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Saturday, November 06, 2004

The election has produced a number of really interesting maps, cartograms, and other attempts to make sense of what happened graphically. The simple red/blue map, by state or county, doesn't, it turns out, tell much of the story. Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman of the University of Michigan have put together one of the most compelling graphic sets. This histogram, for example, tells an unexpected story.

The histogram

As they put it:

The results show an interesting effect. There is a large "bump" of counties centered a little above 50%, where people voted roughly half-and-half for the two candidates, although with a slight bias in favor of the Republican candidate. And then there is a big "spike" on the left of the plot, representing counties where, to an excellent approximation, no one voted Republican. It appears that there are, as the pundits have been telling us, "two Americas," but they are not the ones people usually talk about. They are "divided America," where people split roughly evenly between Republican and Democrat, and "decided America," where everyone is a Democrat. The Democrats of "decided America" number about 5.9 million, or 11% of all Democratic voters. These people are unlikely ever even to encounter a Republican voter in their home town.

If one were to summarize simply, it appears that the election's winner won by a slim majority of people in counties that -- as counties -- were rather ambivalent about their decision. He was opposed by a nearly (but not quite) equal number of people a considerable fraction of whom live in counties that were very certain of their support for his opponent.

Update: As Charles in the comments points out, Crooked Timber is reporting that the mapmakers have come to the conclusion the all Democratic counties shown in the histogram were apparently a result of a coding error. The site itself, which is back on line, does not mention this, but has removed the histogram. This cartograph, a population weighted representation that resembles a monster butterfly, however, remains accurate.

Weird map of US that appears to be a monster butterfly

posted by jeev | 6:59 PM |

Friday, November 05, 2004

From a fabulous gallery, to which you can contribute:

To the world, sorry everyone

Unsurprisingly, they are getting a lot of traffic, so be patient.
Update: Apparently they got hit so hard they just gave up. Too bad. It was a good idea.
Update update: It was a good idea. And now they're back up and ready for the traffic. It's a bit slow, but very heartening.

posted by jeev | 3:59 PM |

Thursday, November 04, 2004

How others see us:

The cover of the Daily Mirror: How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb

Via I'm Just Sayin'

posted by jeev | 5:21 PM |

This is a map of the counties that voted for Bush, followed by a map of population density.

Election by counties map/population density

The top map makes it a very red country, but the bottom one puts that in population perspective. A lot of that red is empty country.
Via Crooked Timber.

posted by jeev | 4:54 PM |

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

There are a lot of pep talks out there right now, but this is the first one I've come across (other than the border realignment) that makes much sense to me:

As many books as we write about them, our enemy is not Bill O'Reilly, or Rush Limbaugh, or even George Bush. Further, as much griping as we may do about them over the next few months, our problem is not Terry McAuliffe, or Bob Shrum, or any of our candidates. Individuals are neither our enemy, nor our problem. Instead, our enemy and our problem is conservatism itself. Yesterday, John Kerry won among self-described Independents and "moderates" by greater margins than George Bush won among the nation as a whole. Yesterday, we improved on our 2000 vote by 10%, more than twice the 4.7% increase in the national population since 2000. Our activism kicked ass. Our ability to appeal to the center kicked ass. Our problem is that we are in the minority. Our mistake would be to start blaming individuals and creating scapegoats.

Instead of either individuals or the way we run campaigns, our problem is conservatism itself. Yesterday, John Kerry and our Congressional candidates, including my beloved Ginny, lost because a far greater percentage of the electorate identified themselves as conservative (33%) than as liberal (21%). Had the numbers of liberals and conservatives been equal, then John Kerry would have won with 54%+ of the national vote, and well over 379 electoral votes (Bill Clinton's highest total). Ginny would have won in a landslide. Our problem is that there are more conservatives than there are liberals.

When conservatives are 33% of the electorate, and liberals are only 21%, we start twelve points down in every campaign. The solution to this problem is not to move to the center and take the left for granted. The solution to this problem is not to simply energize the base so completely that our activism and energy alone carry us over the top. Unfortunately, the debate we will see over the next few weeks and months will probably be framed by these two positions. In the end, both are unfortunately temporary and purely tactical. Also, both ignore the fact that we do an excellent job at both. However, even if one or the other occasionally works, they both fail to take account the difficulties of governing a country where we start twelve points down in every approval rating poll, and twelve points down in every legislative proposal we wish to pass.

The solution to our problems, the only solution that actually addresses our problems rather than criticizes us for not doing well at tasks where we actually excel, is to increase the number of liberals in this country at a more rapid pace than the number of conservatives are increasing. We must grow liberalism.
[]
I am not sure how we do this, but our task begins now. The reactionaries have finally achieved what they have fought decades to achieve: a government that will completely destroy every last remnant of the New Deal, make us a worldwide colonial power, and be able to institute to most frightening aspects of the "culture war." Despite our best efforts, the reactionaries have achieved total victory. Prepare for hell. While I believe that selling liberalism and clawing our way out of the minority is the only way to reverse this trend, I am not sure how we go about doing that. However, I do know it is time that we at least start talking about it. We are in the minority, and that must end. It is time for us to grow.

From MyDD.

posted by jeev | 7:10 PM |

A girl can dream:

Redrawn map of North America

via Matthew Yglesias.

posted by jeev | 6:53 PM |

From Josh Marshall:

Setting aside my general political leanings, my personal views and feelings of partisanship, I think the result portends very bad things for America's role in the world and the well-being on all levels of this country. Changes in domestic politics, in theory at least, can be shifted back at a following election. The world, though, is different. There we are just a ship -- though the largest one -- on waters we can never truly control. And I fear that this result will set in motion dangerous dynamics that even the relatively young among us will be wrestling with and contending with for the rest of our lives.

From Andrew Sullivan, on the force that, apparently, drove this election:

I've been trying to think of what to say about what appears to be the enormous success the Republicans had in using gay couples' rights to gain critical votes in key states. In eight more states now, gay couples have no relationship rights at all. Their legal ability to visit a spouse in hospital, to pass on property, to have legal protections for their children has been gutted. If you are a gay couple living in Alabama, you know one thing: your family has no standing under the law; and it can and will be violated by strangers. I'm not surprised by this. When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses. But it is deeply, deeply dispiriting nonetheless. A lot of gay people are devastated this morning, and terrified. We have seen, and not for the first time, how using fear of a minority can be so effective a tool in building a political movement. The single most important issue for Republican voters, according to exit polls, was not the war on terror or Iraq or the economy. It was "moral values." Karl Rove understood the American psyche better than I did. By demonizing gay couples, the Republicans were able to bring in whole swathes of new anti-gay believers into their party. With new senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn, two of the most anti-gay politicians in America, we can only brace ourselves for what is now coming.

From Dan Gilmore:

There's no secret about what's coming. We don't have that excuse this time.

Here comes more fiscal recklessness -- as we widen the chasm between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else, cementing a plutocracy into our national fiber, we'll pay our national bills on the Treasury Bill credit card for the next few years. Many economists expect a Brazil-like financial crisis to hit the U.S. before the end of the decade. If we muddle our way though the near term, we'll still have left our kids with the bill.

Here comes an expansion of the American empire abroad, a fueling of fear and loathing elsewhere on the globe. This is also unsustainable in the end. Empire breeds disrespect.

Our civil liberties will shrink drastically. This president and his top allies in Congress fully support just one amendment in the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment's right to bear arms. Say goodbye to abortion rights in most states. Roe v. Wade will fall after this president pushes three or four Scalia and Thomas legal clones onto the Supreme Court. Say hello, meanwhile, to a much more intrusive blending of church and state.

The environment? We'll be nostalgic for Ronald Reagan's time in office.

And, finally, from James Wolcott:

The election was a victory for George Bush and Rovianism, a victory for Grover Norquist. It was also a victory for Osama Bin Laden. I don't believe for a moment Bin Laden was trying to sway voters to Kerry with his taped address. This was the outcome he wanted, a gift from us to him: an unapologetic Christian Crusader in the White House whose reelection giving lie to the notion that Abu Ghraib was an aberration and that the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians weigh upon America's conscience. This morning America could not look more like a grinning aggressor to the Arab world, an aggressor with fresh marching orders.

But there's bitter clarity to knowing the worst. My wife has forbade me from going into the same depressive funk after this election that I did 9/11--"I couldn't take another 9 months of that again"--and I'm not depressed, being filled with far too much healthy loathing for millions of my fellow Americans to let myself droop. I do have a column that is (over)due, so blogging will be light until the weekend, when the statue of Jesus will be installed on the White House lawn.

Me? Canada is looking more and more compelling.

posted by jeev | 11:06 AM |

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

You know how people have been worried about e-voting? Turns out they had cause. This is from a Santa Clara voter this morning, who happened to have his cameraphone with him:

Screen with 'voter save error #9'

Via BoingBoing, which is getting creamed today. Be patient.

posted by jeev | 1:42 PM |

Mr. Wolcott:

I am preparing myself for either outcome today. Should Kerry win, I will post an important statement called "A Time for Healing," or something equally noble-sounding. Should Bush win, I shall post a statement of philosophical resignation tentatively titled "Good, Go Ahead, America, Choke on Your Own Vomit, You Deserve to Die." The latter will probably require a little more tweaking.

Vote!

posted by jeev | 8:19 AM |

Monday, November 01, 2004

This is the message of Kerry's last ad of the campaign:

This is the message of Bush's last ad of the campaign:

Hope versus Fear.

Via I'm Just Saying.

posted by jeev | 1:18 PM |

Sunday, October 31, 2004

Osama is still out there and sending us videos. Why? Reporters from the Knight-Ridder group decided to take a closer look at the claims and what lies behind them at Tora Bora:

Knight Ridder reporters Barry Schlachter of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Jonathan S. Landay and photographers Carl Juste and Peter Andrew Bosch of The Miami Herald were at Tora Bora during the battle, and photographer David Gilkey of the Detroit Free Press and reporter Drew Brown traveled there a year later, interviewed Afghan fighters, retraced al-Qaida escape routes and talked to Pakistani intelligence officers who were tracking al Qaida.

Their reporting found that Franks and other top officials ignored warnings from their own and allied military and intelligence officers that the combination of precision bombing, special operations forces and Afghan forces that had driven the Taliban from northern Afghanistan might not work in the heartland of the country's dominant Pashtun tribe.

While more than 1,200 U.S. Marines sat at an abandoned air base in the desert 80 miles away, Franks and other commanders relied on three Afghan warlords and a small number of American, British and Australian special forces to stop al-Qaida and Taliban fighters from escaping across the mountains into Pakistan.

"We did rely heavily on Afghans because they knew Tora Bora . . . ," Franks wrote.

Military and intelligence officials had warned Franks and others that the two main Afghan commanders, Hazrat Ali and Haji Zaman, couldn't be trusted, and they proved to be correct. They were slow to move their troops into place and didn't attack until four days after American planes began bombing - leaving time for al-Qaida leaders to escape and leaving behind a rear guard of Arab, Chechen and Uzbek fighters.

posted by jeev | 10:58 AM |