Well this should bring a sigh of relief to Matthew Yglesias, who's been fretting ever since Nov 3 about the hard-to-explain boost of Bush support from Latino voters.

NBC Makes Unprecedented Downward Correction in Latino Support for Bush

18-point Margin of Victory for Democrat Kerry Among Hispanics Doubles Previous NBC Estimates; Numbers Affirm WCVI Criticism of National Exit Poll Figures

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- In a stunning admission, an elections manager for NBC News said national news organizations overestimated President George W. Bush's support among Latino voters, downwardly revising its estimated support for President Bush to 40 percent from 44 percent among Hispanics, and increasing challenger John Kerry's support among Hispanics to 58 percent from 53 percent. The revision doubles Kerry's margin of victory among Hispanic voters from 9 to 18 percent. Ana Maria Arumi, the NBC elections manager also revised NBC's estimate for Hispanic support for Bush in Texas, revising a reported 18-point lead for Bush to a 2-point win for Kerry among Hispanics, a remarkable 20-point turnaround from figures reported on election night. [...]

The more information comes out about the exit polls, when they were right and where they were wrong, and actual voting behavior (to say nothing of actual counting of ballots), it looks like we should hold off on any more "revise Democratic strategy" sessions until at least January, when more reliable data can be assembled and analyzed with some degree of confidence.

Donkey Rising has more here and here on the ongoing revision of Hispanic numbers, and here on the declining Bush margin as the raw vote totals are finalized state-by-state.

This started as a post about religious fundamentalism and shifted into something else. I'll come back to the fundamentalism stuff in a different post when I get the chance, but since I'm celebrating Veteran's Day with marathon paper-writing (like Trickster the past week has been extremely busy for me on the school and Habitat fronts, hence the skimming and lurking on my part) it may have to wait a while. In any case, here's the something else part:

Praktike has just recently registered the domain Liberals Against Terrorism, in what I think is probably a long-overdue step. He says he's not sure what to do with it yet, though I suspect he has something in mind... but I'll toss in my idea on the subject anyhow.

The fact that "liberals" broadly speaking, spend less of their time commenting on the serious threats that radical fundamentalism poses to the secular, pluralistic liberal society that we cherish — as seen in the murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh for his controversial statements on Islam's treatment of women, among other offenses — than we do the many failings of the Bush administration's attempts at tackling this threat has in effect ceded the initiative in the debate. Rather than being the first ones to say "this is awful" and explain why from the liberal perspective, we end up being the ones adding "yes, but.." This isn't good from a political standpoint and probably not for our sense of perspective either.

As much as I don't like to admit it, there are members of the political left (and a few of them are even Democrats) who really do consider the U.S. a bigger threat to world peace than what they see as the comparatively minor threat of terrorism. I do think they are a minority within the Democratic community, but that the relative silence of the middle -- not at all helped by a media that rewards sensationalism over substance -- has allowed them a larger share of our collective voice than they deserve. This colors the rest of us in a negative light.    more »

Via JKC's diary at Tacitus and Kevin Drum, the best visualization of the electorate so far. It shows both population concentration (larger a patch the greater the number of residents from 2000 census) and intensity of polarization (from bright blue Dems to bright red Repubs). If nothing else, it's gorgeous. Undoubtedly its rorschach-like aspects will trigger lots of different responses, but to me its a splendid chinese dragon with ferocious blue jaws. But hey, I couldn't be reading any wishful thinking into it could I?



This is just one of a number of maps prepared by a trio at U of Michigan (physics and complex systems). Their page describes the methods used to prepare each. The cartogram (above) is based on a geographical map that uses the color scaling proposed by Robert Vanderbei at Princeton. We had alreday come across Vanderbiei's work in an earlier discussion of voting maps that JC
and MC MasterChef had brought to our attention.

My favorite of the Vanderbei maps, from an aesthetic standpoint if nothing else, overlays the colors on a map that includes mountains. Both striking and informative.



The Princeton page has some information on voting predictions as well.

By popular demand, the Michigan site is making the purple cartogram (above) and its companion map available as wallpaper.

I'm planning on writing a fair bit in the near future about where Democrats can go from here. As I wrote yesterday, I think we do great on issues and ideas, but have some work to do on thematic packaging. So as a first step, I'd like to propose a provisional Mission Statement for the Party. In the days to come, I'll apply that Mission Statement to various issues and ideas that come up in elections.

This is a big job and I'm looking for some help. But I'm ready to start the ball rolling with the following proposed MISSION STATEMENT:

The Democratic Party will provide an enlightened government that will help Americans be free, safe, healthy, and prosperous.

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The following issues did not matter from an electoral perspective:

• The environment
• The deficit
• Civil liberties
• Poor execution of a war fought on dubious premises
• Corporatism

What else?



Addendum photo: You are not alone! Fafblog feels your pain.

I expect the Democratic Party, and by extension all the rest of us too, will be working through the ramifications of November 2nd 2004 for at very least the next four years or so, so maybe there's no need to rush into this all so soon, but Matthew Yglesias has a case to make over at the Prospect that maybe it can't all be traced back to values after all:   more »

I'm a great believer in the proposition that every citizen, even the most partisan, should greet a new President with an open mind and give him or her a fair chance to be a great President. But that principle doesn't apply in the same way to a second termer, and it doesn't apply at all to a second-termer who has refused to acknowledge that he made a single mistake during his term, who has never fired an underling, and whose primary campaign theme was Stay The Course.

If George W. Bush actually does dramatically change his stripes in a second term, I am prepared to notice that and adjust my stance accordingly. Until that point, my attitude toward the new President is combative. I want to use all fair political means to neuter his Presidency.

But I am not optimistic enough to think I will fully succeed. I expect our tax system to be rendered more economically unjust, and I don't expect to see it recover during my lifetime; I expect our nation's standing in the world to fall further, and for the world's citizens to more and more blame our arrogance on America and not just on Bush; I expect our courts to be packed with quiet, angry men in dark suits with slicked-back hair who will legislative into the law protections for power and moneyed interests that won't disappear in my lifetime; and I expect one more huge blunder that no one could possibly predict at this time, like Iraq in the first term.

There's only one good thing: I expect the next four years to be years of reaping the whirlwind for the wind Bush has sewn in the last four years, and there won't be any doubt about whose fault it is. That may make this outcome, in the long run, a good thing. That's just hard to see right now.
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Never forget the old adage that all politics is local when you're either celebrating or mourning.

This wasn't a "redefining" election like 1994, or even a big momentum boost one direction or another. It primarily clarified the lines that were there in 2000. And like 2000, the electoral college didn't amplify the popular vote result. Independents (K52-B44%) and new voters (K57-B41%) backed the Democratic ticket at the Presidential level. Without studying the state-by-state margins, that suggests that Bush's fairly wide margin of victory in the national popular vote was assembled from very large majorities in red states.

The striking thing was how independent the Senate race dynamics were from the Presidential. (e.g. Mel Martinez polling way behind Bush in Fla) The surprises were how well Dems did in a few races like Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Otherwise, no surprises in the Senate.

The House results were also completely separate from the Presidential. Gains were totally explained (and anticipated) by local factors, such as Texas redistricting, where Delay was 3-for-3 in getting rid of Dem incumbents, just like it was planned. Most of the Dem hopes a few months ago had been on GOTV efforts, which were effectively countered by Reps in "their" districts. By the last month there were no realistic expectations of Dem pick-ups and they knew they had their work cut out for them just to counter the impact of redistricting/demographic shifts. The gerrymandering effect lives on.

The closest connection between Presidential vote and lower down on the ballot appears to have been the anti-gay marriage initiatives in Ohio and Michigan. Exit polling on voter motivation for President at the national level (what was the most important issue) tends to bear this out -- biggest category was "moral values" (21%) which went 78% Bush. In Ohio exit polls the figures were 23% and 83% respectively. And it's pretty clear that the exit polling underreported Republican voters, so those figures may indeed be higher.

[UPDATE -- See praktike's post]

When I was making predictions on the Presidential outcome, I put Ohio in Kerry's column because of likely high NorthEast Ohio turnout (which appears to have happened). I included local ballot dynamics in my considerations, just made the mistake of not looking at initiatives.

I'm feeling preternaturally perky about Ohio; all the Repubs lower on the ballot are winning in cakewalks like Voinovich, so no extra energy from e.g. a Senate race, and Gallup has Kerry ahead.

That'll teach me for next time!

I'll also remember to adjust Florida for the hurricaine effect, using the Governor's popularity (Jeb at 80%) as a proxy. Apparently that wasn't factored into the weighting by the pollsters. That element should be taken into account -- as well as which regions of the state got hit the hardest -- even in the absence of the "Bush family business" effect.

We've collected a few poll watchers aids that may come in handy. Comments welcome as the evening progresses.

Any further predictions will be deemed null and void if they're posted after 6:55 PM (all times EST), given that the Florida polls start to close at 7:00 PM.

As the evening progresses, we have some links to turn to on balloting disputes and if the whole process turns any more litigious.





This year the number of online sites with nifty tools to track the returns is legion. I'm kinda a map freak in general, so I've been playing with a number of the maps online. The one that's linked to the electoral college vote on sidebar, Electoral-Vote.com, is excellent but often has loading problems with the traffic level so high, which is why we've disconnected the automatic feed today.

Some of the best interactive maps are the big newspapers' online editions. I'm especially fond of the LATimes, which has the most recent info in the state roll-overs, and another map for tracking the Senate races nation-wide. Now if I could just disconnect the "Hail to the Chief" everytime one of my scenarios breaks the 269 barrier for one or the other candidate!

The Washington Post's electoral college map is also rather nice. As of today, however, the right side of their front page online edition is a totally interactive map with lots of drill-down capacity for President, Senate, Governor (and DC/Local). Click on a state and you'll get gobs of info, including the House races (with bios). Here for example is Colorado, which also has the famous referendum on selecting electors for the electoral college.

If you want to keep the box score using pencil and paper, WaPo has created a pdf map and state list.

If you want great polling data that's broken down lots of different which-ways but easy to use, Trickster links to NowChannel.com. Good Senate info as well as Presidential data.

David Leip's Atlas of US Presidential Elections has a number of nice features, including poll closing information with the map shown above. In addition to the expected data pages and voting results maps, he's tracking the poll closing process. He'll be keeping track of when various states are "called" by news organizations, so if you lose track while channel surfing, you've got a place where you can get an immediate update.

And if you want to keep your own running total on the electoral votes, but don't want to keep running columns of number on your calculator or build your own spread sheet, Leip's site has an interactive electoral vote calculator (deluxe version) and (simple version). The deluxe has maps, resets, and lets you keep track of the Cong Dist breakdown and states that aren't winner-take-all.

Okay, I’ll confess up-front that what I’m about to say is pretty unhip, and that it hasn’t the slightest trace of pomo-ironic hyper-informed edginess about it. It’s pretty old-fashioned. But what the hell, I’m getting old.

Anyway, here goes. You know what worries me more than swing states and electoral college scenarios and unaccounted-for polling groups? You know what worries me more than poll challengers and last-minute ads and absentee ballots? You know what I’m starting to care about more than . . . gasp . . . who actually wins this election?

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