OK – the US system is flawed – FTTP in states means that only a dozen or so states matter each time. So make it fairer: You could just count all the votes ? (far too simple) Or perhaps recognise “states rights” The electoral college system gives a boost to small states by giving a minimum of two electoral votes before proportionality kicks in….first past the post awards all to the winner however. So if we keep the bias in …
There’s probably more US stories out there than any of us can process, so I’m planning to ‘dump’ judicially. Wired on the big non political winner of this US election, Nate Silver’s rigorous modelling techniques (which perhaps resulted in a great deal less bellicosity in US news rooms): Data was also the story of how this election was analyzed. Obama won the election. But Nate Silver ofThe New York Times completely reshaped its coverage. Silver steadied the nerves of liberals and rattled …
A comfortable win for Gingrich in South Carolina as the BBC reports. The scale of the win (40-28) must be of particular concern to Romney. RealClearPolitics is particularly damning with it’s three takeaways from SC. 1) There is no good news buried in here for Mitt Romney …2) This is worse than George W. Bush’s loss to John McCain in New Hampshire. John McCain caught Bush off-guard in 2000, but Bush was given an opportunity to regroup. He hadn’t fired any major …
So today is the Republican Iowa caucus. The master of US Psephology is Nate Silver (from Wiki) of the wonderful FiveThirtyEight.com. He think’s it’s tight between Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, with Rick Santorum slightly behind but with a bit of momentum. It’s worth a look at the caucus process. From the IOWA GOP site we get: First, the Presidential Poll is taken. At the beginning of your precinct caucus meeting, the Caucus Chairman will call for the Presidential Preference Poll. …
