Blogs > Cliopatria > Election Day: Early Assessments and Thoughts

Nov 2, 2004

Election Day: Early Assessments and Thoughts


by Cliopatria


Here are my random thoughts as of 4:47 pm Central time on Election Day:

--I think Kerry is going to win. I realize that exit polls are incredibly flawed, but every single set of polls from the most contested states has given Kerry a significant advantage. Most have listed ten states, with Kerry winning six or seven, the President two or three, with the rest statistical ties. The president may pull out a close vote. If there is a landslide or a mini-landslide, all signs point toward Kerry.

-- Voting in West Texas this morning was very easy. When I received my Texas voter card, I saw that the county elections registrar had screwed up my registration card, misspelling my name. I sent it back as instructed, and did not receive a new copy. I called yesterday, was assured that it would not be a problem, showed up this morning at Chester Nimitz Middle School across the street from the main UTPB campus entrance, flashed identification, backup id (my license is still from Virginia) and a utility bill, and whisked on through. The ballots were pretty archaic and had to be lined up just right. But the process took no more than five minutes, and that included lining the punchcard and making sure at the end that my Presidential candidate choice went through and that there were no hanging chads. I brought a colleague to her poll (different from mine) and she reported that the ballot was a bit confusing, especially for some of the older people. I do not know if it was the same as mine, as I had not voted yet and I brought her home before I did. Voting, that is the actual process, should not be difficult and it should not be confusing.

-- At both polling places there were people carrying placards with lots more signs stuck in the ground. They were darned close to the polling. I am sure they measured them from the door or whatever, but I am not a big fan of last-second campaigning being right where voters park, in this case right in front of the school. I did not make any noise about this mostly because lots of people are going to make noise about insignificant and inconsequential things these next few days. Still, at both schools, what was going on may well have been illegal.

-- I hope this is not a lingering nightmare like last time. I would not mind if it goes late into the night, but I hope there is a decisive win. I do not think it will be a good thing for America to have a repeat of 2000.

--That said, it would be a supreme irony if the two parties were forced to take the exact opposite positions as they did last time around and to see them having to defend things they claimed represented an affront to democracy last time or oppose something they saw as at the very root of the electoral process.

-- I have been asked to be on call as an elections expert for some of the local media. I’ve been a go to guy of sorts for the two newspapers and a couple of the local television stations virtually since I got to Odessa. I’ve even commented on the local situation, which would be a lot more interesting were it not for the bad faith redistricting here in Texas. That is something that will come home to roost for the Republicans one of these days, I assure you. -- I am going to say it now, before we have any results: The Electoral College is both undemocratic and it is un-republican, lower case in both instances. A winner-take-all vote that dismisses the results of the electorate makes no sense. The Electoral College in theory is supposed to protect us from, from, well, from something. What precisely were we protected from in 2000? Other than the will of the majority, I mean. I also think that the Electoral College really damages our credibility when we tell other countries that they need to have free and fair democratic elections, even if only perception-wise. I don’t mind some sort of Electoral College where there is a check on the popular vote, but I do have a serious problem when the votes of 40% of Californians or New Yorkers in effect do not count, and when the majority is discounted for archaic and ephemeral reasons that no one understands. I know this will require Constitutional change, but it is change I support. I do so for the sake of the country, not for the advantage of one or the other party.

-- This election represents perhaps the ultimate example of the law of unintended consequences, of being wary of what you wish for, in that if Kerry is elected, suddenly within three months he’ll be in charge of all of this. If Iraq goes even more to hell than it has already, he’s going to bear much of that burden. These next four years are vital. They are vital because of Iraq, because of the larger issue of terror, but also because especially with Justice Rehnquist’s failing health (I do not especially like the man as Chief Justice, but I do wish him well and hope that the decision to return to the bench or to retire is his alone) the Supreme Court might be a huge factor soon, and because someone needs to add some fiscal and economic sanity to the country. Kerry is not the ideal man, but he is much, much better than what we already have.

-- Stating the obvious, perhaps: If Kerry wins by more than a smidge, it will mark a huge repudiation of the President. Bigger even than in most cases when an incumbent loses. It has been clear all along that a sizeable majority of democrats are not especially thrilled with Kerry. That is an even more pronounced phenomenon for Independents. If Kerry wins in a landslide, therefore, the only reasonable interpretation can be as a slap at the President. Of course a big win by the Bush team provides them with the biggest mandate of any president since perhaps Johnson after 1964 (Reagan faced either a divided or hostile Congress even after his 1984 landslide). If it is razor thin, on the other hand, we can look forward to four, and probably at least eight, more years of what we’ve had the last four years. That is not a prospect to relish.

--Predictions? As I said at the beginning, I think Kerry wins. And I think he wins by more than people expect, even in the Electoral College vote. I suspect that turnout will approach record rates, and that new voter turnout will be a huge factor in Kerry’s momentum. Younger voters will turn out in record numbers, as will minorities in contested states. Kerry will win in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and Michigan and Ohio, sweeping the putative Rust Belt heartland. Florida will again be a nexus of controversy, but Kerry will take it by a relatively comfortable margin of a handful of thousand votes. He will also take New Hampshire. Bush will pick up Pennsylvania and will win handily in Missouri, a state many believed might be in play not long ago. He will also take Virginia and Arkansas, neither of which will come as a surprise. Obviously this is based on just a few hours of exit polling, on data on new registrations, on the latest polls in the states from the last few days, and on gut instinct. We’ll see how I do. I’ve noticed that there is little accountability in the whole punditry game, so if I am wrong, absolutely nothing will happen.


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More Comments:

E. Simon - 11/3/2004

Don't know what to say... who knew - Ohio. For what seemed like an eternity every day running up to the election it seemed like the stars were more favorably aligning for Kerry. In light of what I was looking forward to expecting for the GOP I feel this is an unfortunate loss. I was really hoping that they would be prompted to undergo the kind of introspection that only a lost presidency can deliver.

E. Simon - 11/3/2004

Sorry for the sloppy language, in case it wasn't clear where I was coming from. Simply, I'd like to see a battle within the GOP where social moderates to liberals repudiate the social and religious extreme conservatives, and where they've led them.

E. Simon - 11/3/2004

Iraq was obviously the biggest factor - something I found unfortunate ever since the discontent began over how cosmetically some seemed to think it would play out. But as an independent I have no problem calling out the GOP (as opposed to individual families) on the backward direction in which they pushed social (as well as environmental) issues and can't help but wonder how much of a role the Rove red state supermajority strategy might have played, and backfired, in the context of the overall election. It doesn't seem that there are Dems comparable in popularity and ability who can consistently capture the middle and independents as can Giuliani, Schwarzenegger and McCain - and if the GOP doesn't at least consider the possibility that socially moderate to liberal positions are at least worth considering as a function of party policy, then they deserve to lose national elections as far as the eye can see.

Dynamic presidencies need dynamism all the way around in order to be successful, not just on a misrepresented neo-Wilsonian adventure. The GOP already lost a huge chunk of their base because of Iraq - so they might as well have chosen to reach out to the middle as Bush had long ago promised, but by then they had already lost all credibility on that score - as well as money in the budget. If it was Iraq alone that caused them to lose (an issue that Kerry played very well), then that's too bad, but I don't think they can ever regain anything without some serious re-thinking of what they're all about.

Kerry might have a severe charisma deficit, but he gave the Dems a huge boost tonight. The GOP now has at least 4 to 8 long years to look forward to of an adept Democratic politician controlling, at the very least, the bully pulpit - a man who has every right now to use that position to their detriment. For the sake of everyone interested in a competitive and constructive political process, let's hope the GOP uses that time well, and fills it with some serious soul searching.

I also have to say that I absolutely disagree with you on the electoral college thing. It exists, as I see it, to promote the role of federalism. I think it makes sense that a presidential candidate should seek out some sense of geographic distribution to his campaign, and not just rely on raw numbers that can be concentrated in a few select areas. In a country as large as ours, a candidacy which ignores the need to geographically distribute its campaign, and a presidency which ignores the need to geographically distribute its mandate, is a recipe for encouraging civil strife, if not disunion and civil war. Unitary governments, of course, can afford to forgo these considerations. But that's why they tend to be smaller.

Of course there are ways in which the electoral college could be reformed, such as withdrawing the awarding of two bonus points that disproporionately favor small states. I think some good ideas were just bandied about in a recent Washington Post article - I'll pass it on if I can find it again.