AOL has a story claiming Polls say Bush leads in electoral college.
How can he lead in that if no one has voted yet???
How much did Bush have to pay AOL to say this?
At least it mentions my state is a “toss up”.
They can say Bush is ahead in the electoral college vote in the same way they can say which candidate leads in any other poll. They poll residents of each state and territory with electoral votes to determine which candidate is ahead, then tally up the electoral votes for each candidate in those places where he leads.
Why are you making a fuss about this, Vanilla? It’s an Associated Press story (AOL doesn’t do a lot of reporting), and all they did was add up the electoral votes from states that appear to be solidly Democratic or Republican. It’s hardly a stretch to say that Bush will carry Texas, Kerry Massachusetts, etc. They’re just projecting. Neither guy has enough to win; a large number of important states are up in the air. The story actually said a lot less than I thought it did when I first looked at the title. Basically it just tells us that things are very even and that swing states like Michigan, Ohio and Florida will make the difference. Big surprise. Some of the states may go the opposite way, but it’s just a projection.
Is that even what they did? It seems like they relied more on common sense or conventional wisdom than anything else.
The polls are going to swing like Tarzan over the next few months…and as mentioned, certain states are a lock…Dubya could bomb London, ban the Constitution and beat a baby seal to death on live television and my guess is that Alabama and Texas and the usual suspect states would still vote for him. To be fair, states like California and Massachusetts wouldn’t vote for Dubya now no matter what he does.
This is why certain states, my home state of Nevada being one of them, are “swing states” that could change the election. These states will be the main targets of mass advertising, multiple visits by both candidates and huge media coverage.
The Electoral College was probably a good system back in the days when the biggest problem was rural versus urban voters. With television, internet and mass media covering the entire USA today, I think those days are over, but it is still the system we have to work with. So yeah…it is pretty easy to sit in an armchair, do some simple addition and figure out which state is going to vote for Bush or Kerry. But there are always some surprises…and there are always some hanging chads to fuck things up.
I have no idea of the methodology used to derive the specific conclusion. Were I going to write a story on how many electoral votes each candidate appeared to be able to rely on, I would use the methodology I outlined. I suppose other methods are possible.
I wonder if the fact that Saudi interests own a large chunk of AOL had anything to do with this small tidbit of otherwise useless information making the front page of my beloved AOL News.
How much do the Saudi’s own of CNN, The Denver Post, Fark.com, etc? Hmmm…
I’m sure that’s it. The Saudi’s.
Heh. It does sound goofy, but I was responding to the OP.
For those who think that Bushco is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bin Laden Inc., its really not that farfetched. Consider that the Saudi Kingdom has made the Bush family $1,300,000,000 richer over the past 30 years.
A lot of Americans wonder if that had anything to do with why we went to war with Iraq instead of Saudi Arabia, why ObL was given a two month head start before the war in Afghanistan, and why AOL would run front page BS like this. There’s no great debate here, just thinking out loud and the offering of humble opinions.
Yeah, it’s all part of their very devious plan to… accomplish absolutely nothing. 
It’s even more devious than that. It is all part of their plan to convey timely news stories to the public! The fiends.
For those interested here is a link to (I think) the news item under discussion, or one very similar:
The article in question reminds me of the old George Carlen sportscaster routine, And here’s a partial score just in: Yale 28. Its meaningless. Its not newsworthy. It has no value to anyone. Its misleading. It belongs on page seven at the bottom of the politics section. AOL put it on the front of their home page. A reasonable person could be suspect, while another could see nothing to it.
Is it possible that AOL is playing politics? Yes. Is it probable? No. So what’s up with the snarkiness?
I honestly don’t see why you consider it (and I am talking about the article I linked to because no one else has linked to anything else and I am not on AOL) meaningless or misleading. It is far more relevant than the almost daily national poll updates that say that 42% of voters nationwide are for Kerry, and 43% for Bush. We don’t elect the President by a direct vote tally, we elect him through the mechanism of the Electoral College.
Say what now?
According to an NBC News report if Bush were to win exactly the same States in 2004 as he did in 2000, and Kerry were to win exactly the same States as Gore did in 2000, Bush would have more electoral votes this time around. This is because of an electoral shift caused by population changes.
I find it amusing that they report on the news that 2% more people in might state are for Kerry than Bush…in a survey done by (and at) UNH. Gee…do you think college kids are really representive of the entire state? Hmmm. These polls are all equally meaningless.
I agree that polls giving the popular vote don’t mean much. I feel very strongly that saying that CA, NY, MA, etc., go blue while the large rectangular states go red, and there’s a bunch to close to call, but BUSH WINS is not news, especially front page news. That’s all. Nothing else to see here.
Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal alone owns or has owned anywhere from 1.5 to 2 billion dollars worth of AOL stock. Google has pages and pages on this. I think that’s fairly common knowledge.
Now, if you had mentioned a few million, I’d let this one go. But you’re talking 1.3 billion dollars. Care to give some evidence of this? Or are you just ranting polliticaly?
Fahrenheit 9/11 was made for folks like duffer, who need to know the things they don’t know they need to know. 