How McCain Won (or Could Have)

I find it fascinating that the same group of people who are still attempting to rehash the 2000 election and the fiasco in Florida with the legendary and infamous "500 votes" --- are the same ones telling the people studying the numbers of the 2008 election to 'let it go and move on'.

Can you not hear the echo?????

The article was bad enough. The blogging after was even stupider. Election is over, people. Focus on tomorrow.

jhw539: No, jhw539, she is trying to show that Obama did not care for anything except the presidency. I guarantee you any Republican candidate would have gone to the funeral of the woman that might as well have been their mother. And you call us heartless?

I understand why the founding fathers of our nation created the electoral college - so that each state can pick the president they want - to give each state a voice, and althought larger states do have more electoral votes, the electoral college allows smaller poplated states to have more control.
I don't agree with this philosophy! Only the popular vote should elect the president, regardless of the population of each state. Unless it is a landslide, like with Barack Obama, the current system is unfair. As far as I'm concerned, Al Gore was robbed of his presidency!

Another reason to do away with the electoral college, it's day is long gone and it should be eliminated just like buggy whips and button hooks.

This is a clear example of "if you torture the numbers enough, they will confess to anything."

There are a couple of interesting points here:
1. This is a question on how presidents are elected, and not who ran. This is like having question on photofinishing in horse races and then all of sudden everyone talking trash about past horses....it really doesn't matter.
2. While the electoral college is antiquated, it does offer some degree of isolation for each state. Can you image if the margin for victory was 10,000 votes nationally....that would mean that every vote would be recounted...it would be a national circus. Now, if a candidate gets 60% of the vote, no one makes a stink about the 1000 votes that may be questionable in any state.

Waste of time indeed. Like be sorta pregnant...

It is an interesting study though. And the electoral college is necessary in the process to weed out the riffraff of society.

More on the college.

The reason its necessary is to ensure individual state sovereignty. The U.S. is just that, the 'United States', a collection of independent states acting as one entity under the umbrella of a federal government. Just because federal law trumps state law much of the time does not automatically exclude said sovereignty. States remain independent entities and as such each get their fair share of electors, senators and representatives in the umbrella government.

Now as for the electors themselves. Its just a matter of convenience really, the electors cast their vote based on the pool of voters they represent. Think of the elector as a referee. If the vote swings one way or another, no problem. But in the event of a tie, the elector makes their best guess so the election can move forward unimpeded. Without that referee, elections might never see a conclusion due to accusations of this or that, or election recounts (like the hanging chad fiasco in the 2000 election)

This is yet another reason for us, the 'defenders of democracy' in the world, to get rid of the electoral college. We don't even elect our president by popular vote, and the last time a president lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote, we endured 8 years of crap from the right wing.

I doubt that the Michigan Student could find actual-reliable TOTALS..our current President is said to have come out of a VOTING Turmoil--and where are the stats that that has ended or has been FIXED..my thoughts are of a number of VOTES being fraudulent on the side of crony-ism..//..the dubious side of Manifest Destiny seems to have a "speck" of trouble..thanks but no thanks.

"This is like saying John Daly could have won his last major if only he had 7 hole-in-ones."

That is exactly correct. The statistic shown above is meaningless because of the rediculously low probability of it actually happening.

McCain lost because the Better man WON!

Antiquated system for such a super power, needs fixing desperately, AMERICA should be ashamed.

Ned
Good article and I agree with your comment as well. The only thing I object to are comments (not here BTW) that claim a landslide victory when in fact it is only a little more than 50% of the popular vote (52% last I heard), which gives the false impression that he is extremely popular when in fact it was Bush that was extremely unpopular and lost the election for McCain. This too has happened before and we end up with changes that we really did not wan't by voting for the lesser of two evils (political parties not people). But as a Libertarian I'm always disappointed in the results.

t.v.eddie
The better man refused to run and supported Obama instead.

FM
21 electors.

ps
McCain is very popular in PA but Pittsburg and Philly went to Obama.

McCain lost largely because of the enormous effect of the economy on voters, because he did not run a very good campaign and because most voters are stupid.