The Slipping Landslide?

This article by Mark Nickolas from the Huffington Post on the MSM's ignorance regarding electoral history needed to be posted for a couple of reasons. One, it pretty much goes along with what I have been telling everyone who will listen - popular vote is not the metric by which we elect our president. Whether or not it should be is open for debate. But currently it is not.

To demonstrate the significance of such a distinction let's assume the following - as unlikely as it is. If John McCain beats Barack Obama by a half a percent in each of the 50 states he would claim all 538 electoral votes thus accomplishing a "landslide" regardless of the fact that he won by only .5 percent of the overall popular vote. This is why looking at national polls, while not useless, is really not a good way to gauge where things really stand.

Take a look at Real Clear Politics website. They currently have Obama ahead of McCain by 3.6% in an average of all recent national polls. But when you look at how that translates to the electoral college you get Barack claiming 238 electoral votes to McCain's 163 with 137 still considered 'toss-ups' - that is states that cold go either way. That gives Obama a lead of 75 electoral votes. Not a landslide, but being ahead by 19% of the assigned electoral votes, it certainly looks better. But if you eliminate the toss-ups and assign them to the person who currently holds a lead in those states (which is exactly what happens come November) then the lead increases even more yielding a 322 to 216 lead for Obama, or a difference of 106 electoral votes, or almost a difference of 20% of the available electoral votes. So by looking exclusively at the national polls one is left with an entirely incorrect understanding of where things actually stand.

The second reason I needed to post on this article is because Mark demonstrates an elegantly simple and beautiful use of Excel - my favorite pastime. His application of the trendline just made my heart all fuzzy.

Lastly, I would like to disagree with Mark's assertion that MSM badly needs a history lesson. I think they know exactly what they are doing. By reporting on how close the race is they accomplish two things - they appear more objective thus earning neutrality points, and second they captivate the audience. The more they can convince the majority of viewers that this IS a close race the more people will feel the need to tune in to every detail of the campaign. They thus create a bigger story than there really is and viewership soars at the expense of journalistic integrity. But no one would ever call them on it because they appear neutral. Brilliant, really.