Voting is today

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woody

woody

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If you live in a state having a primary today (and are registered to vote) remember today is the day to vote. For Democrats, delegates are handed out in proportion to the number of votes the candidate gets (in most states). So your vote actually counts. Republican primaries are mostly winner-take-all, but still, you may live in a close state.

For news, here is a pretty good site:

RealClearPolitics - Opinion, News, Analysis, Videos and Polls
 
Is it not the case that under risk neutrality a Republican vote is worth the same as a Democrat ?

Under winner-takes-all, there is a surprisingly large chance that you personally get to choose the next Republican nominee. Although millions votes may be cast, the difference will be much much smaller, perhaps only thousands. I guess the Republican candidate has 1/4 chance of winning.

Would you pay $1 to enter a lottery to personally choose the next president ?

This is not wildly unlike some interview questions, so think about it.
 
Hey Dominic, with that kind of thinking, you might enjoy this site:

http://www.ftpredict.com/

You can trade futures on elections. If real money were involved, I bet this would be the best predictor.
 
Uh oh. My inner political junkie's coming out to play play devil's advocate here...

The types of people who would trade in a political futures market would be the small subset of people who both follow politics and are risk-seeking enough to wager money on it. I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that this self-selecting community is not exactly a random sample of likely voters. Political futures markets tend to turn on political news and polling reports, things that the majority of voters are simply too ill-informed to care much about. (Remember that undecided voter from 2000 debates who was leaning towards Bush and away from Gore, claiming that her most important issue was the environment?) This means that the market participants react to the political market more like pundits than regular voters, and the pundits haven't been calling things too well lately. I simply don't see any mechanism by which futures markets would be any more efficient at predicting political outcomes than standard polling.

Not to mention the fact that there have been several elections since the advent of these markets, and the empirical evidence of their predictive efficacy is far from solid...
Why were the political futures markets so wrong about Obama and Clinton? - By Daniel Gross - Slate Magazine
 
These are fantasy futures, so they are not much better than people on chat boards betting based on news and polls. But if real money was involved, I think greed would change things. The futures may even affect the vote. This is of course illegal for a reason.
 
I really don't like politics but I read somewhere that the size of your wallet is directly proportional to your inclination towards the right... i.e. republicans. I think there was a cartoon displaying that somewhere.
 
I don't think it's illegal, actually. Intrade.com uses real money, and it's totally above board.
 
Intrade is a cool site. But they are an Irish corporation and their FAQ says:

Is it Legal for me to use Intrade where I live?

The simple answer is that we cant be sure and this is why we require you to confirm to us that your activities are permissible from your own location. If you are in any doubt if your activities are legal from your location then you should not use our service until you take suitable professional advise.
Click to expand...

And this article:

Bettors risking millions online to predict election outcome - The Boston Globe

States:

Oh, sure, it's illegal to wager on a presidential race in the United States. But thanks to the Internet we now live in an age of gambling without borders, which enables Americans -- along with the rest of the global village -- to get a piece of the action.
Click to expand...

So I suppose technically it is illegal, but still possible.
 
I really don't like politics but I read somewhere that the size of your wallet is directly proportional to your inclination towards the right

Makes sense, but not as an economic term. America has about the highest correlation between wealth in generations on the planet. Not only higher than other developed nations, but also some oil states, which is quite a trick.
Thus the US has a higher % of people who got their money through dumb luck of birth than other countries, hence they support a party which advocates the teaching of Intelligent design.
In countries where your wealth is more a function of your ability and effort, a candidate that openly supported Creationism would be laughed out of political life.

Some in this forum have already seen what happens when Creationists get control of the US immigration system.
 
A big bit of the game that seems hardly covered is the game theory of who is VP to who ?
If Obama pulls ahead, would Clinton agree to be VP ?
She's just young enough to retry in 8 years time.

Obama's younger, and his lack of experience is clearly a factor for those who are not committed to a candidate. 8 years as VP might swing that.

But...
It's 8 years, not 4.
Unless the Democrats implode, it will be Hillary or Obama. The sort of thing that would stop them being re-elected is the kind of Bush-level screwup that takes down anyone associated with him. It is not a coincidence that the Republican who is doing best is the one most unlike Bush.

There is a momentum term in Obama's support that is distinct from Clinton's.
If she goes down, nearly all of her followers and donors will switch to Obama with not one backward look or regret.
However Obama has an organisation and following strong amongst smart young blacks and whites. If he drops out, then the Democrats will disillusion many blacks, who will simply not vote. A good chunk of the younger whites will also just drift off, and some of them seem to like McCain, mostly because they despise the evangelicals who are sworn enemies of McCain.
Hispanics seem to prefer Clinton to Obama, but also rather like McCains immigration policy.

Hillary is a love/hate person, few neutrals, and before Obama arose many people wondered how she could possibly reach to people outside the Democrats.

Also the bizarrely undemocratic method used by the Democrats which gives their "VIPs" vast votes in the choosing of a candidate mean there is a large chance that the candidate with the fewer votes win. Given that Hillary is a creature of the Democrat machine, she holds those aces.

Thus if Hillary does not make Obama a good offer, she dramatically increases the chance of losing.
 
I would be very surprised if Hillary and Obama were on the same ticket in November. Very surprised.

Think about one thing though. If Hillary is elected, and stays for 8 years, that means our country would have the same two families in the White House for 36 years. 36 years! A substantial portion of our population would never have voted for president without a Bush or Clinton as one of the choices. Doesn't sound much like democracy does it.

The best argument for Obama, IMO, is that he appeals to a broad base of people, infusing them with patriotism and hope. Do you hear everyone shouting USA USA at his speeches? That's normally a Republican thing. Policy-wise, he and Clinton are not that much different. But Obama is known for an ability to compromise and achieve incremental results that work towards an end goal.

We can divide the country by race if we want, but I would argue we are more divided by class. This argument is too long for this thread.

What Dominic says is correct about Obama's supporters. They will not come out for Hillary. Obama has a lot of the independent vote, and believe it or not those voters will go for Mcain over Hillary in the general election. Obama has brought new voters to the plate and they would likely stay home if he's not the candidate. Many independents have switched to Democrats just so they can vote for Obama in the primary (in states with closed primaries). This is pretty incredible.

Dominic also touches on the most un-democratic part of the primary process--the Super Delegates. No, they are not able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but they are able to give the nomination to the candidate they want regardless of how the people vote. We'll see if these Super Delegates start baling on Hillary in favor of the Obama wave or if they tilt the scales in full favor of Clinton. If the latter happens, you can be assured that Hillary will not have the democratic mandate, will not get a large turnout for the Dems, and will lose to Mcain-Huckaby in November.

The next few weeks should be mighty interesting.
 
I think Clinton has a stronger incentive to pick Obama as VP than Obama has to pick Clinton. He would add his supporters, his air of bipartisan compromise (which is my least favorite thing about him, to be honest), and his message of change to her message of competence and experience. I don't see how a Clinton/Obama ticket could lose, especially against a McCain/Huckabee ticket, with its combination of old angry guy and squirrel-eating nutjob. If Clinton doesn't pick Obama as VP, I think she still stands a good chance of winning, though the race becomes a bit harder.

Obama, on the other hand, has little to gain by picking Clinton as his VP. I see him going for Jim Webb, or maybe Kathleen Sebelius, either of which would reinforce his message of getting new blood into Washington.

As for myself, I agree with Woody: the two families passing the Presidency back and forth like that for over a quarter of a century smells a bit too strongly of the Plantagenets during the Wars of the Roses. That's what's pushed me over into the Obama camp for now. Still, if Clinton wins the nomination, I'd vote (and campaign) for her enthusiastically, and not just because McCain scares the living daylights out of me. She may not be perfect (far from it, in fact), but she's a smart, capable, hard-working American with a firm grasp on the issues facing the country. Sounds like good Presidential material to me.
 
I only have three issues:

- Don't mess with the economy
- Don't raise my taxes
- Don't mess with the medical system
 
A McCain-Huckabee does look so inevitable, as a balanced ticket.
Indeed the whole thing is shaping up remarkably like the last season of the West Wing.

A charismatic, honest Republican candidate is unelectable, so gets some Creationist jerk to lend his support.
The Democrat candidate is young coloured, and ropes in an older guy (Kennedy ?) to add weight.

To increase the remarkable coincidence, the winner inherits a badly run war created by the blundering of their predecessor.
 
There is a Greek saying on politics roughly translated.... "If you are young and not a LIBERAL you have no HEART, and if you are old and not CONSERVATIVE, you have no BRAIN"!!
 
I will resist the strong temptation to bash candidate I dislike. But I am giving odds on who will take that gauntlet and start a flame war... I mean political discussion.
 

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