Tim Blair

Rather haughty for a chap whose biggest contribution to the political discourse was creating the term "two party preferred".

(The AEC doesn't even use his phrase anymore; they use 'candidate' in place of 'party' nowadays).

Tradesports.com and the iowa electronic markets have Bush in an unbeatable position at the moment.

Oh, and this classic from Wikipedia:

After spending several years as a ministerial assistant and three years as an economist with the Chamber of Manufactures (1968-1970), "trying to present the case for protection for Australian manufacturing industry".

We have this dickhead to thank for helping perpetuate Australia's protectionist misery in the 70s.

Yep, Kerry in a landslide, just like his pal Mark Latham.

You're thinking of "champignon" (as in "breakfast of").

"Compaignon" seems to be cognate with "companion".

I'd sure like to meet Mr Mackerras and his wallet in a bar on election night.

I live in Missouri, and that must be one of his "minor revisions" because, John Fake Kerry will not win this state. It won't even be close.

I suspect that by the time he gets done making "minor revisions" the actual number will look more like: Bush 296 electoral votes.

It looks from here (Wisconsin) like George Bush will get 60% of the popular vote nationally. Vote fraud may drive that as low as 57%. George Bush still wins.

Oh god. When will people stay the heck away from Florida? We have enough problems.

(I am referring to your buddy Chris Sheil's remarks in the above link to Florida. Bite me, Sheil.)

Hamster, hamster, hamster, hamster, hamster, hamster, hamster, hamster
Mushroom, mushroom
A dog! It's a dog!

... I think it's time I went to bed ...

Somebody remind me again what picking John Edwards as Veep was supposed to bring to the table when even Kerry cheerleaders don't expect him to deliver his own home state to the campaign...

Yea Andrea, in Florida you have citrus canker, hurricanes, crocodiles, disney world, but as a saving grace, you have SUGAR CANE.. !!!! OT I have a small penis, as you changed my posts to, (everything is relative, I was raised on a cattle station, among horses & stuff, & I must say that I simply cannot measure up to what I observed as a kid) also am incredibly stupid, what else can you expect from the descendant of convicts? You are so incredibly smart Andrea, calling me an "asswipe""dickhead" & assorted other words shows deep insight into my breeding & character, an insight I doubt is possessed except by a smart person such as yourself. Words such as you have used on me (I count 10 such words) words which I have possibly never used in my life, & I throw people OUT of the pub for using, in fact only tonight I have been "bovvered" by some Maoris, (now in gaol) for refusing them service after they swore such words & I shall bear the scars lifelong. Being banned, (or called "asshole" etc) rather fades by comparison to crushed teeth, crimped windpipe, cracked ribs, crushed cheeks, chipped eyeballs, torn biceps (all of which I have recieved at work, from ozzis, you ever want someone to give you a screed on what assholes ozzis are, I will supply you with more anti-ozzi information than you could ever require). I am sorry anybody is insulted, or offended by anything I posted in comments, but stand by all I post. I do not mean insult, perhaps y'all are not accustomed to objective posting? XXXX

Missouri, Florida and Ohio? Has this guy looked at any polls recently?

Polls? Patrick, are you serious? Polls showed Australia to be "neck & neck".. guffaw, guffaw, guffaw!

Does substituting "Bush" for "Kerry" count as a "quite minor revision?" I'm just asking...

I'm a pessimist, I think Kerry is going to win 272-266 in the electoral college.

Here's to hoping I'm a crappy predicter.

Out of interest, what was Mal's prediction for the Aus election?

WARNING to Steve at the Pub,

You are in grave danger of not being taken seriously.

If you haven't reached that crippling status already...

I wrote off Steve At The Pub long ago, jafa.

u boys really got me worried, *quiver*quiver*

And that's why.

I don't think anyone can say with any degree of certainty how this thing is going to turn out; there's a lot of hopeful guessing going on. But, whew! what a day Nov. 2 will be.

Quentin George, interstingly Malcom Mackerras was actually rather close to it, with his call for the Australian election. He forecast the government being returned, with control of the Senate. (Hope this hasn't given anybody the willies re Mackerras' forecast for Nov 2)

Bush's odds are shortening.$1.70 down from $2 before the OBL tape. The punters aren't agreeing with Malcolm.I wonder if he put his money where his mouth is.

I'm starting to get a really bad feeling about all of these LLL "polling experts" predicting a Kerry win. To me, it's starting to smell like one of the hooks that the Democrats used in 2000:

"We just KNOW Gore won Florida because the polling data SAID he would win!" Never mind that Republicans won a clear majority of State House and local races, which in itself suggests a Bush victory, the polling data claimed Gore would win.

These predictions are starting to smell like leftover 2000 garbage!

Most Aussies think they are smarter than the average Yank (we're stupid enough to think the wackos who appear on Donoghue are good a great representation of the average American).

If the US plums for Edwards as Robin (what was Robin's last name in Batman & Robin?) then Aussies will know that we've been right all along.

Other than little Billy and Madam Roddam, Edwards and wife would have to be the smarmiest turds I have ever seen run for public office. Could you ever imagine Edwards being the most powerful man on earth?

Latham modelled himself on these jokers and look what we did to him.

Amazing that most of Kerry's campaign money has come from lawyers.

"what was Robin's last name in Batman & Robin?"

Just Robin, although his real name was Dick Grayson.

Rumor has it he laid an egg shortly before the Batmobile lost a wheel.

TN,
Why is it amazing that most of Kerry's money comes from lawyers? The lawyers are backing their gravy train, trying to elect the team that will continue to allow them to lay waste the American economy through tort litigation in order to line their own pockets. Kedwards and the Dems also represent the sordid cultural orientation of America's liberal elite. Like good Marxists, the ambulance chasers are backing their class interests.

Having read Chris Sheil's latest, I can only conclude he's dripping tears into his fifth shiraz, and missing his good ol' Kelpie dreadfully. Poor man.

RealClearPolitics only has eight states as toss-ups. If we assume the results in the other states follow the current coloring, and that the House of Representatives remains Republican, then Kerry must win Florida, at least 2 of the 3 next-largest tossup states, and either the third of the next-largest or two of the other four.

It's not a certain Bush victory, but the poll numbers clearly favor him.

One thing to bear in mind is that fake registrations and voter fraud don't show up in opinion polls. The Democrats have really been pulling out all the stops on false registrations this time.

Tks for proofreading tim. I decided the French spelling was a little too provocative!

"Most Aussies think they are smarter than the average Yank..."

Not to generalise, but I think we do have a far smoother election process. Don't know how well it would translate to a population of 300M though. Curiously, it's one of the things the federal authorities control from the grass up here. The states have no say whatsoever.

Craig Mc says:

Not to generalise, but I think we do have a far smoother election process. Don't know how well it would translate to a population of 300M though.

Well imagine how much easier & smoother it would be if we switched to the British First-Past-the-Post system. With the primary vote percentages being what they have been for some years now, the ALP would never get anywhere near government and all the assorted whacko parties (i.e. the DemoCreeps, the Greens etc) would be totally irrelevant for good. Bob Brown would then be reduced to preferencing whether he wants it from the back or from the front. Which is about as far as his influence should reach.

Simple, easy and elegant, eh? :-)

In addition to
http://www.realclearpolitics.com

also see the Horserace Blog at
http://www.jaycost.blogspot.com
in particular, Jay’s summary http://jaycost.blogspot.com/2004/10/scoop-on-polls.html
of a longer article by DJ Drummond at Polipundit http://polipundit.com/index.php?p=4176

& also see the Hedgehog Report at
http://davidwissing.com/index.php

Gallup, Battleground, & Time polls appear to be the best. Some others are good but tend to be skewed Demward.

Jay Cost, 10/27/04: “CBS News/ NY Times: To the extreme credit of this poll, detailed demographic breakdowns are readily available. However, and most important, is that Drummond notes that they ‘tend’ to overweight their sample toward Democrats.”

CBS News/NY Times just released: Bush 49, Kerry 46, Nader 1 , Bush JA @ 49%

Jay Cost, 10/27/04: “Pew is a polling outfit that does an excellent job of providing you with its internals. If you go to the Pew site, your socks will be knocked off at their crosstabs (of course, given how deep the crosstabs go, they'll have a high MOE). However, Drummond notes that their partisan breakdowns skew toward Democrats.”

Pew Research just released: Bush 51, Kerry 48, Nader 1

There is talk of MASSIVE voter fraud’s being uncovered. That’s not factored in. The Get Out The Vote Effort also is not factored in.

I don't think we have a smoother electoral process.

We actually have a dishonest electoral system because it isn't really true democracy.

Aussie pollies don't have to encourage us to vote which means they only have to work half as hard as Bush and Kerry have had to.

Voluntary first past the post is the best system.

I live in Bennelong and poor old Andrew Wilkie has moved out of the house he rented for the election campaign.

"I live in Bennelong and poor old Andrew Wilkie has moved out of the house he rented for the election campaign."

Is this another parody? I don't want to be duped twice in a post. Help me here.

"Well imagine how much easier & smoother it would be if we switched to the British First-Past-the-Post system"

I was talking more about the procedures for conducting elections, rather than the first-past-the-post vs proportional vs preferential issue.

Things like having a deadline for registering to vote, so that AEC officials can check registrations (including door-knocks). The simple pencil on paper ballots vs punch card/electronic systems. A universal standard vs state-by-state (even county-by-county) methods. I don't think it's just the litigious culture of the US that is leading to disputed elections, it's that the methods make it too easy for whiners to carp.

OK, our system has problems with the senate ballot. We'll be using a tablecloth for the ballot in a few years. Maybe one reason why Howard now has a majority in the senate. It's much simpler just to put a "1" in the Liberal Party box.

As for the preferential system, I have to admire the founding fathers for coming up with a system designed not to elect the most popular party, but instead the least unpopular party. Helps avoid things like BDS.

“Poll: Bush, Kerry in near-deadlock” USA Today, Oct. 31, 2004, 8:01 PM EST

It’s the GALLUP poll.
GALLUP: Bush 49, Kerry 47 Margin of error 2 pts

Margin of error 3 pts
B46 K49 Florida
B46 K50 Ohio
B50 K46 Pennsylvania
B48 K46 Iowa
B44 K52 Minnesota
B52 K44 Wisconsin

Too close for comfort. Gallup is very reputable, but, on the other hand, Gallup’s state numbers look really strange, somewhat hard to believe.

For Bush to be up 4 points in PA means that Philly and every union in the state has mysteriously disappeared off the planet. The Wisconsin figure is out of whack as well.

Kerry will win, be sure of that. And the massive voter suppression going on from the Republican side is not going to be nearly enough to stop it.

However, for those who will miss the dull yapping of the dry drunk former warmonger in chief, don't worry. You can always pay a visit to sunny Tarpon Springs, Florida. to see your hero in his retirement.

Perhaps they'll find room for ol' Christopher Hitchens too, and provide him with a full liquor cabinet.

I hope you're all having a good war.

Don't worry, most of 'em are Allah lovin' brown people...

Bush: 306 in the Electoral College.

Kerry wins Missouri? ROTFLMAO!

Kerry will win, be sure of that. And the massive voter suppression going on from the Republican side is not going to be nearly enough to stop it.

Justin, either you've been drinking, in which case you need to stop, or you haven't, in which case you need to start.

Slightly OT: In other news, ALP pipsqueak Kevin Rudd offers this evidence as to why the Labor Party had their arses handed to them at the recent election:

"And frankly I think in this country we need to be doing more than issuing fridge magnets to tell people to be alert not alarmed ... in dealing with this ongoing terrorist reality."

You weren't very specific Pixy. Which part of my post makes you think I might be drinking? The part about voter suppression, or the part about how Kerry is going to be the next president?

What a devastating link. A political operative following the leaked DNC manual & making the pre-emptive claims of voter suppression.

For over a hundred years, the Democrats, with their big-city political machines, have built a rich & famous tradition of ballot fraud.

How they howl their recently manufactured urban myths now! To the chorus of groans from such propaganda cults as CBS News.

tim, how come your blog doesn't send trackback links? Not part of your system? Or have you turned it off?

"Well imagine how much easier & smoother it would be if we switched to the British First-Past-the-Post system. With the primary vote percentages being what they have been for some years now, the ALP would never get anywhere near government…"

Have you even looked at the primary voting percentages for that last few years?

Take 1998 for example:
Liberals - 3,800,721
Nats - 588,088
ALP - 4,454,306

The ALP again beat the Liberals on primaries in 2001, although not the coalition. So if it was a first-past-the-post system, Howard would have been a one-termer.

Justin, I think it's the incoherent, unrelating, and stumbling list of ideas and suggestions that you posted. It really sounds like you either imbibed too much, and are out of control, or stop drinking, and are going through withdrawal.

For example, most people are saving their gloating until after the election. True, Kerry might pull it off (although I doubt it). But should President Bush win, you are going to look very stupid indeed.

Oh, wait, what I am saying? You already look stupid. My bad.

Jeez Real JeffS, I'm on my 3rd fifth of Jack and I still know how many commas to use to keep my points intact within a sentence.

Whoo-hoo!

Man, if I keep drinking like this I might start stumbling around the room and frothing at the mouth like Bush during the second debate.

Justin :

Given the enormous fraud that's been perpetrated by both parties in the past, don't you think that the voter rolls need to be checked?

The minority most disadvantaged by the vetting appear to be convicted felons.

In an ideal world, the vetting would be done in a bipartisan fashion. But the Dems are afraid FAR too much of their vote comes from ringers, the dead, illegal aliens etc, and the GOP are afraid that a genuine turnout of the disadvantaged would give the Dems a landslide.

I think they're both right : the Dems are beating the GOP by at least 5:1 in fraudulent votes, but if everybody voted who should be able to, the GOP would be toast.

This year I wouldn't be surprised if the fraud is way over the usual 3% figure found in most elections. Could be as high as 10%, but 5% is more likely. In a race as close as this, that's enough.

cs -- deleted trackback at least a year ago. It caused the page to load slowly.

Karl writes:

Have you even looked at the primary voting percentages for that last few years?

Indeed I have. That's why I wrote what I wrote - namely: "With the primary vote percentages being what they have been for some years now, the ALP would never get anywhere near government…"

The ALP certainly did score marginally more primary votes than the Coalition in 1998. Given the fact this was "the referendum on GST", it is amazing they did as badly as they did...

However, have a look at the trend over the last three elections:

1998: ALP: 4,454,306 40.10%
LIB/NAT/CLP: 4,388,809 39.50%

2001: ALP: 4,341,419 37.84%
LIB/NAT/CLP 4,934,957 43.01%

2004: ALP: 4,408,867 37.63%
LIB/NAT/CLP 5,471,666 46.70%

If you can't see a very clear, consistent trend away from Labor, you must be blind.

The ALP again beat the Liberals on primaries in 2001, although not the coalition.

Well, considering the Nats and the Libs have been in Coalition for a long time now, to the extent they generally do not stand candidates against each other, I fail to see the relevance of this statement.

So if it was a first-past-the-post system, Howard would have been a one-termer.

Not necessarily. When you have numbers as close as the ones in 1998, it is quite possible that there could be several individual marginal electorates going to the Coalition (or Labor, for that matter) by a whisker, while the majority of the vote could be tied up in the safe seats. The government could then have been easily returned.

Alas, when the difference grows to almost 11%, this is becoming rather unlikely.

Cheers,

JPB

Craig, unfortunately I missed a chance to run over Andrew Wilkie in Canberra a week after the election. I recognised him just after I'd passed by...

Slightly off topic, it looks as though the Iraqi 'rebels' haven't been reading from the leftie handbook. Don't they know there are no WMDs in Iraq?
Rebels vow to use chemical weapons

If Justin Eagle thinks Kerry will win, I'd lock in Bush, punters.

Why is everyone so hung up about friggin' first-past-the-post. That is a USELESS system. If say 45% (or less!) of electors mildly like one particular candidate (and mark him or her as their choice) but 55% hate that candidate with a frothing passion, then the candidate will probably be elected (seeing as the rest of the vote will be split), with mild regard on one side and frothing hatred on the other. How the FUCK is that a good system?

The benefit of preferential voting is precisely that it ALLOWS ACCUMULATION of PREFERENCES. The only argument I can ascertain for us RWDBs to favour FPTP voting is that it will neuter the greens - but those greens voters would just vote ALP anyway, boosting the ALP's vote - how is that a good thing?

At any rate, the days of preferential voting disproportionately favouring the ALP are over. 30% of greens prefs went to the coalition (lol, no idea why, but thanks), the democrats are probably on the verge of bankruptcy (having passed the threshold of irrelevance), and Family First is eating up conservative ALP voters, and plus, it's about time the religious right countered the secular left.

So keep preferential voting!

PW

Somebody remind me again what picking John Edwards as Veep was supposed to bring to the table?

To win the Vice Presidential debate against Dick Cheney, bieng that he is the super-slick trial-attorney. This is the analysis that I heard. That is why he has been so scarce lately, because he had his ass/arse handed to him in that debate.

There are counties in the US with more registered Democrats than population. A Republican has to win by at least 2% to overcome the fraud. In a race this close, I can't see Bush overcoming this.

Fraud in Illinois put JFK in over Nixon in '60. The Republicans declined to fight it, thinking it would be harmful to the nation. With no evidence of fraud, Democrats in 2000 still dragged the country through the mud for weeks. Republicans are gentlemen, Democrats are crass, self-serving scum (witness how Carter and Clinton have broken the tradition of ex-Presidents staying out of politics). Bush will lose Tuesday by fraud and will graciously concede.

Justin Eagle

Man, if I keep drinking like this I might start stumbling around the room and frothing at the mouth like Bush during the second debate.

That was the one debate, that I thought W. performed well in, and I'm a supporter of his.

Dave S.

A Republican has to win by at least 2% to overcome the fraud.

So true...if elections in the U.S. were entirely fair, Republicans would win all the close races.

It's a fact of life, sadly, that U.S. conservatives just have to live with.

ForNow:

That poll you cited is the CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll. The figures it arrives at consistently differ from those in the straight Gallup poll, which is regarded as the industry standard.

And those state poll results are ... counter-intuitive, to say the very least. With the exception of Iowa and maybe Wisconsin, I think every last one of them is wrong.

My own maths gives Bush a floor of 266 EVs. Not enough to guarantee a win, but all he has to do is prevail in one of the seven states up for grabs (HI, MI, MN, NH, OH, PA, WI). Kerry? He's got to win all seven.

In memory of Mrs. Hatuel and her little daughters.

Weep for a monster but no tears for the bullet ridden bodies of these innocents

I would like to see her condemned to spend the rest of her days under an Islamic regime but forced to sleep in the same room with Arafat until he rots in hell

So if it was a first-past-the-post system, Howard would have been a one-termer.

Not necessarily. When you have numbers as close as the ones in 1998, it is quite possible that there could be several individual marginal electorates going to the Coalition (or Labor, for that matter) by a whisker, while the majority of the vote could be tied up in the safe seats. The government could then have been easily returned.

And so it would have been...retroactively applying first-past-the-post scoring to the 1998 results (found here), we get the following (actual results in brackets):

LP 67 (64)
NAT 14 (16)
ALP 65 (67)
IND 1 (1)
One Nation 1 (0)

Incidentally, one of the seats the ALP would have won due to a split vote between the NAT and the LP candidates.

In other words, the coalition would have fared even better under first-past-the-post than under preferential voting, the ALP's nationwide primary vote advantage notwithstanding. What I'm taking from this is that the ALP (at least in 1998) had a handful of strongholds, driving up their national total, but didn't do well at all in the marginal seats. One can hardly say that Howard only won that election on preferences.

Cue Nelson Muntz: Haha!

PW writes:

What I'm taking from this is that the ALP (at least in 1998) had a handful of strongholds, driving up their national total, but didn't do well at all in the marginal seats.

..and that same situation exists to this day; it's just that there are fewer and fewer ALP "strongholds" and they do just as badly, or worse, in the marginals.

What a shame, eh? ;-)

JPB

Thank you, Grand Old Elephant. Somebody at another site made a brief remark to the same general effect (enough for me to mention it for the sake of the nervous at Lucianne.com), & you’ve fleshed it out.

JPB: Kind of reminds me of the Democrats in the US, too...pulling down big numbers in their inner-city enclaves but rapidly losing the suburban areas, to say nothing of the vast expanses of Flyover Country which they lost quite a while ago.

Grand Old Elephant, I hope you don’t mind that I quoted your comment here over at the Horserace Blog (Jay Cost) at
http://jaycost.blogspot.com/2004/11/beware-gallup-poll.html#c109931495581672265.
Thanks again.

It was mathematically proved in 1954 by Kenneth Arrow that there is no method of voting that will, in all circumstances, reflect the actual preferences of the people. None. It's an unachievable goal, so voting systems must be selected by some other criteria.

Like clarity.

What single-round first-past-the-post does is tell everyone "You have one and only one vote. Cast it the way you think will be best." It forces hard choices on the voter; he'll only vote for Nader in Florida if he thinks that's more important than defeating Bush, for example. It makes the voter consider the situation, and clarify in his mind where his overall priority really lies.

He can't rank Nader #1 and Gore #2, secure in the knowledge that his first priority is really just symbolic, and he'll achieve his real goal of helping beat Bush. He can't rank Nader #1 and Bush #2, hoping to trick the Democrats into moving leftward, so they'll have a harder time beating the Republicans in the next election. He has to pick what is most important to him, and live with the consequences.

PW says:

Kind of reminds me of the Democrats in the US, too...pulling down big numbers in their inner-city enclaves but rapidly losing the suburban areas, to say nothing of the vast expanses of Flyover Country which they lost quite a while ago.

Yeah, but then I hear they have been winning over more and more of the dead voters!

So they must still retain some appeal, right? ;-)

JPB