An open letter to James Whitson, the editor and Grand Master or whatever of PresidentElect.org, a great resource for historical election maps (though I'm not sure that their analysis is very good this year), concerning
this article (published on the site earlier this year), which to me exemplifies the
first stage of Republican grief, combined with maybe a higher-than-usual amount of craziness. I am busy and lazy, and so chose not to reformat my letter to make it into a normal blog entry, and so I think that it comes off sounding a little pretentious, especially in the conclusion. Oh well. I should add that I got an email from James Whitson in return that was very positive and indicated he agreed with me that the author was wrong, though it still seems strange to me that he published it, considering how it's just so incredibly transparent and not very persuasive, either. Anyway, here it is:
Dear Mr. Whitson,
Normally I enjoy your site and find the content informative and
interesting. However, I felt like I had to write in to complain about
the most recent article posted, "No Matter How Much They Study, the
Electoral College Won't Give a Democrat a Diploma in 2008," by a Mr.
Philip Fowler. The gist of Mr. Fowler's article seems to be that John
McCain will be elected the next president of the United States because
"America seems to prefer having a Republican in the White House, no
matter how low the current occupant's approval ratings." The first
example that Mr. Fowler uses to back up his argument is that of the
election of 1876, which, apart from being far, far removed from our own
era, was conveniently held before the advent of approval rating
polling. He then goes on to say that twentieth-century America "was no
different" in this respect, and to prove this cites the Republican
holds of the White House of sixteen years starting in 1897, twelve
years in 1921, and twelve again in 1981... which leaves out the twenty-year Democratic
hold of the White House from 1933 to 1953. I myself would probably not
go back so far, since the political landscape has changed greatly since
the New Deal, but Mr. Fowler seems to be perfectly comfortable using
antiquated political data to support his ridiculous claims.
Mr. Fowler then moves on to more specifics. He identifies
nineteen states that have went to the Democrat in the last three
elections, which he says that the Democratic nominee could "probably
count on- maybe": New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts,
Vermont, Maine, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Michigan,
Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, California, Hawaii
and DC. However, this list is deceptive because it takes no account of
either margins of victory or polling this cycle. Most political
analysts would probably say that of these states, Michigan, and maybe
Pennsylvania, cannot be relied on this cycle (unless, of course, a
major event suddenly makes the race much more favorable to McCain- but
I'm going to assume for the sake of this response that the election
stays close).
Mr. Fowler then states that the reason that past Democratic
nominees who have lost the election have lost is that they haven't won
any southern states. He then proceeds to identify the "hardcore
(Republican) southern states", again not by looking at this election
season's polls but by their past voting records, so to speak. The
states that Mr. Fowler takes out of contention for the Democrats are
Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and
Texas. Almost any analyst would agree with Mr. Fowler's removal of
Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, and Texas as potential blue
states- but North Carolina and Virginia? Virginia is one of the most
fought-over states this cycle, and the most recent SurveyUSA poll has
Obama four points ahead. North Carolina will probably go Republican
this cycle, but nonetheless, many polls have shown Obama within five
points of McCain (though this may have been changed by the selection of
Sarah Palin- the polls aren't really conclusive on that point).
Mr. Fowler then proceeds to name some "distinct possibilities"
among southern states for Obama- rather strangely, Tennessee,
Louisiana, Arkansas, and Georgia. Though Obama did contest Georgia, he
seems to be consolidating his resources and moving staff out of that
state; the rest of the states named aren't in the realm of
possibilities for Obama at all, barring a last-minute gamechanger.
Does Mr. Fowler intend to make Obama's chances seem lower by naming
such out-of-reach states? Or has he been living under a rock for the
past eight years?
Mr. Fowler then names three swing states that, in most elections,
"could tip the balance either way," but in this election "won't swing
the Democratic nominee's way." These are Missouri, Ohio, and West
Virginia. This is a little strange- West Virginia, assuming a recent
poll that had Obama five points down in that state was merely an
outlier, is not a swing state this election cycle. The trends in
Missouri and Ohio that Fowler asserts show "(the states are) swinging
to the GOP) is ambiguous at best, and over twenty-four years there
actually doesn't seem to be any trend at all in Missouri- from a six
point Republican win in 1980 to a seven point win in 2004. The
twenty-four-year trend actually favors Democrats in Ohio- from a
ten-point to a two-point loss. And a side note: Mr. Fowler says that
only one Democrat, Bill Clinton, was able to swing all three states his
way, "but President Clinton's last win was a dozen years ago."
Strange... wasn't Mr. Fowler just citing precedent from 1876?
And now for the so-called "19 GOP Faithful," the 19 states that
have voted for the Republicans in the past three election cycles:
Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
Mississippi, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South
Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and Alaska. Again,
this list is misleading, not taking into account recent polls or
margins of victory. Again, Virginia and North Carolina pop up- I've
already mentioned them. There are several other states in here that
were competitive before the RNC, but now aren't. And then there's... Colorado.
Colorado is one of the most hotly contested states this polling cycle,
and polls show the race very close there. This makes me wonder if the
author pays attention to polls, or even political news this cycle, at
all- to show such a level of ignorance about this year's race and then
write an article analyzing it- and get it published online- is truly
amazing.
Mr. Fowler proceeds to take the absurdity to a whole new level- by
adding in as "out of reach" three "heavily Republican" states that
"barely" went for Clinton in 1996, he contends, only because of the
presence of Ross Perot in the race (even though exit polls showed that
Perot's followers would have split roughly evenly between Clinton and
Bush if he wasn't in the race). Aside from larger qualms about the
author's methodology, it seems inconsistent to me to throw out
information from twelve years These three states are Kentucky,
Arizona, and Nevada. I agree that Kentucky is going to be a deep red
this election cycle, and Arizona a (less deep) shade of red, but Nevada
is yet another important swing state this cycle, with polls there
showing the race within five points. And the oh-so-helpful chart that
plots out the three states' 'GOP-trending,' to paraphrase the author,
which according to him is "just too strong not to count" (his
underline). Well, if you actually look at the twenty-four-year chart
that the author has so kindly layed out for us, you'll notice that yes,
Kentucky has a strong 24-year trend towards the Republicans- nineteen
points, to be exact. Pretty big swing, right? Then you look at
Arizona and notice a 22-point swing... towards the Democrats. And Nevada has a 32-point Democratic swing over 24 years,
from a 35-point Republican win in 1980 to a 3-point Republican win in
2004. Might that indicate something other than what Mr. Fowler is
telling us?
Two more (small) points: Mr. Fowler says that the grand total of
the electoral votes of all the states that he has concluded are denied
to the Democrats is 274, leaving 266 to the Democrats: "nine electoral
votes shy (of victory)." It's actually four; probably three, since the
Democrats are likely to control a majority of the state delegations in
the House in the 111th Congress and therefore control who gets to be
the next president in the event of a tie. And the author also says
that if McCain "can wrest even one more state from the Democrat's
possibility column: Pennsylvania, California, New Jersey, or
Wisconsin," then McCain wins. California? Excuse me? California
voted for Bill Clinton by fourteen points in 1992, and hasn't been
competitive on the presidential level since.
To Mr. Fowler: get your facts straight, get yourself informed, and get rid of your 1988 mindset. It doesn't flatter.
*Blogger's Note: Some other things I enjoyed in the article but didn't mention in the letter was the creative and frequent use of bold and italicized letters and underlines, and also large font size. I mean, who knew that you could combine all four at the same time? Philip Fowler must truly be a genius. And I also loved the opening sentence, where the author implies that reasons you might expect John McCain to win include his charisma, politics, and campaign style. And does anyone know who this guy is? Based on a Google search, he may be a database analyst in Indianapolis, a professional extra in films, a lawyer, or any one of many other things. I take it that this means he isn't a well-known elections forecaster? And lastly: because, as I said earlier, I am busy and lazy, I didn't proofread this, so feel free to put any corrections in the comments chain.
