h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So MR, who is he going to vote for if he hates both of them? Wouldn't it be lovely to have an election where you didn't have to choose the lesser of two evils?

Most of the folks in my area think Bush is the cat's meow. I try to understand their reasoning, but it all boils down to the fact that they would vote for any Republican - no matter what. They shut out the criticisms and pretend that they aren't there. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

There are thirteen other parties supporting candidates for the presidency, and over thirty independent candidates as well. Maybe one of them is more suitable?

If the point is to defeat Bush, then the answer is NO.

You are absolutely correct Lil. If we want the Shrub out, we have to support the other major candidate, in this case Kerry. If the Ralph Naders on the ballot get too many votes, we're scr*w*d.

GDZ,

I hope you meant to say 'too many votes', and not 'on the ballot'. I think having third party candidates on the ballot is always a good thing.

Restpectfully,
Don

Normally I would agree with you DonQuixotic but in this case, I said exactly what I meant to. This election is so crucial that the more 3rd party candidates we have, the worse off we will be because 3rd party candidates tend to take more votes away from the liberal candidate than the conservative. Look at 2000, the result was determined by 537 (I think that is the correct #) votes in Florida. Now, imagine that Mr. Nader had not gotten his 5% of the vote, Al Gore would be president and we would not be in the pridicament that we are, in regards to our freedoms.

GDZ

I don't think we can assume that if Nader hadn't run in 2000, all those voters would automatically have voted for Gore. Ralph only got 2.74% of the vote, and although 38% of those were Democrats, 25% were Republicans and the rest were independents, Greens, Progresives, etc..
Plus, over two million Democrats actually voted for Bush, which was a much larger factor. CNN polling data indicated that if neither Nader of Buchanan had run, Bush would have won the popular vote. Of course this is all highly speculative, but I don't think it's fair to say that Nader is responsible for Bush being elected.

Don

Yes, quite a few Floridians accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan, thanks to that badly-designed butterfly ballot.

Well, things aren't looking bad right now for those of us who want to see the Shrub uprooted: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1291085,00.html

However, I am worried about the Republican convention. Not because I think they're going to put on an outstandingly brilliant show, but because there are going to be huge demos in New York. Although I can very well understand the temptation to greet the Reprobates with a or , I can't help fearing what the right-wing media would do with scenes of the President beseiged by a violent mob.

Cheney refuses to support Shrub over gay marriages in townhall meeting in Davenport.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=998122004

Cracks appear over New York.

In regards to the upcoming convention: why not have both of the major conventions at the same time?

Then they wouldn't get the TV coverage same as in the UK the three big parties all have their annual convention in differnt weeks.

I am planning on totally avoiding the television and quite possibly the radio next week, as I can see my high blood pressure (despite being on medication to control it) going right up to stroke and/or seizure levels.

Notice, DD, that while Cheney is against the Consititutional amendment he's not going out of his way to actively oppose the official Administration policy. If he truly believed in "family values"--not the kind that the religious right have defined, but those that require love and support for all--he would fight Bush's efforts to limit his daughter's civil rights.

Subtle I know but surely a major break for a republican none the less.

I was shocked to see that split occur. And here I thought Cheney was pure evil. I guess he's just 95% evil.

The fact that republicans are campaigning to get Nader on the ballot means that he doesn't belong on the ballot. It's really that simple. The fact that he's accepting their help means that he is no longer fighting from the moral high ground, which he used to have legitimate claim to.

*nods sagely*

The polls are all over the place. Some of them look promising and some of them don't. Why do they bother taking them if they don't actually mean anything? Take Ohio.....please. Last week Newsweek had Kerry ahead by 10 points. Just three or four days later, Zogby had taken Ohio out of the swing column and put it firmly in the Bush column. While the new Newsweek poll has Kerry ahead by 2 points. It's crazy. Zogby had Misery in the Kerry column and Newsweek has Bush ahead by 1 point.

I guess the thing is that you can always look around and find a poll that you like.

It's like that in science too Hypatia - you can a paper which will say that someone observed anything. So in the end, you have to weight the paper with the authors reputation. Who do you trust more, Zogby or Newsweek? Just to add fuel to the fire:

"A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of 761 registered Ohio voters, conducted between August 13-15, showed Kerry at 50 percent, followed by Bush at 41 percent and Independent candidate Ralph Nader at 5 percent. "

From CNN.com, link available upon request

*watches with interest as Ormondroyd is pitched into the library by a pair of security bots then quickly picked up by a second pair and returned to the salon*

769 is considered a sufficient number for a poll?

Well, using some statistics, the margin of error should be 3.6%

Here's the problem, and it's one scientists & engineers deal with everyday. The uncertainty in a measurement of this type can be written as this equation:

U = 1/sqrt(N)

sqrt means take the square root
N is the number of times the measurement is taken

In our case, 1/sqrt(769) = 0.03606 ~ 3.6%

The problem is, that if we were to quadruple the number of people we asked (which would quadruple the amount of work), we would get an uncertainty of:

1/sqrt(3076) = 0.01803 ~ 1.8%

So we only get an improvement of a factor of 2, after expending a factor of 4 more work.

Although, you would think a huge massive media empire like turners/CNN, working along with another empire (USA Today) could afford to ask 3000 people a simple 3 choice question, especially since there are how many million residents of Ohio?

It is encouraging that they're polling registered voters.