Professor Abramson Speaketh

[DemocratSinceBirth]

He's a professor of Political Science at Emory University and a Democratic activist

Professor Abramson

The exit polls missed the mark very badly last night (before they were reweighted to correspond to the actual results). The national exit poll consistently showed Kerry leading by 3 points--just the reverse of the actual vote. The Ohio exit poll had Kerry up by 4 and the Florida exit poll had it tied.

What happened? Some combination of bad precinct samples, resopnse bias, or failing to accurately account for early and absentee votes must have been at work. Whatever it was, it was a major problem. In 2000, the national exit poll also overestimated Gore's vote, but not by nearly as big a margin.

Why did Kerry lose the popular vote? Basically this was a rerun of 2000. Almost every state, and every big state, went the same way it did in 2000. It looks like the only switches were New Hampshire for Kerry and probably Iowa and New Mexico for Bush, although those are not certain (and, in fact, New Hampshire is also extremely close). But Kerry got killed in the South and that appears to have also dragged down several Democratic Senate candidates.

I think that Democrats need to think very hard about the lessons of this election, regardless of what happens in Ohio with the provisional ballots. We lost the popular vote and probably the election to a Republican incumbent with a horrible record. It is going to be very difficult to win a presidential election unless the Democratic candidate can do significantly better in the southern and border states. More thoughts to come later.

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The professor nailed it... He absolutely nailed it... We will find it nearly impossible to cede the entire south and southwest and win general elections...

I'm not smart enough by half to come up with the solution but I am smart enough to identify the problem....

And folks we have a huge problem....

[JI7]

1. the South is a problem for sure

[springhill]

2. Yes, that is a problem....

But so is the fact that we have a system in place where the vote CAN be STOLEN! And until that is fixed nothing else really makes any difference. We have fascists in office, and people need to start realizing that.

[Walt Starr]

3. #1 way to reverse the trend, GIVE UP ON GUN CONTROL!

God, guns and gays.

Okay, that's really two issues, fundamentalism and guns. We will never win with fundamentalism, so give up on the guns already!

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. Clinton Was Able To Finesse Those Issues...

We need another Clinton..

On depropravera....