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Thu, Jan. 10th, 2008, 12:27 pm
What is up with election coverage?
The coverage of the current US primaries is mindbogglingly wrongheaded. Recent coverage has focused on who would 'win' New Hampshire among the democrats, and Huckabee's 'lead' among republicans. The actual numbers can be found here. New Hampshire is not a winner-take-all state for democrats, and both Clinton and Obama got exactly nine delegates from there, making the declaration of a 'winner' extremely misleading, if not outright revealing of the declarer having dubious mental capacity. Among republicans, Mitt Romney now has the most delegates, with Huckabee in second, and the media is currently speculating that Romney will drop out because he's so far 'behind'. Seriously, what is wrong with journalists? Are they not able to do basic arithmetic? Ideally I'd like to have meta-coverage discussing why some states are winner take all and others aren't, and what on earth 'super-delegates' are, but I'd settle for even an accurate portrayal of what's happening in the race as it unfolds. But thank you CNN for putting up a nice site which gives accurate up-to-date information. Please expand it in the future with more explanation of what 'super delegates' are, and what happens to a candidate's delegates if they drop out of the race. Thu, Jan. 10th, 2008 09:01 pm (UTC)
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) abyrneseyeview
Signal is easier to cover than noise, and the pay is the same. Thu, Jan. 10th, 2008 09:35 pm (UTC)
bramcohen
I think you meant that the other way around. Thu, Jan. 10th, 2008 09:10 pm (UTC)
spider88
A science journalist spoke to my science writing class last quarter (made up of mostly graduate biology and microbiology student). I asked her if there was ANY regulations for the education level of science journalism, in terms of writing or editing, or ANY systems in place for fact-checking basic concepts. Nope, none. She in fact had to explain to her editor how basic percentages worked. Where she had written x% her editor wanted her to write "x% out of 100". Not "x out of 100". So, no, they don't know how to do basic arithmetic, and they don't have to learn to keep publishing. Thu, Jan. 10th, 2008 09:31 pm (UTC)
lupoleboucher
I don't understand why anyone thinks the media is interested in giving out accurate up-to-date information about anything. The media is interested in selling advertisements: that's ALL they're interested in. The "early primary" thing is just a way to sell ads -they make it look like a horse race, when it is really more like a WWF wrestling match, except we don't know who Vince McMahon is. I used to help news organizations price their online ads; ads cost more during election cycles. Duh. If you want the real story: learn to count, or go talk to people who know stuff -it's the only way to learn about anything. Thu, Jan. 10th, 2008 09:37 pm (UTC)
jered
Not to mention the whole superdelegate thing that the Dems do; CNN seems to credit them all, in advance, to Clinton. Is that because they've already been bought (legally) off? Or is it a prediction? Thu, Jan. 10th, 2008 10:01 pm (UTC)
bramcohen
What is a superdelegate? There's no explanation on the CNN site. Thu, Jan. 10th, 2008 10:10 pm (UTC)
jered
It's buried in the fine print at the bottom of their Democratic Scorecard. They say:
Superdelegates in the Democratic Party are typically members of the Democratic National Committee, elected officials like senators or governors, or party leaders. They do not have to indicate a candidate preference and do not have to compete for their position. If a superdelegate dies or is unable to participate at the convention, alternates do not replace that delegate, which would reduce the total delegates number and the "magic number" needed to clinch the nomination.
Republicans have a similar concept of "unpledged delegates". Basically, this all goes back to the fact that the primaries/caucases don't have the weight of any sort of law -- the delegates can choose to vote for whomever they'd like. Being a political appointment, however, it's heavily frowned upon to vote for the candidate not indicated by the primary. Thu, Jan. 10th, 2008 10:09 pm (UTC)
dbt: Super-delegates
super-delegates are current national officeholders and other major national figures (former presidents, vice presidents, house and senate majority/minority leaders, speakers of the house), plus governors and possibly a few other state officeholders, totaling around 850. They are free to endorse and pledge to vote for any particular candidate, but are not bound and may change their mind (rare unless their candidate drops out).
Delegates selected from a primary or caucus are pledged to vote for the candidate (that's why they're selected based on the vote in the first place). If their candidate drops out, they're typically required (by honor or contract, not sure) to vote for whomever their candidate endorses. There hasn't been a non-majority primary in 50 years, so it hasn't typically mattered, but it might this year with tough multi-way races. Thu, Jan. 10th, 2008 10:15 pm (UTC)
jered: Re: Super-delegates
All delegates' votes are based on honor. This can lead to unexpected voting, but to my knowledge has never changed the winner of a presidential election. Thu, Jan. 10th, 2008 10:29 pm (UTC)
bramcohen: Re: Super-delegates
Hold on a second. Any sensible definition of 'majority' win is that the candidate leading the delegates vote has the win locked from real votes prior to the convention. Between the superdelegates being 19% of all delegates, and candidates ranked third on down being able to throw their votes any which way and those being what I assume is an entirely typical about 25% of all votes, that basically means that a candidate would have to get 90% of all votes among the top two to have a lock on the nomination (which isn't even mathematically possible with my assumption about third on down totalling 25%). So basically there's no way in hell there can be a clean majority prior to the convention without some fairly significant back room dealing beforehand to reach agreement about who's going to win. For that to have happened in every election for the last 50 years paints a very sinister portrait of the political machine.
The above is about the Democratic primary process. During the same time period, the Republican party hasn't once gone without a clear front-runner already selected six months before now! Christ, no need for anyone to have vast conspiracy theories about how politics works, all they have to do is do the fucking math. Fri, Jan. 11th, 2008 05:30 pm (UTC)
brad_templeton: It's not the delegates
The number of delegates from these states is minor and it is not so much of an error by the press not to care about them.
These early primaries are entirely viewed as a "test" -- can this candidate win a real voting block. In Iowa it's a highly self-selected block which is a problem and part of why the wisdom is you can lose Iowa but must do well in NH.
But it's not so much if you can win, but also by how much you lose. If you can only pull single digits in a state, unless there's a very obvious reason (for example, you came out against corn farmers in Iowa) people interpret that as saying, "this is not a horse that can win."
And it's self-fulfilling too. Even if you would have won in a national poll, your poor performance in early small states can take voters away from you later, even if they liked you. A large fraction of voters are not voting for the candidate who they like the most, they are voting for "the candidate that can beat the enemy."
This is a test of how good you are at beating your enemies. Sometimes by any means necessary (pandering, attack ads, etc.)
This is not good, however, and it means we can't get candidates unless they know how to win these small states. I have advocated that what state goes first be assigned by lottery, and rotate it every election, rather than being done by tradition and backfighting.
You do need to start in small states for your test because candidates can't afford to run elections in large areas early in the race, it would bankrupt them.
Sun, Jan. 13th, 2008 05:46 am (UTC)
bramcohen: Re: It's not the delegates
Yes, the early states have the advantage of finding out who's actually 'electable', without bankrupting poorly funded but charismatic and popular candidates. And if the media covered the first few states as a test of who the contenders are, rather than trying to call the whole race in the very first state, I'd be happy with it. My complaint is that the media coverage is boneheaded, not giving a good idea of what's happening in the race at all. Fri, Jan. 11th, 2008 11:57 pm (UTC)
booger_dawson
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