US Election

[????]

All over according to Bookies - Obama big favourite 1/4 on Betfair for eg

[Gidget]

Yay.

[Fabricio the Guido]

Going to be glued to this.....

[mynamehere]

If Obama wins by two votes they came from my house. But I know the margin will be substantial in the Electoral College where the decision rests. And the Senate to the Democrats and the House of Representatives...

[Salsaboy]

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Gidget]

US elections are much more interesting and exciting than UK elections.

[MrBen]

I'll be honest. I've tried.... but I still can't understand the US voting system.

[LondonMix]

Ask away... An expat here to help :)

[El Pibe]

Basically each state has a bunch of votes to choose the president.

These used to be posh people put there through almost completely opaque systems, weird ballots and suchlike, but are now essentially block votes according to the popular vote.

The discrepancy between state populations and the number of electoral college votes they have mean its possible to win the popular vote but lose the election.

Not that dissimilar to here where the third party usually get between a fifth and a quarter of the vote but less than a tenth of the seats.

I'm sure Americans without direct experience of our system find our presidential election (sorry force of habit after Blair) equally odd.

[LondonMix]

Almost right. The discrepancy with the popular vote is more complex. No matter if 51% or 80% of a states voting population vote for a candidate 100% of the state's electoral votes go to that candidate. This combined with voter turnout as a percentage of each states population is why the popular vote can be very different from the votes won via the electoral college.

Electoral votes are almost like points based on a state's population. In the US, candidates try to win states as each state (regardless of how many people vote or by what percentage you win it) gets you all of the state's electoral votes (or points in the analogy) in 48 out of the 50 states and DC. Bigger states have more electoral votes and are so are worth more. Swings states are the most important. If you are going to lose a state 45% to 55% you don't even bother campaigning there as its just a waste of time and money.

The roots lie in US History. The states were once more like individual nation states - sort of like the EU today- with their own identity. Therefore each state had its individual voice heard but its say in determining things was weighted by its population within the union.

[Mick Mac]

Thanks for that LM. Crystal clear. I didn't understand EP, never do. ;)

[MrBen]

Thanks both. So that's why Florida and Ohio become really important. Back in 2000 didn't a bunch of grannies in Key West effectively determine a president who alienated the entire Muslim world and started two long, bloody and costly wars?

[Gingerbeer]

That was the fault of hanging chads.

[steveo]

I've seen them on the back of sheep

[LondonMix]

The crazy thing about winning Florida (the largest swing state) is that you have to appeal to both the Cuban vote and the super high concentration of elderly that retire in the state. This is why the US embargo with Cuba can?t be undone by either political party even though trade relations have long since normalized with other communist states. Also, if you propose to do anything that affects retirees, you know you?ve lost Florida which can cost you the entire election.

[Mick Mac]

How many electoral votes does Florida have?

[Ted Max]

29

[maxxi]

In a South African township the charity Lifeline is "offering a mobile phone to any resident who manages to capture and submit 60 rodents to the organisation."

A deal on election lawyers in Florida has yet to be reached.

[LondonMix]

This link gives you a feel for the 2012 election http://www.politico.com/2012-election/swing-state/

You can see which states (and thus electoral votes) each candidate has in the bag and which ones are swing states. This year there are a lot of swing states. While you can see in the polls Obama is likely to win enough swing states to take the election, the margin of victory (for both Romney and Obama) in quite a few of the swing states is within what most people would consider the margin of error for pollsters. That?s why the race in my view is too close to call and I wouldn?t be taking the odds that bookie was offering!

Romney is winning Florida by only half a percentage point in the current polls which is really a dead heat. If Romney loses Florida there is no way he can win the election even if all the other swing states ended up going his way so that?s the result everyone in the US will be focused on tonight.

[Huguenot]

Hmmm!

The US is different because you can lose the popular vote and still be president/prime minister....?

Well, where else could that happen?

[LondonMix]

You're back H-- people were speculating you might have had an unfortunate accident (see M&S thread)

[Huguenot]

Ah yes.

It probably was a tease, but borne from frustration rather than anguish. It wasn't a troll.

I've vented my spleen on baby boomers before.

History will refer to a financial system that wasn't essentially flawed, but allowed consecutive governments to borrow against future earnings to spend today. The output was low taxation and the transfer of expense for today's investment to tomorrow's exchequer.

The anticipation was that today's borrowing would be dwarfed compared with tomorrow's valuation.

There is an equivalence argument that despite the persistent disagreement between fundamentally opposed political ideologues like myself and Quids, that we both actually agree.

Some tossers (read baby boomers) spent all the cash, and we need to pay it back and find some confidence.

Not so easy as some people imagine.

[Huguenot]

BTW, I do post rationalise, and respect I've poked the crumblies too far...

I'm 42

[Huguenot]

Anyway, I give it Obama by the tightest margin you can squeeze from a Florida rectum. We have seconds to weight/wait.

[maxxi]

I'm surprised the Republicans didn't go with the slogan they used when they last won a presidential election -

"You don't change horses midstream"