Let's Talk Sense...

Sunday, September 24, 2000 Volume XXV, No. 29
Roswell, New Mexico

In this issue:

Who's Going to Win?
--------Part 2-------
Electoral College Analysis---
State-by-state


· Electoral College Watch: Bush Team??
· My Projections
· No Criticism of Bush Campaign Intended
· The South: Bush Comes Roaring Back!
· Where Does This Leave Bush?
· The West (15 states, 100 Electoral Votes)

Electoral College Watch: We still wonder about the Bush Team

Well, things seem to be going marginally better for the Bush-Cheney team. However, reports by the Annenberg Foundation and Kathleen Hall Jamieson and other "election analysts" found more disturbing news about the Electoral College Intelligence Quotient of Bush 2000. Reports from this past summer show that Gore outspent Bush significantly in 17 key states (true tossup states---i.e. not Illinois). This while Bush was spending more overall!

Not only did they 1) not take advantage of their advantages, and 2) fail to define Gore in the spring, and 3) wander aimlessly in Illinois, West Virginia, Minnesota, and California, but 4) they allowed Gore to establish leads, or significantly close the gap in the true battleground states. (Pennsylvania and maybe even New Hampshire were probably lost during this period.)

It would be one thing if they had had funding problems, but they didn't.

The Bush team may well pull this thing out, right now I am believing they will. And they will have every right to crow about their competence. But the reality will be more like a basketball team that commits 38 turnovers, misses 25 free-throw and still wins by 2 in overtime. There are a number of basic factors this team has apparently not had a handle on.

My Projections

To allay further questions, let me say that I can't help what the polls say. (I have had numerous comments about how my projections don't match the polls---either in individual states or nationally.) My projections are not based on polls----although, unlike many conservatives I hear from, I believe most polling is highly accurate. Understanding what polls mean and do not mean, as well as the ability to read the internals of a poll, causes the disconnect between the pollster and the consumer, i. e. the American voter, the consumer of news and information.

My projections are based on trends within each state's national elections AND the image/policy positions/ideology each candidate has been able to project to this point. It is a complex process which includes formulae for estimating the total vote and the trends among new arrivals (based on census data) over the past two presidential cycles.

No Criticism of Bush Campaign Intended

The comments I have made about the Bush campaign and its decisions about mapping its way to 270 Electoral votes, is in no way intended to be anti-Bush, or a criticism of his campaign. I believe the Bush triumvirate which heads up his campaign to be more talented than any we have ever seen. I am confident he will be on message at the end, and will do well in the debates.

The "mapping and media concentration" errors which I perceive to have been committed are of a fundamental kind which should have been headed off at numerous levels of know-how and responsibility within both the RNC and a Bush strategic planning committee many months ago.

The South (11 States)
(123 electoral votes): Virginia(13), North Carolina(14), Kentucky(8), Tennessee(11), South Carolina(8), Georgia(13), Alabama(9), Florida(25), Mississippi(7), Louisiana(9), and Arkansas(6).

Bush Comes Roaring Back!
(and Takes Tennessee Too!)

Bush wins the South 123-0. Surprising the pollsters and the Gore camp, he takes Tennessee.

"Earth in the Balance" penetrates more Louisiana voters than is thought possible----anyone who even knows anybody involved in petroleum exploration or production is scared out of their wits. Gore ends up blowing the Cajun Land for no reason other than his own nuttiness. Otherwise it would have been an easy win for the Democrat nominee.

In neighboring Arkansas, embarrassment at Gore's non-stop lying (for no apparent reason---at least Clinton often had reasons to lie) and their guilt about Clinton, as well as the conservative trend in the state shifts the state to the Bush column.

The trend toward racial polarization in southern voting continues unabated. Blacks keep nudging their voting participation percentages upward to begin matching their actual share of the population. This means that in places like Mississippi and South Carolina Republicans must get ever higher, and seemingly improbable, percentages from white voters---many of whom are by long-standing tradition, Democrats, especially at the local level. In some states even when the GOP is able to get nearly 70% of the white vote (or even higher), the results are still very, very close.

Using Mississippi as an example (where Blacks make up 36% of the population), if Gore were to get 95% of 36% the vote, Bush would have to receive a near astounding 76% among white voters. As it is, he has to win by a solid 2-1 (67%) margin among white voters.

Make no mistake about it, borrowing a page from Tip O'Neill, Lawton Chiles, Bill Clinton, and just about every Democrat who has robbed oxygen from the environment over the past 20 years, Al Gore WILL try his best to scare the living daylights out of everyone he regards as a mindless codger----and he apparently regards all Americans over 55 as mindless codgers.

Demagoguery on social security and any other programs he can conjure up will be the theme of the month in Florida this October. Gore will do better than he deserves, but the return of huge margins among Cuban-Americans (they were not there for Dole) in south Florida for Bush will offset the demagoguery---- which will not be as effective this time around anyway. The GOP will take Florida by a hundred thousand votes.

45 days out, this is the way we see it:

(Popular vote, in 000's)

State

Bush

Gore

Nader

Buch.

Others

Virginia

1,222

1,124

37

61

26

N. Carolina

1,350

1,198

----

32

20

Kentucky

731

685

13

17

12

Tennessee

945

940

15

46

14

S. Carolina

605

533

13

29

10

Georgia

1,243

1,075

----

48

25

Alabama

810

727

11

30

16

Florida

2,670

2,560

70

70

30

Mississippi

480

413

9

26

12

Louisiana

847

840

17

39

27

Arkansas

451

417

12

18

12

Totals

11,354

10,512

197

416

204

Perc

50.05%

46.34%

0.86%

1.83%

0.90%


22,683,000 votes

Where does this leave Bush?

Well, it leaves him down only 123-127----lots better off than he was coming out of the East.

Kentucky (and Indiana) will be the first to announce results on election night. In '92 and '96, I instantly knew that my projections had been correct when Kentucky went for Clinton (Indiana results reveal nothing----if a Republican nominee were to lose the Hoosier State you would know he is headed for a huge loss, maybe 538-0). Kentucky will be safely in the Bush column.

He still has to sweep the West---not the Pacific, the West, and he has to win Ohio, Michigan, Missouri and a couple of more key states.

Can he do it? We'll see in the coming issues.

In the next issue:
The West (15 states)
(100 electoral votes)

Texas (32), Oklahoma (8), Kansas(6), Nebraska (5), South Dakota(3), North Dakota(3), Montana(3), Wyoming (3), Colorado(8), New Mexico(5), Arizona(8), Utah(5), Idaho(4), Nevada(4), Alaska(3)

About the makeup of the 15 "western states."

I am from the school of American demography which holds that some of the "traditional" divisions of American regions---often developed by journalists of the last century---make no sense.

The idea, for example, of a "Midwest" stretching from Youngstown, Ohio on the Pennsylvania border, to Scottsbluff, Nebraska, ignores true regionalism---the history, culture, and social mores which make and shape regional interests.

I start the West (and I am not alone in this) with the six states bisected by the 100th Meridian---from North Dakota to Texas. That line is a clear demarcation in history, from the settlement of the West to the common appeals of prairie populism of the 19th Century to the common thread of modern-day conservative Republican leanings (at least in national contexts).

The eight states of the Rocky Mountain region share most of these historical experiences. Alaska, as part of the cordillera which ties into the Rockies, is far closer to the West, in every sense, than it is to any of its "Pacific" Region sister states---Washington, Oregon, California and Hawaii. The fact that Alaska cruises depart from Seattle, or that there are in fact economic ties between those two points is completely irrelevant.