Originally posted @ 11:16 am, Thu 6th Nov 2008
Good news from the United States. Barack Obama's victory represents many things (see www.me4sd.com), not least hope that the USA will now face up to global challenges like climate change.
Not good news for the Tories - see an excellent post by Luke Akehurst - http://lukeakehurst.blogspot.com/2008/11/cameron-co-on-mccain-palin.html#links Key political message - It was a vote against Tory economic philosophy that Obama described as - “... that old, discredited ... philosophy – give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else.”
I went to a special election night party, but the BBC coverage made the occassion quite dull. It should have been about how people were voting and why. All that IT available to show how the people were actually voting and they didn't use it. Instead it focussed on talking heads on the last 8 years & the next 4 and they missed the basic story like explaining which states had to change.
Frustrating to see the talking heads still talking about the "Bradley effect". From what I can see of the results compared against the average of polls published by www.RealClearPolitics.com, the pollsters had a good night. Most of the states were within 4% of the final result (28 out of 36 measured).
Pollsters blotted their copy book a bit in the some of the most important states. They underestimated Obama's margin in Pennsylvania (by 4% so a surprise to see the result from this key state declared as soon as polls closed), and two switching states (Nevada (5%) and New Mexico (5%)).
McCain did much better than predicted in 5 states - Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, New York and Arizona (which gave us much higher hopes than could ever be expected that McCain might lose his own state).
Problems remain though for the pollsters both in the USA and here. In explaining how they checked for false returns from members of the public surveyed, they showed how they use judgment to test for what problems they've experienced in the past. Not sure that's enough.
So if pollsters still have to improve, what about the elections themselves?
Can it be accaptable that volunteers have to work so hard to get voters registered in the world's most powerful free society? Registration should be much more automatic and the onus on local government to get the register much more up to date.
And can it be acceptable for people to queue on election day to vote? Or for counting machines to be used that may not have a clear accounting trail?
And for the country's politics?
I'm astonished at how such a developed country is stuck on basics like getting medical care for everyone. And to hear American pundits de-cry Britain's NHS whilst overlooking such a fundamental wrong.
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