more for Kerry, Kerry would have won the Electoral College while Bush still would have taken the popular vote, a result the reverse of 2000.
This is what brings up these voter fraud charges. Why were the exit polls wrong? They are independent of voting machines. Did the machines win it for Bush? I will comment on this later.
I would like to note what happened on Election Day itself, 2004 November 2. First of all the line was really long, going outside the school where the polling place was. It took me 46 minutes to get through this; in a normal year, it takes only about 5 minutes. I thought it was important for everyone to vote, however, and I thought this was a good sign - good turnout favors Kerry.
Sample ballots were handed out. Of course the Democrat's sample ballots say vote for all the Democrats; the Republican ones say vote for all the Republicans. But they agreed on the two questions and five bond referendums on the Chesterfield, Virginia ballot. Vote "Yes" on all of them. The one irregularity I saw was on the Republican sample ballot, for U.S. House Representative. The Democratic candidate was Jonathan R. Menefee. The Republican ballot said it was "Jonathan R. Menace". Sounds like childish namecalling to me. But I never reported it - did not have the time.
The exit polls seemed to indicate an easy victory for Kerry. There were a few hang-ups, such as the fact that one of these was 59% women. Women tend to vote Democratic. When the results came in, they indicate all the usual obviousnesses, namely Indiana for Bush, Vermont for Kerry and so forth, although the 60-39 margin for Bush in Indiana did concern me a bit. But what startled me later that night was CNN's reporting that all of Florida's central counties were going for Bush, and furthermore, they were going for Bush more than they were in 2000. So I checked all the states out and found the vote going pretty much as in 2000 or more in Bush's favor. When southern Florida came through, it was for Kerry but only by the same amount as for Gore in 2000. That told me that Bush was wining Florida. It finally boiled down to Ohio, the very last pertinent state to be decided. Bush won it by 3 points and also the Presidency. Further, although New York and New Jersey went for Kerry, there were huge Bush gains in these two large states (as well as in California). These gains in huge states caused the fairly large popular plurality for Bush, 3.5 million votes. If it had been slightly more for Kerry, Kerry would have won the Electoral College while Bush still would have taken the popular vote, a result the reverse of 2000.
This is what brings up these voter fraud charges. Why were the exit polls wrong? They are independent of voting machines. Did the machines win it for Bush? I will comment on this later.
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Ballot Fraud?
On Tuesday afternoon, 2004 November 2, I looked at some exit polls on the site http://www.electoral-vote.com . They clearly showed a trend towards Kerry, including in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida. I watched that evening as the votes were being tallied. Everything went as predicted (except for unusually high, in my opinion, margins for Bush in Indiana and in the entire country). Then CNN's anchors expressed concern about the returns in Florida. Not only was central Florida going to Bush, but the counties in central and northern Florida were going more for Bush than they were in 2000. That meant that the state was leaning to Bush. The same sorts of things occurred elsewhere, and it ended with Bush taking Ohio by a 3-point margin and the popular vote nationwide by 3 percent. So the exit polls were wrong. They polled too many women or something.
But then came the articles on this Internet. They kept saying ballot fraud all over the place. Votes were being thrown out, machines were erring for Bush and so forth. Sounds like conspiracy theories to me. Except for one thing. Consider this site: http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm . It shows registrations of voters as Republicans and Democrats, and it compares how the voters voted for President versus their party affiliation. Now I know that Democrats vote for Bush. In fact, in some northern Florida counties, most of the residents are Democrats but most vote for Bush and have voted Republican for years. What concerns me about the table in this site is that it says that whether voters vote more for Bush then their party affiliations would indicate is a function not of sex, not of sexual orientation, not of race, not of party affiliation, not of the area of Florida they live in, or in any other sociological or demographic variable, but on what type of machine was used to record the vote. One machine produced far more Bushward electoral votes than the other. This suggests a bias in that machine. Of course we are assuming a lot of things; among them, the authenticity of the data on the http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm website. But if the data is official, then something has to explain this dependence on the type of machine. I think it should be investigated. I don't know if it will affect the outcome, though, but I still think we should look at it and see if there is anything to it.
But then came the articles on this Internet. They kept saying ballot fraud all over the place. Votes were being thrown out, machines were erring for Bush and so forth. Sounds like conspiracy theories to me. Except for one thing. Consider this site: http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm . It shows registrations of voters as Republicans and Democrats, and it compares how the voters voted for President versus their party affiliation. Now I know that Democrats vote for Bush. In fact, in some northern Florida counties, most of the residents are Democrats but most vote for Bush and have voted Republican for years. What concerns me about the table in this site is that it says that whether voters vote more for Bush then their party affiliations would indicate is a function not of sex, not of sexual orientation, not of race, not of party affiliation, not of the area of Florida they live in, or in any other sociological or demographic variable, but on what type of machine was used to record the vote. One machine produced far more Bushward electoral votes than the other. This suggests a bias in that machine. Of course we are assuming a lot of things; among them, the authenticity of the data on the http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm website. But if the data is official, then something has to explain this dependence on the type of machine. I think it should be investigated. I don't know if it will affect the outcome, though, but I still think we should look at it and see if there is anything to it.
Some Reflections on the Election
The election is now over and we wonder what is going to happen now. I have not been able to blog in so long because of an overwhelming avalanche of activities, including watching the election results come in. Bush won the election, like I had predicted months ago, but not according to what I said just before the election.
My predictions were based on Allan Lichtman's Keys to the White House, 13 statements such that the incumbent party wins if and only if five or less of the keys are false. In mid-2004, four of the keys had fallen (were false) and so I thought that Bush would win, even though Kerry was leading at the time. There were two wobbly keys throughout the campaign: Key 5, Short Term Economy, and Key 11, Foreign or Military Success. Late in the summer I still called for Bush's election. I had said that Key 5 had fallen because people don't feel like the economy was good, no matter what the numbers say. Then just before the election, I declared that Key 11 had fallen, because there was nothing good coming out of Iraq: it was a steady drip of more and more US soldiers being killed. This was enough for me to declare for Kerry. However, Allan still stuck to 4 keys, and a little later, I declared the entire key system worthless in this election because these two keys were so fuzzy. Bush won. So therefore, one of these held. I think it was the Short Term Economy key, since the economy started to improve at an accelerating rate in October, bolstered by a trend-bucking fall in oil prices. So the keys worked again.
So what does this mean about the future? According to my Periodic Presidents, which are based somewhat on Strauss and Howe's generations theories, Bush is a Nero president, analogous to Hoover and Buchanan. This means he does not see a crisis coming, and a Crisis President, as Lincoln or FDR, is elected after him. I pointed this out on the Fourth Turning discussion board, and got a reply that unlike Hoover or Buchanan, Bush is doing a lot of things: invading Afghanistan, establishing the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security, invading Iraq, and striving to open up the Alaskan National Wilderness Reserve (ANWR) to oil drilling. But does this mean he is responding to the crisis? To me he doesn't. While Hoover and Buchanan did not do anything, Bush is doing a lot of things wrong. The crisis of the future is not terrorism. It is oil. Both candidates ignored this threat to our future in their campaigns. So Bush is a different type of Nero; perhaps he is a Hamlet instead, stabbing Polonius when the thing to do is to get rid of the corrupt King. Whether this is any worse remains to be seen. He will not be elected in 2008, so according to my pattern, who becomes President in 2009 will be the next Crisis president. I therefore expect the crisis to occur between now and 2008, then; probably in the form of an oil shock.
So who will be elected in 2008? What do the keys say?
1. Mandate. If the crisis comes before 2006, then the key falls otherwise it stands.
2. Challenge to Nomination. There are a lot of Republicans out there, and it is hard to tell now whether this one will stand or not.
3. Incumbency. Falls, as President Bush can't run again.
4. Third Party. Probably stands. Don't know of any now, and none performed well in 2004
5. Short Term Economy. see 6
6. Long Term Economy. Probably both will fall. Rising oil prices probably will bring on a recession. But if not, then they will stand, since these times have the 2000 stock market bust to compare with.
7. Policy. Bush has not produced new policy; apparently Allan Lichtman does not think that the Homeland Security Department is new policy. This one probably will fall.
8. Social Unrest. Probably will stand. It takes a major ruckus to upset this one.
9. Scandal. There are all sorts of scandal sparks flying around but it is hard for them to start a fire. This one probably will stand.
10. Foreign or Military Failure. This probably will fall, as Saddam is captured already. What's left in Iraq is this constant quagmire and continued deterioration of the situation.
11. Foreign or Military Success. This also will fall, since I don't see any magic successes coming up in the near future.
12. Incumbent Charisma. Depends on who's running. McCain and Schwarzenegger have charisma; the other main contenders do not.
13. Challenger Charisma. Depends on who's running. Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have charisma; the others don't.
Keys 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, and 11 will fall, then. This means a Democrat will be elected in 2008, and whoever is elected will be the next Lincoln or FDR in our history.
My predictions were based on Allan Lichtman's Keys to the White House, 13 statements such that the incumbent party wins if and only if five or less of the keys are false. In mid-2004, four of the keys had fallen (were false) and so I thought that Bush would win, even though Kerry was leading at the time. There were two wobbly keys throughout the campaign: Key 5, Short Term Economy, and Key 11, Foreign or Military Success. Late in the summer I still called for Bush's election. I had said that Key 5 had fallen because people don't feel like the economy was good, no matter what the numbers say. Then just before the election, I declared that Key 11 had fallen, because there was nothing good coming out of Iraq: it was a steady drip of more and more US soldiers being killed. This was enough for me to declare for Kerry. However, Allan still stuck to 4 keys, and a little later, I declared the entire key system worthless in this election because these two keys were so fuzzy. Bush won. So therefore, one of these held. I think it was the Short Term Economy key, since the economy started to improve at an accelerating rate in October, bolstered by a trend-bucking fall in oil prices. So the keys worked again.
So what does this mean about the future? According to my Periodic Presidents, which are based somewhat on Strauss and Howe's generations theories, Bush is a Nero president, analogous to Hoover and Buchanan. This means he does not see a crisis coming, and a Crisis President, as Lincoln or FDR, is elected after him. I pointed this out on the Fourth Turning discussion board, and got a reply that unlike Hoover or Buchanan, Bush is doing a lot of things: invading Afghanistan, establishing the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland Security, invading Iraq, and striving to open up the Alaskan National Wilderness Reserve (ANWR) to oil drilling. But does this mean he is responding to the crisis? To me he doesn't. While Hoover and Buchanan did not do anything, Bush is doing a lot of things wrong. The crisis of the future is not terrorism. It is oil. Both candidates ignored this threat to our future in their campaigns. So Bush is a different type of Nero; perhaps he is a Hamlet instead, stabbing Polonius when the thing to do is to get rid of the corrupt King. Whether this is any worse remains to be seen. He will not be elected in 2008, so according to my pattern, who becomes President in 2009 will be the next Crisis president. I therefore expect the crisis to occur between now and 2008, then; probably in the form of an oil shock.
So who will be elected in 2008? What do the keys say?
1. Mandate. If the crisis comes before 2006, then the key falls otherwise it stands.
2. Challenge to Nomination. There are a lot of Republicans out there, and it is hard to tell now whether this one will stand or not.
3. Incumbency. Falls, as President Bush can't run again.
4. Third Party. Probably stands. Don't know of any now, and none performed well in 2004
5. Short Term Economy. see 6
6. Long Term Economy. Probably both will fall. Rising oil prices probably will bring on a recession. But if not, then they will stand, since these times have the 2000 stock market bust to compare with.
7. Policy. Bush has not produced new policy; apparently Allan Lichtman does not think that the Homeland Security Department is new policy. This one probably will fall.
8. Social Unrest. Probably will stand. It takes a major ruckus to upset this one.
9. Scandal. There are all sorts of scandal sparks flying around but it is hard for them to start a fire. This one probably will stand.
10. Foreign or Military Failure. This probably will fall, as Saddam is captured already. What's left in Iraq is this constant quagmire and continued deterioration of the situation.
11. Foreign or Military Success. This also will fall, since I don't see any magic successes coming up in the near future.
12. Incumbent Charisma. Depends on who's running. McCain and Schwarzenegger have charisma; the other main contenders do not.
13. Challenger Charisma. Depends on who's running. Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have charisma; the others don't.
Keys 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, and 11 will fall, then. This means a Democrat will be elected in 2008, and whoever is elected will be the next Lincoln or FDR in our history.
A howler
Recently my development's architectural watchdog agency announced that it was going to take pictures of all the housing in the development. In announcing this, the agency's chairman wanted to ensure the safety of the photographers, so he said, "If you have a dog or any other issue that could pose a safety …" A dog or any other issue? This guy is using a meaningless cliché. Everything's an issue, it seems. Except that "issue" also means "offspring", in which case it is asking if you give birth to dogs. Not very flattering. Watch those clichés. It would have been better to say "a dog or anything else".
Monday, November 01, 2004
Tomorrow is the Day
Well finally after over 2-3, in fact, 4 years of campaigning, we finally cast our ballots and find out who is going to lead the most powerful nation on Earth for the next 4 years. So the question is, who is going to win?
For a long time I thought that President George W. Bush was going to win. This is because of the Keys of the White House theory of Allan Lichtman. The 13 Keys are a set of True and False statements. If 6 or more of the statements are false, the challenging party wins; otherwise the incumbent party wins. For much of the past few years, only four of the keys were false ("had fallen"). So I called for Bush's reelection. However, I believe that two more keys have fallen, namely the Short Term Economy key (Key 5) and the Foreign and Military Success key (Key 11). This makes a total of six keys, and two weeks ago, I called for Bush's defeat.
However, these keys are highly subjective. For example, Key 11 depends on how Bush is doing with foreign policy. He invaded Iraq, and initially succeeded: The Husseins are gone. However, there has been a steady rain of bad news from Iraq, and these have hammered at that success. The Mission is NOT Accomplished. But is there enough failure out of this to cause the key to fall? It seems to me that there is backward stuff going on here: if Bush wins, then Key 11 has stood. If Kerry wins, then Key 11 has fallen. This makes Key 11, and in fact the key system altogether, useless for predicting this election. Of course, the keys have predicted the election again.
So how about other signs? The polls? Just about all the states are settled. Only about 10-12 battleground states remain. I have been watching the polls the past few days, first towards Kerry, then Bush, then Kerry. The last I heard, two of the metapolls had predicted a 269-269 tie. This means a donnybrook and probably a win for Bush.
Ohio and Florida are the two swingingest states. It seems now that to a certain extent, if Kerry wins either one, he wins the election. If Bush gets them both, he wins. I did a spreadsheet analysis with 10 swing states and 1024 combinations. I came up with these results:
This says that indeed, Kerry will win if he wins one of Ohio and Florida and loses if he loses both. However, Florida is more important to win than Ohio, since it has more electoral votes, and if Bush and Kerry split their votes, the prospect of a 269-269 tie ominates strongly.
So that helps. But still we have to wait for results in those two states to come in. And they could be really close; enough to cause the results to be delayed for weeks as in 2000. The difference this year is that we are playing this one with several parts. There could be several Floridas to deal with this time.
How about other indicators? The Green Bay Packers beat the Washington Redskins. That means that Kerry will win, since the incumbent party has always won if and only if the Redskins won their football game just before the election. I put this in the same category as 12-game winning streaks in baseball. Just because a team has won 12 times in a row does not mean chances are good for a 13th win.
A better indicator may the Dow Jones Average. In each year that the Dow declined by half a percentage point or more, the incumbent party has lost. The Dow so far has lost 0.52 %. Therefore, Kerry will win.
Another one is that Kerry will win if he takes Ohio. No Republican Presidential candidate has won without taking Ohio. This is another winning streak. It can end any time.
I am not offering any predictions now. This is about as tied as they can get. I can see what Slate means when they say "Fit to be Tied".
For a long time I thought that President George W. Bush was going to win. This is because of the Keys of the White House theory of Allan Lichtman. The 13 Keys are a set of True and False statements. If 6 or more of the statements are false, the challenging party wins; otherwise the incumbent party wins. For much of the past few years, only four of the keys were false ("had fallen"). So I called for Bush's reelection. However, I believe that two more keys have fallen, namely the Short Term Economy key (Key 5) and the Foreign and Military Success key (Key 11). This makes a total of six keys, and two weeks ago, I called for Bush's defeat.
However, these keys are highly subjective. For example, Key 11 depends on how Bush is doing with foreign policy. He invaded Iraq, and initially succeeded: The Husseins are gone. However, there has been a steady rain of bad news from Iraq, and these have hammered at that success. The Mission is NOT Accomplished. But is there enough failure out of this to cause the key to fall? It seems to me that there is backward stuff going on here: if Bush wins, then Key 11 has stood. If Kerry wins, then Key 11 has fallen. This makes Key 11, and in fact the key system altogether, useless for predicting this election. Of course, the keys have predicted the election again.
So how about other signs? The polls? Just about all the states are settled. Only about 10-12 battleground states remain. I have been watching the polls the past few days, first towards Kerry, then Bush, then Kerry. The last I heard, two of the metapolls had predicted a 269-269 tie. This means a donnybrook and probably a win for Bush.
Ohio and Florida are the two swingingest states. It seems now that to a certain extent, if Kerry wins either one, he wins the election. If Bush gets them both, he wins. I did a spreadsheet analysis with 10 swing states and 1024 combinations. I came up with these results:
| Scenario | Kerry | Bush | Tie |
| Kerry OH and FL | 98.9% | 0.8% | 0.2% |
| Kerry FL Bush OH | 71.9% | 17.9% | 10.2% |
| Bush FL Kerry OH | 51.0% | 41.2% | 7.8% |
| Bush OH and FL | 1.2% | 98.3% | 0.5% |
| Overall | 55.6% | 39.8% | 4.7% |
This says that indeed, Kerry will win if he wins one of Ohio and Florida and loses if he loses both. However, Florida is more important to win than Ohio, since it has more electoral votes, and if Bush and Kerry split their votes, the prospect of a 269-269 tie ominates strongly.
So that helps. But still we have to wait for results in those two states to come in. And they could be really close; enough to cause the results to be delayed for weeks as in 2000. The difference this year is that we are playing this one with several parts. There could be several Floridas to deal with this time.
How about other indicators? The Green Bay Packers beat the Washington Redskins. That means that Kerry will win, since the incumbent party has always won if and only if the Redskins won their football game just before the election. I put this in the same category as 12-game winning streaks in baseball. Just because a team has won 12 times in a row does not mean chances are good for a 13th win.
A better indicator may the Dow Jones Average. In each year that the Dow declined by half a percentage point or more, the incumbent party has lost. The Dow so far has lost 0.52 %. Therefore, Kerry will win.
Another one is that Kerry will win if he takes Ohio. No Republican Presidential candidate has won without taking Ohio. This is another winning streak. It can end any time.
I am not offering any predictions now. This is about as tied as they can get. I can see what Slate means when they say "Fit to be Tied".
