filed under Democracy | Interweb | Only In RI | Politics
My favorite political blog does a rundown of RI
12:56PM ON
09/29/2008
BY
Ari Savitzky
Ooh this is neat! My favorite political blog, fivethirtyeight.com, so named because of the number of electoral votes, is doing a running breakdown of all of the states, and is graciously including states like Rhode Island where Obama literally cannot lose unless he performs a partial-birth abortion on national TV. Which he couldn’t do anyway because there’s no such thing.
Fivethirtyeight is all about the numbers; the basic feature of the site is a sophisticated electoral college simulator which takes state and national polling data, along with demographic and historical trends, postulates state outcomes based on the data, and then runs itself 10,000 times a day to come out with an overall win percentage. Either that’s really cool, or I am shockingly lame.
Either way, the table reproduced here has the basic demographic data, which is pretty interesting. You may have known that we’re the most catholic state. But did you know we’re the least white evangelical state? Also, 2nd highest unemployment rate? Ouch.
In the site’s RI roundup, we learn about the potential advantages as well as the hulking, soul-engulfing hurdles faced by McCain in this unwinnable state. Also, some of the commenters have clearly been here.
First, the long and short of it from Sean of FiveThirtyEight:
What McCain Has Going For Him
Rhode Island’s Democrats didn’t embrace Barack Obama in the primaries, handing him a big loss to Hillary Clinton on March 4. As mentioned at the outset, McCain will likely benefit from undecided voters – by percentage – as much as any other state. In addition, it’s a fairly old state and below average education state. That’s about it as far as the demographic data goes. This is a rough state for any Republican these days.
What Obama Has Going For HimAs much of a dearth of optimism as there is in the statistical data for John McCain, there’s almost no end to the ways Rhode Island favors Democrats. It’s the 3d most liberal state on the Likert scale, the lowest percentage of male voters, the lowest percentage of white evangelicals, the highest percentage of Catholics, the third lowest percentage of “American” ancestry, the 4th lowest percentage of gun ownership, most people live in urban areas, and it’s in the bottom ten of military veterans. The unemployment rate is very high here, an economic factor that works against the incumbent party. Obama will win Rhode Island by double digits.
And now, much more entertaining, the battle between two commenters, both claiming to be RIers, over whether we are a bunch of corrupt, racist, lap-dance and donut-loving morons, OR a haven of enlightened, socially liberal patriots in the mold of our freedom-spreading founder Roger Williams.
Rhode Island is a tough state for someone like Obama. Its electorate is old, Catholic, lower-class, unbelievably stupid, and unrepentantly racist.
The way to get attention in Rhode Island is to promise an obscene amount of graft. If Obama is strapped for cash, he might get by if he mails everyone a coupon for a box of donuts and a lap dance.
No suh!
Abacab - you’re a moron. I’m a Rhode Islander, and to say that the electorate is “unbelievably stupid” is just insane. Rhode Islanders, while I see, are not the highest in education levels, do not allow that to creep into their levels of common sense (like we see in the south). RI’ers are driven to vote by socially liberal values, which makes sense since our founder Roger Williams founded the land based upon religious freedoms. We choose presidents to best represent EVERYONE, presidents who will make the country thrive! That’s why Rhode Islanders in 2008 are going to choose Barack Obama in a landslide!!
The truth is probably somewhere in between, no?
September 29th, 2008 at 1:45PM
matthew lawrence Says:
if i ever run for everything i think i’ll run with a free donut and lapdance on your birthday platform. bonus donuts and lap dances will be given to veterans, the infirm, schoolteachers, sports heroes, and Karen Adams.
but the lowest percentage of voting males in the country? jeez!
[Reply]
September 30th, 2008 at 8:43PM
susan Says:
The real issue is not how well Obama or McCain might do state-by-state, but that we shouldn’t have battleground states and spectator states in the first place. Every vote in every state should be politically relevant in a presidential election. And, every vote should be equal. We should have a national popular vote for President in which the White House goes to the candidate who gets the most popular votes in all 50 states.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC). The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral vote — that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
Because of state-by-state enacted rules for winner-take-all awarding of their electoral votes, recent candidates with limited funds have concentrated their attention on a handful of closely divided “battleground” states. In 2004 two-thirds of the visits and money were focused in just six states; 88% on 9 states, and 99% of the money went to just 16 states. Two-thirds of the states and people have been merely spectators to the presidential election.
Another shortcoming of the current system is that a candidate can win the Presidency without winning the most popular votes nationwide.
The National Popular Vote bill has passed 21 state legislative chambers, including one house in Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, North Carolina, and Washington, and both houses in California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland. These four states possess 50 electoral votes– 19% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
See http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
[Reply]
September 30th, 2008 at 8:52PM
Ari Savitzky Says:
you’ll get no argument from me susan, im still hoping that the assembly will see fit to over-ride the governor’s foolish veto of the compact here in RI.
[Reply]
September 30th, 2008 at 10:12PM
joe bernstein Says:
Yeah-a bunch of arrogant urbanites trying to disenfranchise “flyover country”-the differential in the House with representation based on population already serves the function of giving the numeric majority a certain edge in power-the Senate with equal representation for each state,adds balance-a national popular vote is a bad idea-the USA is a representative republic based on democratic principles,not a pure democracy.
If Proposition 8 passes in California,how will proponents of popular majority rule on this blog feel about that?
I’m not taking a position on it-just throwing out the question.
I personally like voter initiative,particularly with the abominable legislature we have here.
[Reply]
October 1st, 2008 at 12:39PM
abacab Says:
Matthew Lawrence -
“but the lowest percentage of voting males in the country? jeez!”
Possible explanation:
“I never voted or paid taxes. My birth certificate and arrest sheet were all that showed I was alive.”
– Henry Hill, Goodfellas
[Reply]
October 1st, 2008 at 1:01PM
Marc Says:
Joe, passing prop 8 in California would only affect California. Nobody is saying that -any- of our legislation should be handled by majority rule, only that the selection of the president should.
I’m a federalist through-and-through and even -I- think that given today’s circumstances (how much loot the feds take and redistribute vs. how much the state does), selecting our highest executive ought to be based on popular vote.
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