Procrastination

جمعرات 18 دسمبر 2008Thursday, December 18, 2008

Georgia Senate Runoff Analysis

This is the last in my series analyzing the 2008 election in the state of Georgia. I looked at statewide numbers in my first article. The next article looked at county level results and also racial polarization. In the 3rd article, I analyzed the results in Fulton county and specifically the precincts in which our team of Obama volunteers worked.

Georgia has a law according to which a winning candidate needs 50% + 1 of the votes cast, otherwise there is a runoff election between the top two candidates. In the general election on November 4, incumbent Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss failed to get 50% and thus was forced into a runoff with the Democratic candidate Jim Martin. Interestingly, this was the second runoff for Jim Martin this year since he had won in a runoff election in the Democratic primary too after no one got 50% in the crowded filed of Democratic Senate candidates in the primary election.

I did not work for the Jim Martin campaign and in fact was fairly certain that he would lose the runoff because Georgia is still a Republican state and there are a lot more habitual Republican voters here than Democratic ones. The Obama campaign had done a good job of registering voters and then bringing the sporadic voters out to vote for the general election, but there was no way that could be repeated for a runoff. Also, from our voter contact when we were volunteering for the Obama campaign, we knew that Sarah Palin was quite popular among Republicans here, perhaps more than John McCain (McCain got 31.6% of the vote and came in 2nd behind Huckabee and barely ahead of Romney in the Feb 5 primary.)

	Chambliss		Martin		Total
	Votes	%	Votes	%	Votes
General	1,867,090	49.75%	1,757,419	46.83%	3,752,577
Runoff	1,226,730	57.46%	908,222	42.54%	2,134,952

As you can see, a lot less people voted in the runoff than in the general election. Let’s look at the voter retention rate, i.e. the number of votes for a candidate in the runoff as a proportion of the votes in the general election.

	Chambliss	Martin	Total
Vote Retention	65.7%	51.7%	56.9%

While only about 57% of the voters in the general voted in the runoff, they were not evenly distributed between the parties. Democrat Jim Martin barely managed to get half of his voters to pull the lever for him again while Republican Saxby Chambliss was successful with almost two-thirds of his voters. This is why the Republican margin increased from 2.92% on November 4 to 14.92% on December 2.

Let’s plot the percentage of votes the two candidates got in each county in the general and the runoff elections. The circles represent individual counties and their area is proportional to the number of registered voters in that county.

Chambliss performed better in all counties and Martin performed worse in almost all in the runoff when compared with the general election.

Another way to look at the data is to compare the vote retention rates for Chambliss and Martin.

Chambliss got about 60-70% of his general election vote in most counties, especially the more populous counties while Martin only got 45-60% in most. The only counties close to parity in terms of vote retention were really small.

I was wondering whether there was any pattern to the vote retention in terms of partisanship. So I plotted the Chambliss and Martin retention rates against the percentage in that county that voted for Obama on November 4.

This is a slight upward trend as the counties get more Democratic. However it is still very low.

We see much less of a pattern here.

By Zack at 12:24 AM in Politics | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

اتوار 14 دسمبر 2008Sunday, December 14, 2008

Georgia Election Analysis III

I did some analysis of the Presidential election in the state of Georgia in two installments. Today I’ll look at Fulton county where I live as well as the specific precincts in Alpharetta, Milton and South Atlanta where our team worked as volunteers for the Obama campaign.

Year	D	R	Turnout	%Turnout
2000	57.53%	39.68%	264,276	65.06%
2004	59.35%	39.99%	330,791	74.15%
2008	67.07%	32.09%	405,531	73.11%

There was a 15.3% swing towards Obama in Fulton county compared to Kerry in 2004. The turnout, based on the number of registered voters, stayed constant from 2004 to 2008. However, if we use the voting age population estimates (VAP) for Fulton county, we get the following turnout rates:

Year	Turnout based on VAP
2000	42.30%
2004	48.00%
2008	52.72%

This shows a bigger turnout in 2008. One reason for the discrepancy between the turnout in the first table and this one is that the Obama campaign focused a lot on voter registration this year and thus got more people registered.

Also, please note that the VAP turnout estimate is probably lower than the real turnout which should be calculated as a proportion of the voting eligible population.

Out of the 3,924,440 votes cast for President in Georgia this year, 2,084,179 (or 53.11%) were cast during advance/early voting or by absentee mail-in. In Fulton county, 184,240 votes (45.42%) were cast early, absentee or provisional out of a total of 405,628 votes cast. This is very unusual for Georgia and Fulton as can be seen in the table below for Fulton county. (This shows the numbers for the 2004 general election for President, the 2006 election for Governor, the 2008 Presidential Primary on Super Tuesday and the 2008 general Presidential election.)

Year	Absentee/Early/Provisional votes
2004 Prez	12.68%
2006 Gov	11.76%
2008 Prez Primary	7.65%
2008 Prez	45.42%

In the 2008 general election, the Obama campaign tried to get everyone to vote early. The effect of this can be seen in the early voting numbers in Fulton county where Obama had a 49.5% lead in early voting compared to a 22.9% lead on polling day itself.

The large numbers of early voters have complicated my precinct level analysis. The precinct level data does not include early or absentee votes which are listed separately as one per county. Still let’s see what we can conclude for our precincts.

For the Get Out the Vote (GOTV) campaign in October and then the first four days of November, we were based in the South Atlanta precincts, 12E1, 12J and 12T, which are just north of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. These precincts are heavily Democratic (more than 90%) but there are a lot of sporadic voters there. So the main task was to get the vote out.

Election	12E1		12J		12T
	Voted	%Turnout	Voted	%Turnout	Voted	%Turnout
2004	518	49.5%	1024	59.7%	566	62.3%
2006	224	22.1%	473	29.2%	581	35.8%
2008 Primary	280	27.5%	564	34.6%	609	39.1%
2008	747	55.1%	1,360	67.3%	1,232	68.0%

Thus, turnout as a percentage of registered voters increased from 57.4% to 64.3% while actual number of people who voted in these three precincts increased from 2,108 to 3,339, a 58% increase in the number of voters. Compare this 58% increase to a 22.6% increase over the whole of Fulton county and a 19.6% increase over all of Georgia. I am actually pleased at these numbers and I am sure all of our Obama team would be too.

Let’s now look at the precincts in Alpharetta and Milton where we made the most calls, starting in August, for identifying voters, persuading them and then getting them out to vote. The table below shows the Republican advantage over Democrats. For the 2008 Presidential Primary, I added the votes for all the Republican Presidential candidates together and did the same for the Democrats. Let’s take the example of ML01A in the 2008 general election, McCain got 73.5% and Obama got 25.3%, which means a Republican advantage of 73.5-25.3=48.2%.

Precinct	2006	2008 Primary	2008
AP07B	+66.0%	+33.2%	+40.9%
ML01A	+64.0%	+34.4%	+48.2%
ML02A	+67.4%	+40.8%	+62.6%
ML02B	+68.0%	+45.2%	+57.5%
ML03	+66.9%	+45.7%	+59.5%
ML04	+65.2%	+38.5%	+56.5%
ML05	+48.9%	+14.9%	+37.7%
ML06	+29.9%	-11.4%	+8.2%
ML07	+65.1%	+41.8%	+52.0%

I couldn’t find the data for the 2004 Presidential election for the Milton (MLxx) precincts but AP07B had a 42.9% Republican advantage in 2004.

Before I opine on those results, let’s look at the turnout (as a percentage of registered voters) in these precincts:

Precinct	2008 Turnout
AP07B	44.6%
ML01A	44.6%
ML02A	55.3%
ML02B	55.3%
ML03	52.5%
ML04	44.7%
ML05	44.2%
ML06	41.9%
ML07	54.2%

We already know that about half of Georgia and Fulton county voters voted early. The early voters are not listed in the last two tables for the Alpharetta/Milton precincts because they are not reported that way by Fulton county. Looking at the election day turnout for Milton, it seems that fewer than half of the voters voted early.

Because we only have the vote breakdown by party for those who voted in person at their polling location on November 4 and a significant number of voters had voted early in 2008, we cannot really say what the margin between McCain and Obama was in Alpharetta and Milton. There is no reason to believe that the early voters had the same partisan distribution as those on election day. In fact, there is reason to believe that the early voters were more likely to be Obama supporters. The Obama campaign had been working hard asking people to vote early. Also, in the whole of Fulton county, Obama had a 49.5% advantage in early voting compared to a 22.9% advantage on polling day. Thus, the very large Republican margin in the Milton precincts in 2008 is most likely not correct. I can say with certainty that McCain won all those precincts except ML06 but probably with a somewhat smaller margin. Even then, Republicans had a huge advantage here in North Fulton. Unfortunately, we don’t have any way of finding out whether our team was able to reduce that Republican advantage or not.

Next: A look at the Senate runoff between Jim Martin and Saxby Chambliss.

By Zack at 1:33 PM in Politics | Comments (5) | TrackBack (1)

منگل 9 دسمبر 2008Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Georgia Election Analysis II

Continuing with my election analysis in Georgia, my data source is the Secretary of State’s website:

• 2004 County level results
• 2004 county registration and turnout statistics by race and gender
• 2008 county level results
• 2008 county voter registration statistics by race and gender

Let’s start with a graph showing Obama’s share of the vote in each Georgia county versus Kerry’s share four years ago. Please note that the size of the circles is proportional to the total number of registered voters in that county.

Since there was an 11.4% swing towards Obama compared to Kerry, a majority of the counties show a larger percentage for Obama as compared to Kerry. This is especially true of large (in population) counties. Since Georgia has 159 counties, let’s redo the same graph separately for the large, middle and small counties.

In the largest 53 counties (min number of registered voters 17,354 and max 554,682), only the most Republican counties got more Republican compared to 2004.

In the middle 53 counties (registered voters ranging from 8,182 to 17,018), the situation was a lot more mixed, but Obama did lose a lot of ground in some.

In the 53 counties with the lowest populations (registered voters ranging from 1,371 to 7,988), Obama did better in some and worse in others. However, these rural counties don’t have many people and probably didn’t matter much at all for the Presidential election.

Since one major reason for Obama’s better performance was the higher turnout and vote from African Americans, let’s look at the same data, i.e. Obama’s total vote share compared to Kerry’s, but by categorizing counties by how white they are. I am using the percentage of registered white voters in a county as a proxy for the percent population that’s non-Hispanic White in a county.

The whitest third of the counties are at least 77% white. Do note that the scales of this graph are different from the earlier graphs. Obama did worse in the smaller, whiter counties than Kerry and better in the bigger white counties. But he didn’t get more than about 35% of the vote in any of them.

The middle third counties by white percentage of the population have about 64% to 77% whites. Obama generally did better than Kerry here. Obama’s share of the vote varied from 27-45% in these counties except for Clarke county (65%) which contains Athens and the University of Georgia.

In the bottom third counties, the white percentage is 18-64% and Obama did very well here.

Let’s look at Obama’s share of the vote in each county plotted against the percentage of whites and blacks in that county.

The red line in both graphs is the least squares fit. As is obvious, Obama’s share of the vote decreases as the percentage of whites increases in a county.

In the previous two graphs, we looked at Obama’s share of the total vote. So we cannot completely tease out the effects of a large African American turnout or the how the white voters voted in each county. Since we can’t have the numbers for Obama’s share of the white vote in each county, we’ll make some simplifying assumptions to guesstimate it:

1. The African American turnout in each county was the same as the total voter turnout in that county. This is approximately true at the state level, but could be wrong for some counties.
2. 98% of the African American voters voted for Obama. This is the percentage at the state level.
3. The number of voters who are not African American or White is small enough (5%) that we can approximate the white vote share by simply excluding the African American vote.

We know this procedure gives us only a guesstimate of the nonblack vote since in one small county (Clay) this results in Obama getting -1.85% of the nonblack vote. In the other 158 counties, Obama’s share of the nonblack vote varies from 4.4% (Randolph county) to 54.6% (Dekalb county).

The red lines in both graphs are LOESS fits.

The first thing apparent in these two graphs is that Obama did particularly well among whites in most of the populous counties as they show up outliers at the top. Among the other counties, there is not a significant pattern, but it does look like Obama’s nonblack vote share is lowest in counties where African American population is in the 20-30% range.

Razib did a similar analysis of racial polarization in Mississippi.

Charles Franklin analyzed the white vote for Obama at the state level. Nate Silver saw that data and noticed that most of the states where Obama performed worse than Kerry among whites were those where Obama did not campaign.

Andrew Gellman, at his must-read blog Red State Blue State Rich State Poor State, looked at Obama’s vote share divided by race in the West, Northeast, South and Midwest. He also showed the estimated nonblack vote by county for all of the US.

Andrew Gellman also looked at the voting preferences of rich and poor voters in both red and blue states in the 2008 election, something which is the topic of his book Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do.

Finally, Michael McDonald estimates the voter turnout from the vote eligible population.

My revised national turnout rate for those eligible to vote is 61.6% or 131.3 million ballots cast for president. This number does not include an approximate 1.4 million under and over votes, for an estimated total 132.7 million total ballots cast. This represents an increase of 1.5 percentage points over the 60.1% turnout rate of 2004, but falls short of the 1968 turnout rate of 62.5%.

His estimate of turnout for Georgia is 61.1%, up from 56.2% in 2004.

Next: An analysis of the precincts in Alpharetta, Milton and Atlanta where our team worked.

By Zack at 2:21 PM in Politics | Comments (2) | TrackBack (2)

جمعہ 14 نومبر 2008Friday, November 14, 2008

Georgia Election Analysis I

This is the first in a series of posts looking at the Presidential election results in the state of Georgia.

Let’s start with the top line numbers from the last three Presidential elections:

Year	Democrat		Republican
	Votes	Percentage	Votes	Percentage
2000	1,116,230	43.2%	1,419,720	55.0%
2004	1,366,155	41.4%	1,914,256	58.0%
2008	1,844,137	46.9%	2,048,744	52.1%

In 2000, Al Gore lost Georgia by 11.8 points and Kerry lost by 16.6 points. Obama has reduced that to 5.2 points, which is a swing of 11.4 percent from 2004. This swing is greater than the national swing of 9.2%.

Let’s look at the Georgia exit polls from 2000, 2004 and 2008.

During the last 8 years, the composition of the voters has changed a lot. The table below shows the percentage of voters who belonged to a specific race or ethnic group.

Race	2000	2004	2008
White	81%	70%	65%
African American	19%	25%	30%
Hispanic	-	4%	3%

That’s quite a change in voter demographics, Compare that to the census estimate of population (in 2006) of 58.9% non-Hispanic whites, 29.9% African Americans and 7.5% Hispanics. This shows that African Americans, probably for the first time in Georgia history, voted in proportion of their population. The credit for that goes to the Obama campaign’s voter registration and Get-Out-the-Vote (GOTV) efforts.

Turnout this year was a little lower than 2004, mostly because of the high turnout among whites in 2004.

	2000	2004	2008
Total	69%	77%	76%
White	71%	80%	78%
African American	63%	72%	75%

Since I am estimating White and African American turnout in 2008 from the exit polls, it might be prone to some error. We’ll know more when all the detailed data is released by the Georgia Secretary of State.

If African American turnout could be higher, Obama might have gotten closer by at most 1 point. However, do remember that in absolute numbers 41% more African Americans voted this year compared to 2004. The increase in the number of white voters was less than 9%.

The next table shows why Obama lost. It tells us what portion of whites and blacks voted for the Democratic Presidential candidate in the last three elections.

Race	2000	2004	2008
White	35%	23%	23%
African American	86%	88%	98%

Obama needed around 27% or more of the white vote. However, he got the same proportion as Kerry.

Looking at voter groups, 37% of all voters (i.e. 57% of white voters) were white evangelicals. Obama got only 10% among them. Since he got 23% among all whites, so Obama got 40% of the white non-evangelical vote. Compare to Kerry who got 16% of white evangelical vote and 30% of white non-evangelical vote. Also, compare nationally where Obama got 43% of the white vote and 24% of white evangelical voters, i.e. Obama got a majority (53%) of non-evangelical white vote nationally.

Young voters nationally flocked to Obama in this election, a lot more than in recent elections. This can be seen in the graphs here.

	18-29		30-44
	US	GA	US	GA
All	66%	48%	52%	56%
White	54%	20%	41%	32%

The low number (20%) for 18-29 year old white voters in Georgia surprised me a lot. It shows how difficult it might be for Democrats to win Georgia even in the future.

Nationally, Obama did somewhat better with white voters than Kerry in 2004. However, there were regional variations. In Appalachia and parts of the South, Obama got a smaller percentage of the white vote than Kerry did.

Southern counties that voted more heavily Republican this year than in 2004 tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter, a statistical analysis by The New York Times shows. Mr. Obama won in only 44 counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of 410 counties that runs from New York to Mississippi. Many of those counties, rural and isolated, have been less exposed to the diversity, educational achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas.

The increased turnout in the South’s so-called Black Belt, or old plantation-country counties, was visible in the results, but it generally could not make up for the solid white support for Mr. McCain. Alabama, for example, experienced a heavy black turnout and voted slightly more Democratic than in 2004, but the state over all gave 60 percent of its vote to Mr. McCain. (Arkansas, however, doubled the margin of victory it gave to the Republican over 2004.)

Less than a third of Southern whites voted for Mr. Obama, compared with 43 percent of whites nationally.

Do look at this table and a map of the US showing county-level electoral shifts.

MSNBC First Read gives the details of Obama vote share among whites.

In 13 [states], Obama received less than 35% of the white vote. His three lowest performing states: Alabama (10%), Mississippi (11%), and Louisiana (14%). The other 10: GA (23%), SC (26%), TX (26%), OK (29%), AR (30%), UT (31%), AK (32%), WY (32%), ID (33%), and TN (34%). On the other hand, Obama won the white vote in 18 states and DC: CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, IA, ME, MA, MI, MN. NH. NY. OR, RI, WA, WI and VT. Obama’s lowest percentage of the white vote he received in a state that he won: NC (35%). The highest percentage of the white vote Obama received in a state he lost: MT (45%).

Razib has a few maps showing Obama’s performance among white voters in all the states compared to Kerry’s performance in 2004 as well as to the national average for white voters this year.

Pollster shows that in states with higher than about 20-25% of African American population, Obama performed poorly among white voters.

If you are interested in comparing Democratic or Republican performance over the years in Presidential elections in Georgia, Dave Leip’s Atlas of US Presidential elections has the historical results in a convenient table format.

All things considered, Barack Obama did very well in Georgia. I was always skeptical about the Democrats winning Georgia, except in a national landslide. How well did the Obama campaign bigwigs think they could do in Georgia can be gauged from this anecdote from August 27.

[Obama’s election manager David Plouffe] said that the campaign’s target in Georgia is about 47% of the vote, owing to Ex-Rep. Bob Barr’s ability to siphon votes away from John McCain.

In the end, Bob Barr didn’t do well at all, but Obama got his 47% of the vote. It looks to me like the Obama campaign knew what it was doing. Do you remember the Obama spreadsheet that leaked just after Super Tuesday and was remarkably accurate about the primary results?

There’s a lot more I want to analyze, including county and precinct level data, precincts in which our team worked. So tune in for more analysis and rambling soon.

By Zack at 11:35 AM in Politics | Comments (4) | TrackBack (3)

پیر 10 نومبر 2008Monday, November 10, 2008

Sun of Suns

I read Sun of Suns courtesy of the Tor.com promotion.

It’s a fun science fiction story about small, warring nation-states with poor gravity, artificial suns and naval battles. Some of the plot is predictable, but it’s a quick read, the kind of book I liked to read when I was young.

By Zack at 11:36 AM in Books | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

منگل 4 نومبر 2008Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Election Day Live Blogging

It’s November 4, Election Day. Why Tuesday? Because it made sense in the 18th and early 19th centuries. It does need to be changed now, however.

7:12am: I am at the Obama campaign Roswell office printing walk packets, volunteer lists and directions etc for our team. I’ll be on my way to South Atlanta as soon as the print job’s finished.

Voting here in Georgia started at 7am.

8:35am: I am at the staging location in South Atlanta. Already at one of the polling places here, the line is more than 2 hours long.

10:39am: The morning rush at the polls has lessened now.

11:51am: Sent out volunteers to go knock on doors to get people out to vote. Also, sent phone lists to volunteers to call.

12:55pm: There are so many people here to volunteer, it’s difficult to even find work for them.

2:07pm: This liveblogging will probably only pick up later tonight when results start coming in. For now, do read my last post about how Georgia is competitive this election.

2:55pm: Intrade has McCain overall win at around 7.3 right now and a Dem win in Georgia at 27.5.

3:21pm: Turnout here in South Atlanta is okay today but add in the early vote numbers and it’s pretty high.

5:01pm: The last shift just went out. Polls close in 2 hours.

Looking at the midday numbers, 25-30% more people had already voted in our precincts than did four years ago.

5:49pm: I am making last minute Get-Out-the-Vote phone calls.

6:28pm: Not sure what to think of the data coming in from the precincts. Did we do good but not as well as needed in this area?

7:00pm: Polls close in Georgia. We are packing up and going home.

8:00pm: Home.

8:13pm: With Pennsylvania being called for Obama, the chances of McCain winning have dropped below 1%.

8:16pm: Godless Hagan defeats Liddy Dole. God has spoken!

8:38pm: NBC has called Georgia for McCain. Looking at the exit polls, African Americans made up 30% of the voters which is equal to their proportion among registered voters and 5% more than their proportion in 2004. However, Obama got only 25% of the white vote.

The Senate race between Chambliss and Martin is closer due to the Libertarian candidate Buckley and might head to a December run-off.

9:25pm: With Ohio projected as an Obama win by NBC and Fox News, I now project Barack Obama as the next President of the United States. Go Obama!

9:47pm: I didn’t blog it but told my fellow volunteers on the Obama campaign that Obama will net around 350 electoral votes and he looks on track for that.

9:59pm: I have been watching CNN since coming home. Now I am switching to Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert special.

11:00pm: Polls close on the West Coast and it’s official. President-elect Barack Obama!

11:32pm: A very nice concession speech by McCain, despite some booing from the crowd.

Nov 5 11:50am: I went to sleep after Obama’s victory speech feeling dazed. I had full confidence from the start that Obama would win but the actual win did affect me a lot. I was a little bummed out last night about Georgia but feel better about it today. More thoughts on Georgia and the neighborhoods our team worked in during this campaign after we have official precinct results.

12:09pm: What’s wrong with Alaska? Did they just re-elect a convicted felon to the Senate?

By Zack at 7:09 AM in Politics | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

پیر 3 نومبر 2008Monday, November 03, 2008

Georgia: Battleground

I have been really busy recently and haven’t had time to blog. Volunteering for the Obama campaign has been fun but also kept me busy. We had phonebanking events every day last week with one at our home on Friday. Then on Saturday and Sunday, we went door to door contacting voters in South Atlanta to go out and vote on Tuesday. That’s also what we are doing today.

So how did Georgia become competitive? In 2000, Bush won Georgia 55%-43% and in 2004 increased the margin to 58%-41%. But in 2008, you can see for yourself:

Georgia is now a battleground state. McCain is leading Obama by only 1.7% here according to Pollster which “averages” all polls. Also, the betting market Intrade has Obama winning Georgia at 27.5%.

In addition, in 2004 African Americans were 27.2% of registered voters and contributed 25.4% of the votes. According to the latest voter registration statistics, African Americans are now 29.9% of registered voters.

In early voting since September 22, we have had 2,020,839 voters already cast their votes, which is 61.5% of the total number of votes cast (3,285,140) in 2004. Assuming a turnout of 80% (higher than 77% in 2004), this would mean that 43.9% have already voted. Among these early voters, African Americans comprised 34.9% of the total. We are hoping that African American turnout remains high even on Election Day tomorrow and puts Barack Obama over the top in Georgia.

By Zack at 3:39 PM in Politics | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)

ہفتہ 25 اکتوبر 2008Saturday, October 25, 2008

Crude, rhetoric-roasted peanuts!

Gasoline prices burned a hole in the wallets of most Americans over the summer, and McCain attempted to use this problem against Obama by highlighting Democratic support for an offshore drilling moratorium. McCain’s, “Drill baby, drill,” refrain sloshed bold and black into newsprint and e-print. It coated the tongues of conservative commentators and oozed into the halls of Congress. Even Obama eventually slipped on the slick, adding an offshore drilling provision to his energy platform.

With the U.S. Presidential Election mere days away, I thought it prudent to douse the burning offshore oil debate with cold, liquid facts. The U.S. consumes about 20.8 mega barrels of oil per day. The Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that the moratorium zone contains 15.8 giga barrels of crude. If true, oil from the moratorium zone would only supply U.S. demand for 2 years and 1 month. One might argue that further exploration could lead the EIA to raise its estimates. But, how much more might one reasonably expect? Is 10% reasonable? Is 25%? Or, maybe, you think 100% might be reasonable. Even in the final case, the moratorium zone only supplies US demand for less than 5 years.

Anyone with a shred of common sense and access to Energy Information Agency (EIA) data could have evaluated McCain’s proposal and put it to rest in under an hour. Drilling the moratorium zone begets a trickle of oil that starts flowing in 5+ years. Crude, rhetoric-roasted peanuts!

By Captain Arrrgh at 6:32 PM in Politics | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

جمعہ 17 اکتوبر 2008Friday, October 17, 2008

Chattanooga

For Michelle’s fourth birthday, we decided to take the day off and take her to Chattanooga, about 2 hours drive away.

Here are some photographs from the Tennessee Aquarium. We have been to the Georgia Aquarium lots of times and that is huge. Tennessee aquarium is smaller, nothing on the scale of the one in Atlanta, but I think children like it better. Michelle was running from one display to another and showing us all the marine life.

We also cruised the Tennessee River Gorge aboard a boat.

When we got off the boat, it had started raining. So we went to Hennen’s for dinner. Michelle was tired, but we had a nice dinner, followed by a chocolate cake and ice cream complete with candle on top to celebrate Michelle turning four.

By Zack at 10:20 PM in Food and Cooking , Parenthood , Photography , Travel | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

پیر 13 اکتوبر 2008Monday, October 13, 2008

Electoral Vote Predictors

Being a political junkie means I follow polls and electoral projections. Add to it the nerd factor and I love to see all sorts of prediction algorithms used to figure out the electoral votes for Obama and McCain.

The best such site is Pollster.com which is very comprehensive and now with their flash applications very customizable too. You can even embed their poll trend graphs on your own website. They use LOESS local regression to calculate the current vote share for the candidates.

In 2004, I discovered Electoral-Vote.com which is run by Andrew Tanenbaum who I knew because of his Computer Science textbooks.

I like the Princeton Election Consortium site because not only do they provide details of their methods but also their code.

FiveThirtyEight weights pollsters by reliability and also takes into account the demographics of each state for their projection.

RealClear Politics averages recent polls to arrive at their electoral map.

Andrea Moro uses statistical simulations to assign the winner for each state.

Finally, 3BlueDudes has a huge list of election projection websites.

By Zack at 4:40 AM in Politics , Science and Technology | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

بدھ 8 اکتوبر 2008Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Vice President Debate

I watched the debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden at 37,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean and a day late.

I think Biden was the clear winner, though Palin didn’t do as bad as was expected considering her interview performances. She did repeat a lot of talking points, but wasn’t half-bad.

The debate’s most prominent aspect was how all the answers were completely unresponsive to the questions asked. Usually there is some effort by the candidates to go off-topic but this debate was really bad in that regard.

One thing that I didn’t understand at all was Palin’s statement that:

We have to fight for our freedoms, also, economic and our national security freedoms.

What exactly are national security freedoms?

You can watch the VP debate online or read the transcript.

Being jetlagged, I still haven’t watched the second Obama-McCain debate.

By Zack at 6:48 AM in Politics | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

جمعہ 3 اکتوبر 2008Friday, October 03, 2008

Torture and Public Opinion

It was heartening to hear the following from Senator McCain at the first debate especially after his support for allowing the CIA to use torture during interrogations.

I have opposed the president on spending, on climate change, on torture of prisoner, on - on Guantanamo Bay. […] And we’ve got to – to make sure that we have people who are trained interrogators so that we don’t ever torture a prisoner ever again.

And Obama said:

And this is the greatest country on Earth. But because of some of the mistakes that have been made – and I give Senator McCain great credit on the torture issue, for having identified that as something that undermines our long-term security – because of those things, we, I think, are going to have a lot of work to do in the next administration to restore that sense that America is that shining beacon on a hill.

To my utter dismay, torture hasn’t become an issue in the US election. Today I want to focus on how popular or unpopular torture has been among the people of the United States and the world, which explains why Senator Obama hasn’t brought up the use of torture by the Bush administration more often and why Senator McCain has been sliding away from his opposition to torture.

Here is a poll from May 2004.

Given pro and con arguments, 63 percent in an ABC News/Washington Post poll say torture is never acceptable, even when other methods fail and authorities believe the suspect has information that could prevent terrorist attacks. Thirty-five percent say torture is acceptable in some such cases.

There’s more of a division, though, on physical abuse that falls short of torture: Forty-six percent say it’s acceptable in some cases, while 52 percent say not.

Majorities identify three specific coercive practices as acceptable: sleep deprivation (66 percent call it acceptable), hooding (57 percent) and “noise bombing” (54 percent), in which a suspect is subjected to loud noises for long periods.

Far fewer Americans accept other practices. Four in 10 call it acceptable to threaten to shoot a suspect, or expose a suspect to extreme heat or cold. Punching or kicking is deemed acceptable by 29 percent. And 16 percent call sexual humiliation — alleged to have occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad — acceptable in some cases.

[…] Whatever their personal tolerance for various practices, 51 percent of Americans believe the U.S. government is employing torture “as a matter of policy” as part of the war against terrorism. And two-thirds think the government is using physical abuse that stops short of torture.

[…] Regarding the Abu Ghraib case, which has resulted in charges against some U.S. soldiers and calls for congressional investigations, the public is twice as likely to see what occurred there as abuse (60 percent) rather than torture (29 percent).

In December 2005, an opinion poll tried to measure attitudes to torture around the world.

In America, 61 percent of those surveyed agreed torture is justified at least on rare occasions. Almost nine in 10 in South Korea and just over half in France and Britain felt that way.

[…] In Canada, Mexico and Germany people are divided on whether torture is ever justified. Most people opposed torture under any circumstances in Spain and Italy.

A Harris Poll in December 2005 makes the American populace look quite pro-torture.

55 percent of all adults believe that rendition is justified either often (14%) or sometimes (41%), when interrogating suspected terrorists. 60 percent of adults believe that the use of “secret prison camps in Europe or elsewhere” is justified either often (14%) or sometimes (46%). 52 percent of all adults believe that the use of torture is justified either often (12%) or sometimes (40%).

82 percent of all adults believe that the U.S. uses rendition, as defined above, often (25%) or sometimes (58%). 81 percent believes that the U.S. uses secret prison camps outside the country often (23 ) or sometimes (58). 83 percent believe that the U.S. uses torture often (17%) or sometimes (66%).

At least it seems that the public doesn’t take Bush’s statements about “we do not torture” at face value.

A BBC Global Poll in October 2006 found that majorities in 19 countries are in favor of clear rules against torture. In order of decreasing popularity, those countries are Italy, France, Australia, Canada, Britain, Germany, South Korea, Spain, Egypt, Turkey, Poland, Chile, Brazil, United States, Philippines, Iraq, Ukraine, Kenya, Indonesia. Note the position of the United States in that list; it’s near the bottom with developing countries. torture is more popular here than in most of the developed world.

There are some uncivilized countries where there is no clear majority for or against torture: Israel (43-48), Nigeria (39-49), Russia (37-43), China (37-49), India (32-23), and Mexico (24-50).

According to a CNN poll of the US in November 2007,

Asked whether they think waterboarding is a form of torture, more than two-thirds of respondents, or 69 percent, said yes; 29 percent said no.

Asked whether they think the U.S. government should be allowed to use the procedure to try to get information from suspected terrorists, 58 percent said no; 40 percent said yes.

In the procedure, water is used on restrained prisoners to make them feel like they are drowning.

A World Public Opinion Poll in June 2008 found that:

A WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 19 nations finds that in 14 of them most people favor an unequivocal rule against torture, even in the case of terrorists who have information that could save innocent lives. Four nations lean toward favoring an exception in the case of terrorists.

However, large majorities in all 19 nations favor a general prohibition against torture. In all nations polled, the number saying that the government should generally be able to use torture is less than one in five.

On average across all nations polled, 57 percent opt for unequivocal rules against torture. Thirty-five percent favor an exception when innocent lives are at risk. Just 9 percent favor the government being able to use torture in general.

The four publics that favor an exception for terrorists when innocent lives are at risk include majorities in India (59%), Nigeria (54%), and Turkey (51%), and a plurality in Thailand (44%).

Support for the unequivocal position was highest in Spain (82%), Great Britain (82%) and France (82%), followed by Mexico (73%), China (66%), the Palestinian territories (66%), Poland (62%), Indonesia (61%), and the Ukraine (59%). In five countries either modest majorities or pluralities support a ban on all torture: Azerbaijan (54%), Egypt (54%), the United States (53%), Russia (49%), and Iran (43%). South Koreans are divided.

Again, notice where US public opinion lies. Near Russia, Egypt and Azerbaijan! Is that what we aspire to be? As Andrew Sullivan said:

So America’s peers in the fight against torture, in terms of public opinion are Azerbaijan, Egypt, Russia, and Iran. This is what America now is: a country with the moral values of countries that routinely torture and abuse prisoners, like Egypt and Iran. Even the Chinese, living in a neo-fascist market state, oppose torture in all circumstances by 66 percent, compared to Americans where only 53 percent do! More horrifying: a higher percentage of Americans - 13 percent - believe that torture should generally be allowed than in any other country save China, Turkey and Nigeria. And in the last two years, as the American president celebrates and authorizes the torture of people who have not been allowed a fair trail, support for torturing terror suspects has increased from 36 percent to 44 percent.

Why are so many Americans morally bankrupt about torture now? It turns out it might be the fault of the religious, or more specifically the Southern Evangelicals.

A new poll released Thursday (Sept. 11) finds that nearly six in 10 white Southern evangelicals believe torture is justified, but their views can shift when they consider the Christian principle of the golden rule.

The poll, commissioned by Faith in Public Life and Mercer University, found that 57 percent of respondents said torture can be often or sometimes justified to gain important information from suspected terrorists. Thirty-eight percent said it was never or rarely justified.

But when asked if they agree that “the U.S. government should not use methods against our enemies that we would not want used on American soldiers,” the percentage who said torture was rarely or never justified rose to 52 percent.

[…] The findings of this poll, which did not define torture, compared to a Pew Research Center poll from February that found that 48 percent of the general public think torture can be justified.

The new poll found that 44 percent of white Southern evangelicals rely on life experiences and common sense to determine their views about torture. A lower percentage, 28 percent, said they relied on Christian teachings or beliefs.

[…] Pollsters also found that 53 percent of white Southern evangelicals believe the government uses torture in its anti-terrorism campaign, despite claims by government officials to the contrary. About one-third, or 32 percent, said the government does not use torture as a matter of policy.

Wow, so a majority of white Southern evangelicals are not only pro-torture, but they do not rely on Christian teachings either. Who would have thought they would be so immoral?

By Zack at 9:19 AM in Civil Liberties , International Affairs , Politics | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

منگل 30 ستمبر 2008Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Eid and Rosh Hashanah

Here in Atlanta, Eid is today. We wish everyone a very happy Eid. Eid Mubarak to you!

The Jewish new year started at sundown last night. So Eid and Rosh Hashanah are on the same day. Shanah Tovah, everyone!

By Zack at 9:23 AM in Islam and Other Religions | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

جمعہ 26 ستمبر 2008Friday, September 26, 2008

Liveblogging Presidential Debate I

For a while there, it looked like this debate might not happen with McCain “suspending” his campaign.

The first question about debates is: Do they matter? According to Mark Blumenthal, there is a great potential for debates to influence public opinion because they are watched by so many people.

Four years ago, according to Nielsen Media Research, 62.5 million Americans watched the first debate between John Kerry and George W. Bush. That fell short of the record 80.6 million that saw Ronald Reagan debate Jimmy Carter in 1980, but it was an enormous audience nonetheless.

Tom Holbrook looked at all Presidential debates from 1988 to 2004 and found that:

Across all thirteen presidential debates the average absolute change in candidate support was 1 percentage point. There are a few notable exceptions, of course. Two that stand out are the second debate in 1992, following which George H.W. Bush lost 2 points, and first debate of 2004, after which George W. Bush lost 2.26 points.

Gallup also looked at debates in 1960 and 1976-2004 and found that debates have little impact.

In two election years, the presidential debates may have had a meaningful impact on the structure of the presidential races; in most others, they probably have not. The debates were less likely to be catalyst events in years when one candidate was a strong front-runner, including 1984, 1988, and 1996. However, in highly competitive election years, any movement in voter preferences can be race altering, and the debates seem to have the potential to produce such movement. The probable examples of this are 1960 and 2000.

I am looking forward to this debate as it is focused on foreign policy and national security, topics that have receded into the background due to economic turmoil but where McCain inexplicably holds a lead despite his crazy war-like ideas.

9:02pm: I just finished calling voters for the Obama campaign with a number of other volunteers. Now I am watching the debate with 15 other people on MSNBC.

9:06pm: First question is about the financial crisis. Obama going first. Worst crisis since Great Depression. Move swiftly and wisely. Oversight. Helping homeowners. Bush policies, supported by McCain, responsible.

McCain starts with Kennedy being in the hospital. McCain not feeling too great about things lately. Republicans and Democrats together. End of the beginning of the crisis.

9:10pm: Lehrer asked about voting on the plan. Both Obama and McCain try to steer discussion away.

9:12pm: Obama brings up McCain’s statement of 10 days ago about economic fundamentals being good.

9:14pm: McCain criticizing Republican spending.

9:16pm: Obama compares scale of earmarks with McCain’s tax proposal cost.

9:21pm: McCain is stuck on earmarks.

9:27pm: Indepence from oil would be good but what is this foreign oil independence Obama’s talking about?

9:29pm: McCain comes back to cutting spending.

9:35pm: Did McCain just oppose foreign aid?

9:38pm: Obama ties McCain to Bush spending. McCain mentions not winning Miss Congeniality for the second time.

9:39pm: Finally, Iraq!

Obama brings back the question of lessons of Iraq to whether we should have gone to war in the first place. Have to use military wisely.

McCain says next President won’t be deciding decision to go to Iraq.

9:44pm: Why is McCain making faces and smirking so much?

9:47pm: Can everyone stop kissing General Petraeus’s ass?

9:50pm: Now on to Afghanistan. Obama argues for more troops. Did Obama just pronounce Taliban correctly? Iraq had no al-Qaeda. Iraq war a strategic mistake. Afghanistan and Pakistan. Got to deal with Pakistan. Safe haven for Taliban and al-Qaeda. Pakistan not doing enough to get rid of them.

9:53pm: McCain says don’t say out loud about attacking Pakistan. Same strategy as Iraq.

9:56pm: Obama mentions McCain’s song about “Bomb, bomb Iran.”

9:57pm: Obama says we coddled Musharraf and alienated Pakistani people. McCain replies that Pakistan was a failed state when Musharraf came to power.

10:00pm: McCain and Obama are trading stories of soldiers killed in action. WTF?

10:03pm: McCain Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is an existential threat to Israel. Mentions Holocaust. Whatever happened to Israel’s nuclear weapons? McCain talks about League of Democracies. Wow, France is a democracy now. Iranian nuclear weapons are threat around the world.

10:06pm: Obama says Iran has gained lots of influence due to Iraq war. Cannot tolerate nuclear Iran. Arms race in Middle East. Cooperation needed from Russia and China for sanctions. Engage in tough diplomacy with Iran.

10:08pm: How does talking to Ahmedinijad legitimize him? Did Reagan never talk to Brezhnev? That sounds wrong.

10:10pm: Obama citing Kissinger approvingly. I feel like ewww but have to admit Kissinger is right on talking to Iran.

10:12pm: Obama mentions McCain not meeting with Spanish Prime Minister. McCain in response tries to joke about the Presidential seal replica from the Obama primary campaign.

10:16pm: Obama says Russia has to withdraw from South Osettia and Abkhazia. Membership action plan for Ukraine and Georgia: Why, Obama, why? Obama doesn’t want cold war posture with Russia.

McCain says Obama is naive. McCain wants to bolster friends and allies. Talks about oil.

10:20pm: McCain has mentioned his trips to a lot of countries today.

10:23pm: Why did Obama have to mention “clean coal”? Arrrgh!

10:26pm: Stupidest question today: Chance of another 9/11 attack on the US? McCain says much less. McCain just came out against torture. Good for him!

10:29pm: Obama comes out against nuclear suitcases? What about nuclear backpacks? The point about nuclear proliferation is good though.

Obama also mentions torture.

10:31pm: McCain goes back to Iraq with a totally wrong but strong ending.

Obama mentions al-Qaeda and challenges with China and both being neglected due to focus on Iraq. Blames Iraq war for autism too! Too scattershot for a strong summing up.

10:34pm: McCain is now talking again, destroying the impression I had of his strong ending.

10:36pm: And finally McCain mentions his POW status.

I would rate it a draw. Obama didn’t land any knockout punches.

12:47am: CBS News poll of undecided voters:

Thirty-nine percent of uncommitted voters who watched the debate tonight thought Barack Obama was the winner. Twenty-four percent thought John McCain won. Thirty-seven percent saw it as a draw.

Forty-six percent of uncommitted voters said their opinion of Obama got better tonight. Thirty-two percent said their opinion of McCain got better.

Sixty-six percent of uncommitted voters think Obama would make the right decisions about the economy. Forty-two percent think McCain would.

Forty-eight percent of these voters think Obama would make the right decisions about Iraq. Fifty-six percent think McCain would.

That sounds good for Obama.

1:23am: CNN’s polling is even better.

You can watch the debate online or read the transcript.

By Zack at 10:37 PM in Politics | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

پیر 22 ستمبر 2008Monday, September 22, 2008

HOA and Obama Yard Sign

I have had an Obama yard sign in my front yard since the Democratic convention.

Today I got a letter from my Home Owners Association (HOA) which says:

According to the Covenants, signs are not allowed to be displayed. Please remove the election sign.

So I checked the Covenants and found the following:

No sign of any kind shall be erected by an Owner or Occupant within the Community without the prior written consent of the Architectural Review Committee. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Board and the Declarant shall have the right to erect reasonable and appropriate signs. “For Sale” and “For Rent” signs and security signs consistent with the Community-Wide Standard and any signs required by legal proceedings may be erected upon any Lot.

It looks like they have the right to erect “reasonable and appropriate” signs. I would like a similar right on reciprocal basis since I would guess that a 16” by 26” sign for a major party Presidential candidate during election season is both appropriate and reasonable. But evidently the management company that runs the HOA disagrees.

I am of a mind to send a letter to the Home Owners Association:

I did not know that the Soviet Union was alive and well here in our subdivision. I had heard of its demise some years ago. Anyway, if I am not allowed to display a political sign for the elections, please grant me permission to fly the Hammer and Sickle on the front of my house.

On a more serious note, does anyone know if there are any local (Fulton county), state (Georgia) or Federal laws which the HOA might be going against here? What is the case law like on this issue here?

I had no idea about Home Owner Associations before we bought a house last year. My first interaction with the HOA was earlier this year when we decided to do some work on part of our backyard. We wanted to install a playset and a small vegetable garden as well as grow flowering plants and grass in a part of the backyard which had nothing. This required approval by the Architectural Review Committee of the HOA and I being a law-abiding fellow submitted the application despite protests by Amber about this being our property and hence we being free to do whatever we wanted.

It took the committee 10 days to approve the project. When I talked to the head of the committee, I voiced my disapproval at the length of time they had taken to do so. He pointed out that the Covenants allowed the committee to take as many as 60 days and that the committee members had lives of their own and were doing this only as part-time volunteers. I replied that that was precisely the point, since their time (and mine) was so precious, so project approval should be almost automatic. If they didn’t see any egregious violation at first glance, they should approve it. I don’t think he got what I was trying to say.

To reiterate, what do you know of Georgia law on political signs and HOA covenants? What do you think I should do and why? Should I simply remove the sign? Should I keep it? In that case, what’ll happen and is it worth fighting for?

By Zack at 1:12 AM in Civil Liberties , Life , Politics | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)