Who Should Win the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election?

[RC]

Eric Schulman
Alexandria, Virginia

Abstract
Howard Dean or Wesley Clark
(or President George W. Bush, should he order the combat use of nuclear weapons).

1. Introduction
Two years ago, we discovered the holy grail of Washington D. C., a formula to predict the electability of a presidential candidate before he or she is nominated (Schulman 2001). Now that it seems clear that George W. Bush will receive the Republican nomination, we have applied this formula to both him and to the nine currently-declared Democratic presidential candidates (plus three others who may decide to run). To review for those few readers who have not memorized the formula:

Electability = 4P - V - S + R + 9G + 95DCI + 95GEN + 95NUC,

where P is the number of years the candidate served as President, V is the number of years the candidate served as Vice President, S is the number of years the candidate served as U. S. Senator, R is the number of years the candidate served as U. S. Representative, and the Boolean variables DCI/GEN/NUC are 1 if the candidate served as Director of Central Intelligence (e.g., George H. W. Bush), was a general officer in the United States Armed Forces (e.g., Dwight D. Eisenhower), or ordered the combat use of nuclear weapons (e.g., Harry S. Truman), respectively. In each U. S. Presidential election between 1932 and 2000, the candidate with the higher electability won.


2. Methods and Results
We used the equation above to determine the electability of George W. Bush and twelve declared or potential Democratic presidential candidates. The results are shown in the table below:

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3fs8i/air/pres2004b.html

[boxster]

1. Oh, please. Anyone with a fairly decent understanding of math

could come up with a formula AFTER the fact, especially with 8 different parameters.

One of the parameters just happens to be Director of the CIA? That'll apply to a lot of presidential candidates. How about exactly one?

Oh, and "used nuclear weapons". There must be a ton of candidates that have that experience.

This is just an elaborate card trick.

[RC]

2. I know that...

"This is just an elaborate card trick."

[boxster]

5. Sorry, didn't mean to offend.

My "oh, please" was directed at the writer of the "trick", not you.

Sorry if it seemed otherwise.

[dofus]

3. What's really amazing

is that George W Bush gets points for having been Director of the CIA when it was his father who held that job.

[arcos]

6. he's not getting those points... n/t

[karlschneider]

4. Lies, Damn lies, statistics and this bit of tomfoolery....

:eyes: