I am beginning to become scared that Romney/Ryan will win. Can smart people please post here and say reassuring things to convince me that he won't?

Sorry, Alfred. I live in Texas, and... Well, you can gues the rest.

Our ads are a) local race and b) national issue. The Ted Cruz campaign and whoever his opponent was, their ads are the ones we saw the most of, and that was a while back.

Obama could win electoral votes in Texas if the votes were spilt by how a district votes, Austin alone could give Obama votes.

― JacobSanders, Thursday, October 25, 2012 1:31 AM Bookmark

This would also be a good system, potentially; Maine and Nebraska have both had it in place for a long time, although it's never actually made a difference. Alternately, you could just proportion out a state's electors based on the overall breakdown of that state, so if the state were 60-40 blue/red you'd have 60/40% of the electoral vote roll out that way. Would also be a huge boon to third-party candidates. Of course, the ruling party in any given state has basically no incentive to ever implement something like this.

i mean. why not just have a popular vote

bc it would end the republican party

seems to me mitt would have a pretty good shot if we were directly electing presidents!

it was my impression that there are far more dem voters in the united states but bc they are mostly concentrated in a few urban areas in traditional blue states they vote less. i don't remember where i got that impression from tho.

probably a Democrat

Obama getting 270+ electoral w/ Romney getting the popular vote would be our best shot at changing the way the electoral college works, giving each party a recent popular win/electoral loss to remember.

would also be interested in how the likely voter model would change with direct presidential election, currently a lot of people on both sides don't bother voting if they're in a lopsided state even if the race is close nationally.

I don't know that the Democratic idea of what should have happened in 2000 was "we should elect the president based on popular vote" so much as "we should fire Jeb Bush into the sun"

and I'm sure there will be other recount controversies if it goes the other way this year, but until the Republicans are hurt by the electoral college there won't be much of a push to change it from that side

my idea was that we should elect the president based on popular vote

There have been four elections (1824, 1876, 1888, 2000) in which the winner of the popular vote lost the election. Each time it was a Democrat. In 1824 Andrew Jackson won both the popular vote and the electoral vote and still lost. (At the time you needed a majority of electoral votes, and with four candidates, he only received a plurality. Congress then decided the winner.)

electoral college doesn't necessarily help dems/reps as much as it helps certain states. change is never going to happen because as soon as it started happening people who don't currently realize they have disproportionate voting power would quickly learn that they have disproportionate voting power. less a party issue and more a state issue.

NYTimes:

While female voters generally tend to favor President Obama, that cannot be said of white women without college degrees, a group known in this race as waitress moms.

"Waitress moms"!?!

maybe they aren't voting Democrat because they keep getting called "waitress moms"

by whom, though?

apparently by "this race", and I think we all know EXACTLY what race they're talking about

waitress mothers make better lovers

i mean. why not just have a popular vote

― max, Thursday, October 25, 2012 9:24 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^ this is substantively the approach taken by the National Popular Vote Compact which I mentioned above: since amending the constitution to switch to a popular vote is prohibitively difficult, instead they're trying to get states to agree to send their electors in the direction of whatever the national popular vote does. Eight states have signed on and another four I think have it on the docket. The gimmick is that all of them agree that it won't take effect until states totaling 270 are on-board, so that they don't shoot themselves in the foot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

If you like the idea, lobby for it in your state, etc etc.

as far as major electoral changes go I think dc statehood gets a better return 4 yr money

the popular vote compact is a great thing and it's nice that the 270 vote trigger means it wouldn't require a congressional vote or constitutional amendment

the difference between a popular vote compact and DC statehood is that one of them has a chance of happening in our lifetime

I mean it's fine, but I think people overrate the badness of the electoral college compared to other things. like the order of the primaries is probably even more distortionary than the electoral college.

nah I would put my money on dc statehood. it can happen whenever the dems control congress and feel like going for the power grab. and the gains are much more obvious.

One of my friends posted a thread on FB about that "waitress moms" thing, leading to some great comments, including:

"All that wasted energy on one band from Akron!"
"I'm voting for any candidate willing to put a waitress on mars within 10 years!"
"this article completely overshadows the struggles of Maître d'ads"

And my Reddit-ready contribution, "Any mom doing her job properly IS a waitress, am I right?"

(xpost) As a DC resident of course I'm hoping for it but even if we get something called "statehood" I don't see it coming with two voting senators and a representative. It's just nowhere near the top of national Dem priorities.

well the timing has to be right, something like the 2008 majorities w/o the world economy collapsing etc. I'm not saying it's inevitable or anything, but it's a power play there for the taking.

the good news is that if you don't live in one of the 8 swing states ur television viewing experience is blissfully presidential ad-free

― Mordy, Wednesday, October 24, 2012 11:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i live in vt and ive been getting hella ads targeted at nh, way more for obama fwiw

btw 538 has obama as a slight favorite in virginia, if he wins there you can start celebrating early

Good morning, guys!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/10/adsbystatetime.png

i watched a pre season celtics game the other night and this ad thats just a clip of romney on 60min saying his tax rate being lower than the average working persons is fair played every comercial break

jesus christ, why the hell is James Taylor tacked onto every fucking Democratic presidential run

we need the worst celebraties to pretend to be republicans as a covert op

cannot imagine how horrible it must be to watch tv in florida ohio and virginia right now

I hate that the campaigns discovered Hulu. Can't skip that shit.

if you use ad block it just shows you a black screen begging you to turn ad block off

romnmentum kaput http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/oct-24-in-polls-romneys-momentum-seems-to-have-stopped

BTW on behalf of Ohio I apologize in advance for whatever happens here.

Every day on my way home I go right past the county board of elections building, and there are a LOT of people doing early voting, every day.

Some items that are meant to be real but come off as parodies:

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/12928_4602012175566_1447120646_n.jpg

As well as

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0OomdFloKI

Man, that eagle isn't even crying. What a waste of effort.

its funny because romney is the one who brought up big bird

re that linkabait conor friedersdorf piece from a while back where he refused to endorse obama because drone strikes and instead went w/the gold standard guy

An economic depression would kill a lot more innocent people than Obama's drone strike program. Economic performance isn't just about money -- it's about people's ability to feed and house themselves and to obtain health care. Economic instability also feeds social and political unrest and can lead to violence and war. William Jennings Bryan had this right: Monetary policy is a moral issue and proposing to crucify mankind on a cross of gold is a "deal-breaker" for me.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-25/the-presidential-candidate-who-would-destroy-the-economy.html

health care reform also

nah I would put my money on dc statehood. it can happen whenever the dems control congress and feel like going for the power grab. and the gains are much more obvious.

― iatee, Thursday, October 25, 2012 2:43 PM (42 minutes ago)

can you imagine the level of "throw the bums out" spent too much time in washington incoherent rage this would create in the other states tho? seems like a one way PR disaster ticket to a complete congressional turnover.

nah I think the rage would be 100% partisan, democrats would quickly agree that a place w/ more people than wyoming should have representation, republicans would all quickly agree that this is the biggest injustice in human history. I actually think they mentioned this in their platform?

dc certainly wouldnt be throwing the bums out B-)

btw most gangster licence plate

http://i.imgur.com/RF6Vt.jpg

hahaha ive never seen that before