NEWS: The Bush Election Victory, Statistically Speaking

POLITICS: The Bush Election Victory, Statistically Speaking

Disllusioned Democrats have reasonably wondered what their collective response should be to the Bush re-election in 2004. Did they simply lose an election they clearly should have won? Did Bush Jr get a strong mandate, having increased his margin from his 2000 victory?

Economist William Nordhaus runs the numbers and says, well, actually, for an incumbent president in a relatively strong economy, Bush's victory really wasn't that hot. (You can read the full analysis here, in PDF form.)

"Running the numbers" involves statistically controlling for a variety of factors that might potentially influence the outcome, and then saying, given those factors, how well would we expect George Jr to do, compared to how well did he do.

The precis offered by Nordhaus is:

In a little more detail, from his concluding section:

I-D-I-O-T

or so is my opinion (of Bush)

not even based on the dumb things he says... more just on what he's done, and his catering to the rich minority...

who woulda thunk tax cuts to the rich would make the poor(ly educated) feel well treated?

OK how was it so clear when no one knew what was going to happen, the polls were damn near even, and obviously Kerry didnt win. Explain this to me because I dont get the clear about it.


The first election, I understood the complaints completely. This time it was a win by popular and electorial. If by 1 vote or a billion he still won.

However the quanity of voters makes that point pretty much useless. In fact wasnt that one of the largest turn outs in years?

If that statistic doesn't grab you, consider the current approval ratings.

Bush et al don't care about what sort of mandate they have. After 2000, when they clearly had no mandate considering that he lost the popular vote, but they still shoved their insane neocon agenda down all of our throats. They don't care about public resistence... "it's their due" or something.

On the other hand, for a president who so obviously misreprsented the the truth in order to declare an unprovoked war, his numbers were staggeringly high. Way to go Bush!

Um...

In the second quote section, you'll see those margins quoted in percentageterms.

I know it's, like, statistics and stuff, but it would help if people made the slightest attempt to comprehend what's in front of them before deciding that what they've just read is wrong or irrelevant.

Or am I asking too much?

you want to know what the election proves? that against an unelectable frankenstein of a man, an absolute souless political robot, bush was only favorable to one more percent of the population than frankenkerry(mmm frankenberry)...

i read the election polling as roughlly forty-nine percent of this country voting no cofidence in the current leadership.

that being said, democrats as a whole need to come back with a liberal-version-regean or nixon. after defeats and public opinion turned against them, in both cases the republicans spent time examining core-principals and beliefs of their party and came back with solid canidates with strong, issue-oriented platforms and well-thought out positions. maybe the democratic party as a whole needs to stop fucking around and wondering how they can spin the last election to paint an unfair picture of the man who is, after all, the president of the united states, and come back with strong canidates(mid-term senate and congressional races aren't far off, boys and girls) with a realistic, intelligent, well-thought out political philosphy. something just beyond- 'democrats: we're not quite as liberal as we used to be!" or "democrats: fuck it! at least we aren't bush & co!"

or we could just sit around talking about how much bush sucks and never get anywhere. that's fun too, if you're into that sort of thing.

Badges!?!? We don't need no stinkin' badges!!

by the way... from a poli-sci standpoint, regean and nixion were genius canidates with tough, well-run campaigns.

to anyone with a soul they were evil scumbags who took time off from purse-snatching from little old ladies to go steer the country into the shitbox.

and the same is true of the current leadership which incubated in those awful nests of depravity.

(after re-reading my post i thought people might get confused about who's cannonizing who)

you're my hero for the duration of the night.

Thank you. That's like my yang for this comment, where my yin was pissing someone off by being snarky at them The world is back in harmony.

Sadly, I'm one of those crazy bastards that's convinced the election was fixxed.

sadly, I agree with a guy named "Twatzilla". bush is the son of a bad man.

edited so you don't have to read my mind

[Edited on Feb 17, 2005 2:12AM]

Bush won, Who cares. Whether or not he ever will do a decent job is irrelevant. He's there And will be for a few more years.

I would like to add how ever, that even if Kerry would of won There would still be bitching going on. So just get over
it.

to put the whole thing in more qualitative terms, just take a look at the map from the nixon/mcgovern election:



compared to nixon's sweeping victory, the alleged "mandate" and massive "ideological shift" toward "moral values" and blah blah blah of the last election look like a blip.

for further evidence, look no further than the fate of bush's second-term initiatives. they're not exactly sailing through, because there is significant opposition/dissent on the details of bush's policies, even among those who supported his candidacy on the whole.

moral: the sky is not falling.


[Edited on Feb 17, 2005 by in_a_blue_state]

See, its comments like the one above that always concern me when it comes to the theory of democracy and due process. I really, really hope that people realise you do not need to wait till the next election to get Bush out of office... it just happens to be much, much harder to do it.

If say, we decided to push our congressional representatives to look into an impeachment of a man who allowed material that was proven to be false by a UN committee (and strangely, one we originally developed in the post war years to prevent Communists from providing false documents to justify invasions of satelite nations...) and than completely disregarding the mandates of an organization we not only helped found, but whos tenants we agreed to support in the light of world harmony. Or perhaps we could look into serious allegations of large quantites of his cabinet, his vice president, and even possible allegations concerning himself, being tied to the single largest financial scandal in US history (one that I notice has had almost no investigation made into it, at least when compared to six years and several billion dollars spent looking into whether or not our last president was involved in a real estate scam that only netted him a couple hundred thousand dollars). Or hell, why not question the judgement of a man who's hand pciked Secretary of Defense has had to offer to resign twice now due to errors he has made, only to be forgiven (and if you are one of those people who believe there is a great deal of character on Mr. Rumsfeld's behalf, or that our president is representing solidarity by standing by his man, I would just like to remind you that being forced to offer your resignation because of major military mistakes you have made is not a noble thing, it is blatant proof that you are unfit to be in your position).

Further, we could technically follow California's example and hold a referendum on Bush's ability to lead. We could in fact, vote the man out of office should we get enough signatures, and follow an archaic and severly outdated system of appeals to allow for an election concerning Bush's right to hold office.

And if all else fails, we can revolt. I am dead serious about that to. We have an amendment in the Bill of Rights whos sole purpose is to protect our ability to overthrow the government by force if necessary. Remember, America was founded by terrorists against the King who worried that their predecessors may not live up to their standards of revolution (say by claiming that security and control are more important than individual freedom, cause, you know, sometimes you have to "give up some freedoms in order to be safe").

Plus, there are a whole hell of a lot of strategies that I haven't even mentioned, or even considered yet. We are a pseudo democracy still children, we have some options other than sucking it up and dealing with a man who may or may not prove to be a monster.

Oh and An after thought I do realise that Bush can be kicked out of office, but he wont

AlistairMather, California was able to recall their governor because of an explicit provision that was added to their state constitution allowing this.

The US constitution only allows for the removal of a president from office following an impeachment trial. Here's some of the details:

from the constitution, article 1, section 3:

Clause 6: The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.

Clause 7: Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

from article 2, section 4:

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

So while I'm with you that Bush is a jerk and has done lots of idiotic, obnoxious things, I think being able to convince two thirds of a committee made up of the speaker of the house and the senate, presided over by the chief justice of the supreme court, that Bush is guilty of treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors is about as likely as us finding WMDs in Iraq. Which is to say, not at all. And that's the only avenue we have available legally removing him from office.

Violent rebellion sounds great in theory, but is quit difficult, if not impossible to do in practice. While our government maintains a semblance of a strong, centrally powered Federal system, in fact in order to take over the country each state would have to conquered separately, due to both geographic and administrative hurdles. This is deliberate, and was meant as a design to make it harder to take over the country. And this is assuming that you had a well armed and organized group of people large enough to effectively beat the US armed forces, as well as the national and state guards of every state. Given that there is currently no army in world capable of doing this, I'd say the likelihood of success of any armed rebellion is low. That is to say, zero.

I admire when people take all that time to type out utterly pointless things.

I agree that impeachment is highly unlikely in reality, but I suspect that a good legal team could interpret treason law to cover allegiance to trans-national corporations. If it's a bad thing to put Chinese interests before America's, then it should be similarly bad to favor Enron's.

No, I would characterize that as a really shitty legal team. Or a legal team making the best argument they could out of a shitbag theory.

No, not necessarily.

Anyway, treason means something really specific... it's the only crime the Constitution specifically defines. Art III sec 3 Para 1.

The Constitution treats the subject of treason very seriously, and it's a subject that should not be thrown around in cavalier fashion, even on a jokey internet message board.

I see what you're saying, and I'm aware of that article. What I'm suggesting is that the constitution had no way of predicting the rise of such corporations, and that if treason includes 'adhering to their Enemies', and you believe that our Enemies include non-state groups that would like to undermine the sovereignty of the nation (which I do) then there should be nothing cavalier at all about calling a Cheney a potentially treasonous character. I don't know that this is the best option for prosecution, but there should be some way to go after these fuckers.

Oh, but I like having shitbag theories... and needlessly aggressive replies to my comments. have a nice day.

The needless agression is a service I provide free of charge.

It's really dangerous to make arguments like this because you accept tacitly that the definition of "Treason" so (uncommonly) precisely laid out in the Constitution is quite flexible indeed. If you can argue that support of a multinational conglomerate is "Treason" then what's to stop Ann Coulter from arguing, say, that failing to condemn John Walker Lindh with enough gusto is "Treason?" You're opening up a whole can of worms -- and since the people in power (viz Cheney and Co.) are more likely to put a malleable definition of "Treason" to sinister use if it's opened up in this way, I'd prefer it if my comrades to the left of me would not open up the door for them.

It really is a shitbag theory, anyway. Yes, sure, lots of the categories of analysis in international law (e.g. "Enemies") are a bit outmoded. Even the UN Charter, which is a lot younger than the US Const., obviously, fails to deal with non-state actors like multinational corporations and international terrorist groups. Yes, this does lead to problems. But we have a perfectly decent process for dealing with the Cheneys and Bushes... representative democracy. We don't need to indulge in fantasies about trying them for Treason. It's dangerous and it's a waste of time pipe-dream.

Actually, that is often a common misconception when it comes to rebellion. Almost all rebellions are begun by a nearly infinetesimal minority. If you look at US history, basically all that began the American Revolution were twenty nuts with guns calling themselves a militia and a general sense of civil unrest amongst the intellectuals. Once one small group takes a violent act within a nation, one that cannot be ignored or pushed aside, the rest of the nation is left with siding with the government, or taking up arms. Neutral parties in insurrections never matter. No one discusses the several million people in Baghdad who have no connections to any political or insurgent agency (note: not terrorists. there are no terrorists in Iraq. only people who do not want to be told that democracy is being GIVEN TO THEM for their own good. just because you fight American soldiers should not automatically make you a terrorist. and as a further aside, am i the only one noticing the severly similar tactics and propaganda used by the USSR to defend their invasion of Afghanistan in the late seventies?). Historically we are told that most of the colonists never even fought in the American Revolution, which means that something like a quarter of the population even decided to have anything to do with that conflict.

And England was the worlds most formidable and powerful military/economic force in the world.

And before you go pointing out that we were fighting a war against a military whose forces were not originally located in this country, but scattered over a vast colonial empire, I would like to point out that the US military presence is tiny within this country. Recent estimates claim that nearly seventy percent of our overall military forces are located outside of the US. Combine this with what is generally agreed within the military as a highly ineffcient (if slightly more so than any other nations) personnel transport network, and the fact that even the reserves have recently been complaining about being spread rather thin, and we come to the conclusion that the US military presence is not some over powering force within this country. Remember, a nations power comes more form what people believe, than what it can actually do. If an entire populace is convinced that the government is too powerful to fight, than it does not matter whether the actual forces are strong, just that everyone believes they are (for example: the USSR's real military capabilities during the Cold War, or say, the actual number of Al Queda members and cells vs. what we are continually bombarded with by US propaganda).

In fact (and here is the line that is going to get me investigated by the FBI/CIA/Intelligence Agent who may or may not be occasionally monitoring boards like this in "liberal hot beds of dissent") taking out the infrastructure of this nation would be fairly simple. Get a few coordinated attacks on police stations in major metropolitan areas, take out the power grid (an incredibly easy feat as was demonstrated by that little outage problem a few years ago, which conveniently no one has fixed... remind me to tell you the story of the professor I had who was a member of the energy commission in the eighties who was told that the US government would not support a system of enforced solar enrgy due to its effect of decentralizing the grid) and place a couple of public acts of violence against party figures and you could due a sizable amount of damage to the old US security ideal.

All it takes is a spark to start a forest fire, kiddies.

As for the referendum move: yes, I do realize we cannot actually remove the president that way, that was my mistake for not elaborating. What should be pointed out is that any private citizen may in fact force Congress to organize a vote on any given subject by collecting a sizable petition and gaining a slight majority in a Congressional vote. From there, if the current president were to lose an election of confidence, for said president to continue in his capacity would not be very likely. The president is the figurehead of the American people, if his fellow citizens don't trust him enough to be in office, his ability to lead would be severly affected, not to say how the rest of the world leaders would view him. It would be a career death sentence, and a president who remained in office would threaten the stability of his party's future endeavours.

All this is grandly hypothetical of course. I've already spent three years of my life working under the current administration, so my dissatisfaction is probably tainted by my paycheck continuing to come to me. Thats really the best thing I can say about them: I always get paid on time, and hell, I can at least pretend that I am getting my taxes back in my salary.