I was wondering about this back in the Presidential elections of 2000, where the mechanism of achieving a result came as a complete surprise to (it seemed) all concerned. It seems as though the US media systematically obfuscate how their electoral processes actually work. Maybe just because they're so flippin' complicated it would confuse the straight-line narrative demanded by today's short-attention-span viewers, etc.
Think about the NFL (or MLB for that matter)... Americans like high drama, high pressure, big plays, 'it all comes down to this', '3 and 2 the count, all the bases loaded' moments. Wins and losses are what's sexy, not steady accumulation of points.
Who cares if someone gains another 3 backing pledges? What I want to know is who won?
It's like trying to work out whose won a basketball match after the first 2 minutes. You can see the styles, but there's 46 more minutes to play, and tonnes more points to come.
I feel the US media is not serving their public well by their reporting.... you'd also think they'd have learnt from their 'predictions' in 2004 and 2000 where they handed the election to democrats based on the exit poll from one small town in Connecticut. Even though only 20% of the poll hand been counted they were shouting about a landslide for Clinton in New Hampshire. Tying in delegates is not a landslide (even if better than Hils was expecting).
As for publishing exit polls on the east coast when the west coast has yet to finish voting... that seems -wrong-.
Obama should get Denny Green on his staff: "Now, if you want to crown Clinton, then crown her! But, she is who we thought she is, and we let her off the hook!"
Presumably (and all my knowledge comes from The West Wing, and I've forgotten most of that), it's that New Hampshire is seen as a good indicator of how the vote will swing.
In that case, a UK constituency returns a Labour candidate, where previously they'd returned a Conservative (or vice-versa), then it's a reasonably prediction that other seats with a smaller majority will also flip. Of course, it's just a prediction, and I'm curious how much effort's been put into testing the validity after the event (you'd think they'd have sufficient data to do so).
Of course, the other thing I remember fro the West Wing was that it was Jed Bartlett's home state, so he was expected to get a large majority there, and anything else was a bad sign...
That's a bit different though, because in UK elections the constituencies all poll simultaneously. So Peter Snow is not using the swingo to make a psephological prediction of how those other constituencies are likely to go on to vote -- he's only making a statistical prediction about how their numbers (already in) are likely to behave.
Exactly. The US media are creating the buzz around the candidates, rather than reporting it. Which seems highly anti-democratic to me.
Still the whole thing does remind me a little of playing "Die Macher", where your initial play does set up the longer term, and even winning small state (or German constituency in this case) helps you swing the rest of the countries Agenda.... :)
I think the democratic deficit, is in the mechanism of early primaries, not in the (inevitable) fact that if there are things happening, then the media will report them
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Same goes for the primaries as for the main event.
How those delegates are elected in the primaries is a little confusing, but it's not really as important.
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Who cares if someone gains another 3 backing pledges? What I want to know is who won?
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I feel the US media is not serving their public well by their reporting.... you'd also think they'd have learnt from their 'predictions' in 2004 and 2000 where they handed the election to democrats based on the exit poll from one small town in Connecticut. Even though only 20% of the poll hand been counted they were shouting about a landslide for Clinton in New Hampshire. Tying in delegates is not a landslide (even if better than Hils was expecting).
As for publishing exit polls on the east coast when the west coast has yet to finish voting... that seems -wrong-.
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Or vice versa, of course.
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Have you ever seen Peter Snow's Swing-O-Meter explanation? (In fact, it's over at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/vote2005/swingometer/html/labcon.stm)
In that case, a UK constituency returns a Labour candidate, where previously they'd returned a Conservative (or vice-versa), then it's a reasonably prediction that other seats with a smaller majority will also flip. Of course, it's just a prediction, and I'm curious how much effort's been put into testing the validity after the event (you'd think they'd have sufficient data to do so).
Of course, the other thing I remember fro the West Wing was that it was Jed Bartlett's home state, so he was expected to get a large majority there, and anything else was a bad sign...
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Still the whole thing does remind me a little of playing "Die Macher", where your initial play does set up the longer term, and even winning small state (or German constituency in this case) helps you swing the rest of the countries Agenda.... :)
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