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Edited on Wed Oct-27-04 12:51 AM by BullGooseLoony
Early voting is supposedly being won by Bush 51-47, according to an ABC exit poll. Let's determine how accurate that poll is going to be in predicting the vote of the nation as a whole on 11/2:
Strong Bush states: Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Idaho, Montana, ND, Louisiana, Tennesee, North Carolina, Georgia = 107 EVs.
Leaning Bush states: WV, Arkansas, Arizona = 21 EVs.
True battleground states (tossups): Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Colorado, NM = 53 EVs.
Leaning Kerry: Oregon, Vermont = 10 EVs.
Strong Kerry: California, Michigan = 72 EVs.
Assuming each candidate gets 50% of each true battleground state, that's a ratio of 107 Bush EVs vs. 72 Kerry EVs in strong states, and among all states it's a 128/82 advantage for Bush (not counting the battleground states- if you want to split those between the two you get 154.5 for Bush vs. 108.5 for Kerry).
But this ratioing doesn't really work all that well anyway, as EVs aren't good indicators of population. Wyoming has about a half a million people in it, 1/70th of the population of California, but with 3 EVs it has 1/18th of the EVS.
So, let's look at the population of the strong Bush, leaning Bush, battleground, leaning Kerry and Strong Kerry states, all taken from the US Census Bureau:
----------------------------------- POPULATIONS
Strong Bush population:
Texas 22,118,509 Oklahoma 3,511,532 Kansas 2,723,507 Idaho 1,366,332 Montana 917,621 Louisiana 4,496,334 North Dakota 633,837 Georgia 8,684,715 North Carolina 8,407,248 Tennessee 5,841,748
Total = about 58,701,390 people in strong Bush states.
Leaning Bush population:
West Virginia 1,810,354 Arkansas 2,725,714 Arizona 5,580,811
Total = about 10,116,880 people in leaning Bush states.
Battleground states:
Florida 17,019,068 Iowa 2,944,062 Nevada 2,241,154 Colorado 4,550,688 New Mexico 1,874,614
Total = about 28,629,590 people in battleground states.
Leaning Kerry states:
Oregon 3,559,596 Vermont 619,107
Total = about 4,178,703 people in leaning Kerry states.
Strong Kerry states:
California 35,484,453 Michigan 10,079,985
Total = about 45,564,440 people in strong Kerry states.
So that's 45.56 million people in strong Kerry states vs. 58.7 million people in strong Bush states. Split the population of the battleground states between them (we're going to ignore the leaner states for now), again assuming 50% split (we have to do this because we're looking for percentages, here), and the total comes out to 59.879 million for Kerry, and 73.016 million for Bush. Add those together, you get 132,895,200 total, with 54.94% of the population in solid Bush states, and 45.06% in Kerry territory. ****By these numbers alone, you can see how Bush is WAY behind where he should be.****
Now let's look at the leaners: 10,116,880 in Bush-leaning states vs. 4,178,703 in Kerry-leaning states. So, Bush-leaning states engaging in early voting outnumber Kerry-leaning states by 2-1 in population- this should push-up Bush's numbers above 50% even more, although it's hard to gauge how much without getting into specific percentages. If you like, you can say that about 53% of leaning states go to each candidate, which would add these numbers to each:
Bush leaning- for Bush 5,361,946 Bush leaning- for Kerry 4,754,934 Kerry leaning- for Kerry 2,214,713 Kerry leaning- for Bush 1,963,990
That's a total of 7,325,936 added to Bush, and 6,969,647 added to Kerry, for totals of 80,341,940 for Bush vs. 66,848,650 for Kerry. That adds up to 147,190,600 total, ****with 54.58% of them going for Bush, and 45.42% going to Kerry.*** Again, those numbers do not bode well for Bush if he's only pulling in 51%. It simply should be higher.
In short, Bush's 51% to 47% lead with the massive advantage he has in population is well behind where he should be.
BTW, I didn't even factor in the fact that, all in all, Bush's "strong" states are MUCH stronger than Kerry's. Bush's vote percentages in his strong states get up into the mid-sixties, while Kerry's only get into the high fifties in California, not even that high in Michigan. This must mean that the battleground states are voting heavily for Kerry.
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