Getting it right
By Brad on Jan 6, 2009 in America, Fact Check, Oklahoma Blogosphere, Politics | comments(1)
I’m not sure if it was this post or this post or some other catalyst that got Jim Martin’s dander up about election maps and 2008 election results, but he continues to blather on about how the electorate was evenly split and the last several Presidential elections being “with a margin of error of a few idiots on the far left side of reality.” In his post’s headline, he asks, “How many times do I have to show the 2008 election map?”
The answer, quite simply, is until he gets it right.
In the post, two of the three electoral maps he cites are projections from March and July — not even the final, actual election results. The last map he includes is the familiar, but deceptive county-by-county map that paints the country in a sea of red, where land mass is given more weight and importance than actual votes.
As I pointed out shortly after the election, this nation is not quite as red as it appears. When you look at a cartogram, a map in which the sizes of states are rescaled according to their population, the electoral map looks significantly different.
Even more, when you take the actual proportional voting margins rather than the all-or-nothing extremes shown on Mr. Martin’s cited map, you get an even more accurate picture of where the country stands — even in Oklahoma (not quite so starkly red anymore).
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To get to Mr. Martin’s claim of an evenly split electorate that was, as he called it, “with[in] a margin of error of a few idiots on the far left side of reality,” the 53% to 46% — a 7% spread — is certainly outside of most credible polls’ margins of error. It is certainly a wider margin than the 52% to 47% — a 5% spread — in 2004 and even more certainly greater than the incredible negative win margin of 47.9% to 48.4% — a negative 0.5% margin — in 2000.
Furthermore, Obama’s electoral win of 365 to 173 (+192 margin) is a significantly more decisive victory than either of Bush’s 2000 or 2004 victories — 271-266 (+5 margin) and 286-252 (+34 margin) respectively.
In both electoral college margins and actual voting percentage margins, the country was much less divided — especially given the significant Democratic gains in both houses of Congress — and certainly much less “evenly split” in 2008 than in the prior two elections.
So, Mr. Martin, you can keep showing your maps, but it doesn’t change the reality. Perhaps you aren’t factoring in the much larger margin of error of a not-so-few idiots on the far right side of reality.
