My election year lie

I promised myself I wouldn’t get side tracked about the U.S. Presidential elections this week.

But I lied.

The fact is, the Commonwealth’s future is too dependent on the outcome, and the outcome itself is too uncertain, for the race not to be a compelling spectator sport. And, like all sports, the fun comes in handicapping the outcome.

Which brings me back to an issue I raised last week: Though Bush has a razor thin edge in the polls, the status of the race can’t be determined by a mere poll reflected on a national level.

This is rooted in the weird concept of the electoral process, in which the winner in any given state gets the electoral votes assigned to that state; the number of such electoral votes being a function of the state’s population. This isn’t news to Americans, but it may be news to many, if not most, of our community here in the Commonwealth.

Since Messrs. Bush and Gore are so darned close in the polls, a look at the polling by state, along with an analysis of the electoral significance, is what’s needed in order to get a truer feeling for the magnitude of things. I’m talking pure statistics here, not politics.

And, dear readers (gawd, I hate that horrible phrase and always wanted to inflict it on you out of pure Sadism), I’ve found some numbers along those lines.

So here’s some wisdom from Rasmussen Research, a reputable polling and analysis firm that looks like it does some great work. According to Rasmussen, Bush is leading Gore by 46 percent to 42 percent in the polls.

Boiling this down into electoral votes, here’s the scoop. A candidate needs 270 such votes to be the winner. Bush, according to Rasmussen, is likely to snare 239 such votes. Gore, by contrast, is likely to grab 168. This leaves 131 electoral votes as a “toss up,” up for grabs.

Clearly, then, Bush’s narrow polling lead nationally manifests in an exaggerated lead when compiled using state-by-state electoral votes.

On an academic note, I’m not claiming it’s likely that a candidate might scoop the majority vote but still loose the election. It is, however, a mathematical possibility. My point is that the electoral process means that the magnitude of a lead (or lag) in the national polls is misleading, since the electoral lead (or lag) will likely be exaggerated. This is in the realm of mathematics, not politics.

In any event, Bush’s lead looks more solid when we look at the electoral vote projections. Of course, he has to battle a hostile media and an entrenched set of special interest groups that will be gunning for him all the way up until election day. Still, contrary to my predictions but in line with my hopes, it looks like Bush might win this one after all.

Stephens is an economist with Stephens Corporation, a professional organization in the NMI. His column appears three times a week: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Mr. Stephens can be contacted via the following e-mail address: ed4Saipan@yahoo.com.