I’ve been watching the Electoral Vote predictor with interest the last few days. As I mentioned previously, its methodology may be questionable, but it’s interesting, and it’s probably no more wrong than any other polls. I really don’t have much faith in the ability of any of them to predict a race this close when it’s getting harder and harder for pollsters to reach a reliable cross-section of voters. A friend recently commented that “the only people they’re talking to are old people without caller-ID”. That may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but it’s definitely true that calling listed landline telephones is no longer a good way to reach a representative sample of the population. But I’m digressing. What caught my eye today was Ohio.
I think almost everybody agrees that Ohio is still impossible to predict. All the polls show a margin of victory less than the margin of error, meaning there’s a stastically significant chance the poll could be wrong. And almost everybody agrees that Ohio is an important state. Its 20 electoral votes are enough to tip the balance in a close race, and according to the folks who study these things, no Republican has ever won the presidency without Ohio, and only two Democrats in the last 100 years have won without Ohio.
Ohio also has some personal significance. I used to live there. I still know a bunch of people there. I know some of them are going to vote the right way. And I’m afraid some of them are going to vote for Bush, for reasons I can’t completely understand. So here’s the dilemma. Given the potential importance of Ohio in a race which is of the ultimate importance to this country and even the whole world, should I try to talk some sense into these people? It’s quite possible that the Ohio result could be decided by a few hundred votes; just changing a couple of minds could be a significant part of that.
I’m not sure what it would take to sway Bush voters, because I really can’t understand why they support Bush. For the last week or so, I’ve been collecting various news articles and references, with the intention of compiling them into one long article here. Then I could decide whether or not to harass all my questionable friends with it. But I’ve never gotten around to pulling it together, and now it looks like I won’t.
But if we believe the latest Electoral Vote Predictor, it also looks like Ohio may not be so important after all. The latest prediction shows Kerry with a comfortable electoral vote victory (291 to 242), even with Ohio’s 20 votes going to Bush. It would certainly be nice to turn those 20 votes back to blue, but if the predictions for the other states hold true, we don’t need Ohio. And my (ex?-)friends won’t be responsible for the destruction of the world as we know it. Nice thought. I hope it works out that way.