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No, this was a mandate

November 7, 2008

There has been some argument about whether the election on Tuesday was a mandate.  But after viewing this image (from the New York Times), it’s a bit hard to view it any other way:

Hey!  It's a mandate!

The rest of the graphic in the link is pretty interesting as well.

Categories: Uncategorized
  1. November 7, 2008 at 22:05 | #1

    Question: How is it possible for Mississippi to vote that much more Republican than 2004? Ok, probably a dumb question…

  2. Lucas
    November 8, 2008 at 00:18 | #2

    Mississippi seems to be mostly blue.  Do you mean Arkansas?  The Clintons were pretty popular there, so that might have had something to do with it.

  3. November 8, 2008 at 09:51 | #3

    That’s a really cool graphic and a good way to look at it.

  4. November 8, 2008 at 11:06 | #4

    Yep, Arkansas…

  5. Still Me
    November 8, 2008 at 15:07 | #5

    I looked at that article about Novak’s assessment of the “mandate”, and I also looked at the comments. While I don’t see how anyone could agree with Novak’s supposed assessment, the preponderance of negative comments and ignorant personal attacks on Novak within the comments seem to outweigh any progress the article itself might have made.

    I saw the same ugliness within the comments of a couple other posts I looked at there.

    Despite the name of the website, I didn’t see much progressive thinking among its readers.  How sad.

    Is it just me—does anyone else see this?

  6. Lucas
    November 8, 2008 at 15:19 | #6

    I try to avoid reading comments on blogs, since they are always vapid, uninformed tripe.

  7. Still Me
    November 8, 2008 at 15:22 | #7

    No Comment.

  8. November 9, 2008 at 07:14 | #8

    I have two observations on this graphic.  The first is that my home county became even bluer (it’s the farthest upper left county in Minnesota,) and it had voted Kerry in 2004. The more encouraging aspect of this is that it had been surrounded by red counties in 2004, but now several counties voted Obama in 2009.

    Arkanas’ Mark Prior (sp?) was re-elected to the Senate, as a Democrat with no challengers.  None.  The Republican party didn’t even put up a sacrificial lamb.  Yet they voted for McCain/Palin.  Does anyone have an explanation on that one?

  9. November 9, 2008 at 17:42 | #9

    When a black Democrat wins Indiana, it’s a mandate.

  10. November 9, 2008 at 17:54 | #10

    This is only a ‘swing’ map- a county could vote 70% Rep, and still show deep blue, as it voted 90% last time.  More interesting is the map that shows graded blue-purple-red counties, size adjusted for population.  The republican vote is concentrated around Texas.

  11. November 9, 2008 at 18:09 | #11

    Even Texas swung more Democratic than last time.  And interestingly, more gay

    Ultimately, no one accepts a mandate that does not correspond with their vote.  And people embrace a mandate that does. But here’s the deal: state after state moved toward Democratic. People didn’t just vote for Obama, or against McCain; Congressional and Senatorial shifts indicate they voted against Republican. 

    The no-good bums always said if they could just have a 3-way majority, they’d fix this country.  Boy, did they ever.  When Bush took office, there was a budget surplus, we were paying down debt, and we were at peace.  When Obama takes office, we’ll be in two wars and on the brink of a depression.  Heckuva job, Republicans.

  12. November 9, 2008 at 18:39 | #12

    It’s a helluva swing.  I’ll pump my legs and swing long and high.  :)

  13. November 9, 2008 at 20:54 | #13

    People did vote more democratic but it seems Alaska still stayed mostly Republican. I say this because a politician indicted on 7 accounts still won. WTF people!?!?

  14. November 9, 2008 at 20:59 | #14

    Not indicted, convicted.  And they still voted for him.  My new name for them is “the Irrational Right” because their mindset seems to be orthogonal to reason.

  15. November 19, 2008 at 00:27 | #15

    Novak’s comment was a bit strange given that he made a claim in 2004 that Bush had a mandate after a much smaller margin (see http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/11/what_a_difference_four_years_m.php ).

    That said, I really don’t like the above graph as an argument. The graph shows the change not the overall fractions. This is like claiming that because the derivative of a function is large the function must be large.

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