I have always questioned whether or not the Electoral College has outlived its usefulness. This is a collection of interesting statistics.
In an email I received, a law professor pointed out some interesting facts concerning the November 2008 Presidential election:
Number of States won by: Obama: 19 McCain: 29
Square miles of land won by: Obama: 580,000 McCain: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Obama: 127 million McCain: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Obama: 13.2 McCain: 2.1
The professor added:
- In aggregate, the map of the territory McCain won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country.
- Obama territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in low income tenements and living off various forms of government welfare.
- Some forty percent of the nation's population has already reached the "governmental dependency."
BILL CHERRY, REALTORS
DALLAS - PARK CITIES
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I'd love to see an analysis of the 2004 presidential election. Did Professor Olson do an analysis of that one?
One was done and that was attributed to him, but Snoops says he denied it was his work. I'm inclined to think he may have actually done it, but when inaccuracies were pointed out, it was easier for him to not take the blame.
Bill...I hate it when you talk dirty! :0)
Oh, OK, Miss Joanie. I'll just apologize to you.
This kind of junk shouldn't be used to draw any conclusions about the candidates or those who voted for them. And I didn't post it for that reason, although I'm not so naive as to think that wasn't the purpose of the author.
But all of it is interesting trivia..,kind of fun to know and consider.
But it it is not trivial that once again a candidate was elected who was unable to win the vote of the majority.
It's amusing that Americans don't seem to mind that our president is elected differently than our mayors, governors, senators and members of the House, i.e., by a cockamamie method that doesn't reflect the will of the voters,
I was a college debator in the early '60s. One of those years, the national debate topic read something like, "Resolve, the Electoral College should be discontinued in favor of the use of popular vote." We're still talking about that 50 years later.
I think the profs conclusions were unkind. It is interesting to note that Al Gore won the popular vote and lost the election. So we have to go back and look at why the electoral college was created in the first place. And the answer is the bpowers that be did not trust the masses to choose a leader and so had this subtle way of changing things. Over time the ability of elctors to vote other than the way the State voted has been eliminated. So maybe the college is not needed today. But by inference the prof seems to be saying the college is neede if his unkind statements about the masses are true. So this analysisi is a bit confusing to me. But it is spirited and sparked these comments so it was good.
Oh, I don't disagree with you about lack of kindess and his obvious agenda. I just thought the raw data was interesting.
And while I'm a Republican at heart, I'm still of the idea that the "man (woman) with the most votes ought to win. If Mr. Gore won the popular vote, he should have been president. (I can't remember back that far.)
And I'll take it further than that. It's time for a Jewish president and a Morman president. This stuff of religion tainting whether or not a propective candidate has what it takes to be president is hog wash.
In fact, it's the very reason I voted for Mr. Kennedy, which was the first time I ever voted since you still had to be 21 back then. These idiots were saying the pope would control the U.S. I said to myself, "That's nonsense. Nevertheless, it's time to get to the bottom of this and see if that speculation is true." If anyone ever heard so much as a peep out of the pope, I never read about it.