Arnold Kling notes that exit polls show that 52% of those who voted have an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party and 53% have an unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party. Arnold comes up with this conclusion:
People with an unfavorable view of Democrats went 88-10 for Republicans, but people with an unfavorable view of Republicans only went 76-22 Democrat.
That was the difference in the election. The “unfavorables” on net broke Republican. The way I would spin it is that there is a large block of voters who are negative on both parties, the Republicans captured a larger share of that block, and that block swung the election.
There are analysis and conclusions that are not graying when it comes to social behavior or political representation.
Condorcet loser,weak Condorcet winer…
K Arrow impossibility theorem
No vote takes into account the intensity of preferences and there is no fairness in democracy,neither is in autocracy,or despotism.A vote of choice between the three would not satisfy the three fairness criteria K Arrow theorem.
To be read:
Difficult to be a good citizen and yet so easy to be a poor politician.
JDH: nice. Arnold is always interesting.
Exit polls are at least in the hands of people that can be examined and verified, yes?
So a 2.5% public majority for the Dems…and the cowing of the American public, despite record unemployment numbers, more difficult than the manufacturing of consent people would have you believe.
That is the way I would spin it…a turn or 2 less than Arnold.
I would guess this means the Bush tax cuts are all or nothing. If gridlock is assumed, then the cuts expire as a whole, no?
Obama will leave in 2012 and will make a lot of money : with books (book titles could be : “powerful rhetoric scills”, “all my lies”, “yes we can : make money” ..) and talks and promotional events and GoldmanSachs sponsor deals.
And after 2012 : Palin will push the red button (accidentally) due to its beautiful shape, and after the nuclear overkill a global reset will take place. The remaining economists will discuss the employment data.
Sometimes when the choice is between the bad and the worse, people choose the worse to clear out the bad and make room for something better next time, other times the worse is so much worse they don’t, such are the dilemmas of voting.
What explains this election result was captured perfectly by one of those little life incidents that happened yesterday to my daughter’s friend’s grandfather. He was an old, teabagger conservative who went to the polls in the morning to vote for all the hard right-wing candidates he could find on the ballot. After lunch he fell over dead. One of the weekly news magazines had a look at exit polling data that showed the GOP victory had less to do with the Tea Party per se, but had a lot to do with old fogies voting GOP in bigtime numbers. This is getting to be something of a familiar refrain. The GOP is the party of old white folks. The GOP ought to be concerned because this may be their last hurrah. A quick cross-referencing between GOP demographics and mortality tables tells me that many of this year’s GOP voters will be spending the 2012 election settling into a long dirt nap. It’s a depreciating voter base.