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Welcome to Backyard Blog, our group online journal for this election season. We've asked a broad array of people with deep ties to the region to share their views on politics during the 2004 campaign.
Send your comments to bbcomments@seattletimes.com. |
October 18, 2004
| A Texas-eye view of Seattle politics |
| Posted by Stephanie Sanguinet at 09:51 AM |
A friend of mine recently visited from Texas to start house shopping; he and his wife are moving here soon.
He was amused by the fact that Washington is such a liberal state…he didn’t say widely Democratic, but liberal. Being from Texas, he is as Republican as they come and is outspokenly rooting for President Bush’s re-election. Out to dinner one night, he brought forth his observations:
- Seattleites cannot drive to save their lives.
- Though the majority of Seattleites have Kerry bumper stickers, the opposite is true for those who live outside of the city. He saw more Bush bumper stickers in the suburbs and Eastern Washington.
- There are those voting for Kerry strictly to out the President and his administration.
I was intrigued by an outsider’s opinion of our political viewpoints in the state. Texans are proud of their President and are quick with anti-Kerry jokes and banter.
Whereas most Republicans have no great reason for disliking Kerry, Texans have their long list of reasons and are able to back up any debate with stark facts, thus making any conversation feel like a debate. Having talked to him about the current election, I was almost envious of a man who obviously took great pride in the state he grew up in.
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| Curiouser and curiouser (read this post) |
| Posted by Matthew Ranger at 09:48 AM |
With just two and a half weeks remaining until the election, things are becoming very interesting. A couple of items of note:
- In the debates, the president was adequate while Kerry was excellent. I suppose this should be expected given that Kerry started a debate society in college and has been debating pretty much his entire adult life. His performance has wiped out most of the margin created by the GOP convention and left him in a good position for the final push to election day.
- Now it may be just me, but this last week the Kerry/Edwards campaign just hasn't seemed to be at the highest level of decency. First Kerry refers to Dick Cheney's daughter to try to score political points, then Edwards says that if they were elected that Christopher Reeve would get up and walk. Poking your finger in family matters and trying to profit from a man's death. Real classy guys.
- In looking at the states that really matter in this election, I find that the President's margins have held in Florida where he's slightly ahead and Pennsylvania where he's slightly behind. I'm surprised, however, to find that he's slipped in a big way in Ohio. A month ago, polls had him up there in some cases by double digit margins. Now some polls have Kerry winning and nearly all are at least a statistical tie. No Republican president has ever won without taking Ohio. The President won't win without it either.
- The other state that really interests me is Colorado. There is an initiative on the ballot that would divide the state's electoral votes between the candidates according to the percentage of the vote that each candidate gets. This would effectively give the losing candidate four electoral votes and the winner five. Unfortunately, the writers of the initiative made it retroactive so that it would apply to the current election cycle. This opens it up to a legal challenge. Should the election turn out razor thin and this initiative pass, we could be looking at yet another election being decided by the courts. Now this situation is somewhat merciful in that I don't see the US Supreme Court taking on the case, but the prospect of the election being decided by the Colorado Supreme Court is certainly within the realm of possibility. Welcome to Colorado: The New Florida.
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| Picking at the poll numbers |
| Posted by Stephen Russell at 09:26 AM |
If you've been a polling junkie for the past few months like I have, you should read this interview with Charles Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report (registration is free).
I’ve spent weeks glued to these websites, knowing full well that polls don’t tell you a darn thing about the reality of the situation. Maybe I am having a hard time giving up the security and hope I’ve been getting from watching the numbers.
These websites, with their fancy-pants statistical analyses, margins of error, and those deceptively clear-cut red/blue/gray maps, give the impression of being concrete, when in fact they more resemble a pile of mud, each pollster shoveling his own dirt onto the heap, hoping that things will consistently hold together.
In his interview, Mr. Cook casts some very rational light on the hype surrounding polls, undecided voters, swing states, and Senate races, among many other topics. Some highlights: Jews are the Gore-to-Bush voters everyone is wondering about; in the polls: thumbs up to Zogby, thumbs down to Rasmussen and Survey USA; finally, Mr. Cook “cannot remember ever seeing a race where a well-known, well-defined incumbent won a half or more of the undecided vote. Generally it is at least two-thirds to three-quarters going to the challenger…”
Good news for Kerry? Maybe, but read the article and questions will get answered. It’s like an “Elections n’ Politics FAQ.” Very, very interesting.
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