Nbadan
11-01-2004, 02:16 AM
MY key prediction in an article published in February this year was this: "On Monday, December 20, 2004, the Electoral College will meet and 327 votes will be cast for John Kerry and 211 for George W. Bush."
The article went on to predict that the 327 votes for Kerry would be made up as follows:
"First, he will win 260 votes by carrying every state carried by Al Gore in 2000. Second, he will win 27 votes in Florida, four in New Hampshire, 11 in Missouri, 20 in Ohio and five in Nevada."
Subject to a quite minor revision, that remains my forecast.
I am referring to a diagram known as the Mackerras US Pendulum which accompanied that article and appears again today.
In my pendulum I show Bush with a notional vote of 278 in 2000 and Gore with a notional vote of 260. That adds up to 538. But were not the votes in fact 271 and 267, respectively?
Yes, they were. However, population growth among the states is not uniform.
The number of electors per state sometimes changes from one election to the next.
If you crosscheck the pendulum and the table you can see that, by and large, the states won by Bush have been growing more rapidly in population than those won by Gore. That reflects itself in the numbers in the table.
The total in the table remains at 538, a number which has applied since 1964. Those states growing faster in population than the nation as a whole are likely to gain (for example, Florida from 25 to 27) while those growing slower are likely to lose (for example, Pennsylvania from 23 to 21).
My American pendulum looks very like my Australian one, however, there are some differences.
The main difference is that my Australian pendulum is based on single-member electorates. In such a case it is worthwhile to show the number of seats.
In the US, by contrast, there is no particular point in giving the number of states. What is important is the cumulation of votes in the Electoral College.
For what it is worth, however, Bush in 2000 carried 30 states while Gore carried 20 states plus the District of Columbia.
The most lop-sided vote in the US is always recorded in the District of Columbia which is heavily black and, therefore, heavily Democratic. DC has three electors.
In 2000 the most strongly Democratic state was Rhode Island which had (and has) four electors. Three plus four makes seven.
In 2000 the second most strongly Democratic state was Massachusetts which had (and has) 12 electors. Add seven and 12 together and the cumulative number is 19.
I now make the assumption that Kerry carries all the Gore states and that brings me to Florida and New Hampshire.
In both these states Gore's hopes were wrecked by Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, who polled 97,488 votes in Florida and 22,188 in New Hampshire.
The scandal of Florida in 2000 is so well known I prefer to skip over it and give some details on New Hampshire.
In 2000 the New Hampshire vote was 273,559 for Bush, 266,348 for Gore, 22,188 for Nader and 2615 for arch-conservative Pat Buchanan. In a preferential vote the Nader preferences would heavily have favoured Gore, those from Buchanan favouring Bush – and Gore would have won.
However, under the US system the Nader and Buchanan votes are wasted so my calculation is based on adding 273,559 and 266,348 together, which gives a total of 539,907.
The Bush figure is 50.67 per cent of that two-candidate total of 539,907 and the Gore figure is 49.33 per cent. So it needs a swing of only 0.7 per cent for Bush to lose New Hampshire on November 2.
Going up the Bush side of the pendulum it will be noted that 11 states are shown as "South". They are the states of the Confederacy of 1861-65.
Bush won in 2000 by carrying every state in the South. As can be seen, my prediction is that Bush will again carry every state in the South except Florida. When Florida gave all its 25 votes to Bush in 2000 and will, on my prediction, give all its 27 votes to Kerry in 2004 the electoral system is not merely a landslide danger zone. It is effectively a landslide certainty.
During the 19th century, there was only one close election and that was in 1876 when Republican Rutherford Hayes secured 185 votes to 184 for Democrat Samuel Tilden.
With only one close US presidential election per century it is a very safe prediction that it will not be close this year. To be precise, historically there is one chance in 25 that this election will be close.
My "Landslide to Kerry" prediction was met with jeers at the time. And readers may well ask once again how I can predict landslides when almost all US experts are saying the race is too close to call.
My answer to that is to assert (based on 50 years of experience) that nine times out of 10 supposedly "too close to call" elections turn out to be landslides on the night.
The most recent example of a typical case was Australia's election on October 9. Do you remember those experts on the ABC's Insiders program. Did not most say our election was too close to call?
The famous English psephologist David Butler has an aphorism for this phenomenon. He says: "Electoral history is littered with unexpected landslides."
I noted above a quite minor revision to my February prediction. Let me now admit that I would not be surprised if Bush carries Missouri.
Suppose that Bush does win Missouri but that all my other predictions are correct. The election would then result in 316 votes for Kerry and 222 for Bush. I would still call that a landslide.
As an historical note, this means I am predicting a result that last occurred in 1956, namely the nation voting for the winner and Missouri voting for the loser, except with the parties reversed.
In 1956 Missouri voted for the Democrat loser Adlai Stevenson while the nation voted for the Republican winner Dwight Eisenhower.
Finally, let it be noticed that results like my predictions are quite possible even if the popular vote is close to 50-50 between the two men. That would not surprise me.
I feel sure, however, that the result will be quite clear-cut in the Electoral College. And that, after all, is what really matters
--
The Australian (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11247939%5E2703,00.html)
I also currently have Kerry winning the EC by a 4-8 point margin. Just as I have predicted.
The article went on to predict that the 327 votes for Kerry would be made up as follows:
"First, he will win 260 votes by carrying every state carried by Al Gore in 2000. Second, he will win 27 votes in Florida, four in New Hampshire, 11 in Missouri, 20 in Ohio and five in Nevada."
Subject to a quite minor revision, that remains my forecast.
I am referring to a diagram known as the Mackerras US Pendulum which accompanied that article and appears again today.
In my pendulum I show Bush with a notional vote of 278 in 2000 and Gore with a notional vote of 260. That adds up to 538. But were not the votes in fact 271 and 267, respectively?
Yes, they were. However, population growth among the states is not uniform.
The number of electors per state sometimes changes from one election to the next.
If you crosscheck the pendulum and the table you can see that, by and large, the states won by Bush have been growing more rapidly in population than those won by Gore. That reflects itself in the numbers in the table.
The total in the table remains at 538, a number which has applied since 1964. Those states growing faster in population than the nation as a whole are likely to gain (for example, Florida from 25 to 27) while those growing slower are likely to lose (for example, Pennsylvania from 23 to 21).
My American pendulum looks very like my Australian one, however, there are some differences.
The main difference is that my Australian pendulum is based on single-member electorates. In such a case it is worthwhile to show the number of seats.
In the US, by contrast, there is no particular point in giving the number of states. What is important is the cumulation of votes in the Electoral College.
For what it is worth, however, Bush in 2000 carried 30 states while Gore carried 20 states plus the District of Columbia.
The most lop-sided vote in the US is always recorded in the District of Columbia which is heavily black and, therefore, heavily Democratic. DC has three electors.
In 2000 the most strongly Democratic state was Rhode Island which had (and has) four electors. Three plus four makes seven.
In 2000 the second most strongly Democratic state was Massachusetts which had (and has) 12 electors. Add seven and 12 together and the cumulative number is 19.
I now make the assumption that Kerry carries all the Gore states and that brings me to Florida and New Hampshire.
In both these states Gore's hopes were wrecked by Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, who polled 97,488 votes in Florida and 22,188 in New Hampshire.
The scandal of Florida in 2000 is so well known I prefer to skip over it and give some details on New Hampshire.
In 2000 the New Hampshire vote was 273,559 for Bush, 266,348 for Gore, 22,188 for Nader and 2615 for arch-conservative Pat Buchanan. In a preferential vote the Nader preferences would heavily have favoured Gore, those from Buchanan favouring Bush – and Gore would have won.
However, under the US system the Nader and Buchanan votes are wasted so my calculation is based on adding 273,559 and 266,348 together, which gives a total of 539,907.
The Bush figure is 50.67 per cent of that two-candidate total of 539,907 and the Gore figure is 49.33 per cent. So it needs a swing of only 0.7 per cent for Bush to lose New Hampshire on November 2.
Going up the Bush side of the pendulum it will be noted that 11 states are shown as "South". They are the states of the Confederacy of 1861-65.
Bush won in 2000 by carrying every state in the South. As can be seen, my prediction is that Bush will again carry every state in the South except Florida. When Florida gave all its 25 votes to Bush in 2000 and will, on my prediction, give all its 27 votes to Kerry in 2004 the electoral system is not merely a landslide danger zone. It is effectively a landslide certainty.
During the 19th century, there was only one close election and that was in 1876 when Republican Rutherford Hayes secured 185 votes to 184 for Democrat Samuel Tilden.
With only one close US presidential election per century it is a very safe prediction that it will not be close this year. To be precise, historically there is one chance in 25 that this election will be close.
My "Landslide to Kerry" prediction was met with jeers at the time. And readers may well ask once again how I can predict landslides when almost all US experts are saying the race is too close to call.
My answer to that is to assert (based on 50 years of experience) that nine times out of 10 supposedly "too close to call" elections turn out to be landslides on the night.
The most recent example of a typical case was Australia's election on October 9. Do you remember those experts on the ABC's Insiders program. Did not most say our election was too close to call?
The famous English psephologist David Butler has an aphorism for this phenomenon. He says: "Electoral history is littered with unexpected landslides."
I noted above a quite minor revision to my February prediction. Let me now admit that I would not be surprised if Bush carries Missouri.
Suppose that Bush does win Missouri but that all my other predictions are correct. The election would then result in 316 votes for Kerry and 222 for Bush. I would still call that a landslide.
As an historical note, this means I am predicting a result that last occurred in 1956, namely the nation voting for the winner and Missouri voting for the loser, except with the parties reversed.
In 1956 Missouri voted for the Democrat loser Adlai Stevenson while the nation voted for the Republican winner Dwight Eisenhower.
Finally, let it be noticed that results like my predictions are quite possible even if the popular vote is close to 50-50 between the two men. That would not surprise me.
I feel sure, however, that the result will be quite clear-cut in the Electoral College. And that, after all, is what really matters
--
The Australian (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11247939%5E2703,00.html)
I also currently have Kerry winning the EC by a 4-8 point margin. Just as I have predicted.