--- Warren Ockrassa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Out of _how_ many voters? 2000 votes is probably > > below the number of voters who put a mark in the > wrong > > box. > > About a million. Turns out the "none of these" > voters were over 3500 in > number: <http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004//pages/results/states/NV/>
And you think that 3500 out of a million votes (that is, 0.35%) is somehow indicative of a large group of the population? What do you think the error rate is in voting? I'd bet it's more than 0.35%, actually. > I don't think you have any empirical evidence to the > contrary. One of > the problems with people who don't vote is they're > not around to take > exit polls explaining why they didn't vote. Yes, but exit polls are not our only source of evidence. We also do telephone surveys, phone surveys, focus groups, and so on. There aren't many things that political science understands really well, but voter turnout is one of them. > Last I checked, Gautam, not every opinion, hunch or > feeling had to be > supported by empirical data. In fact, TTBOMK it's > only declarations > that purport to be factual that need to be supported > by hard evidence > at all. Yes, but an "opinion, hunch or feeling" that is not supported by data is essentially valueless for discussion. If you don't have data you're just asserting your belief indepednent of rational argument. You believe this to be true, but have no evidence for its accord with reality. So why should anyone listen to you? > 1914? 1944? (Asking; how was turnout then?) We weren't at war in 1914, so I would assume quite low, although I don't know with any certainty. In 1944 vague memories of my long-ago American politics classes suggest that turnout was very high despite being somewhat depressed by the very high number of people in uniform during an age when soldiers were expected to abstain from political activity. Nonetheless, I think a dataset covering the last ~40 years of American Presidential elections is pretty good. > I'm not arguing against that. I'm questioning the > application of that > to the 2004 vote. If so many people were unhappy, > why would the > majority vote to retain the status quo? Well, there are two obvious possibilities. One is that they don't blame the President for the things that have gone wrong. The second is that they think the alternative candidate is so bad as to make it vital that they make sure he is not elected, whatever their problems with the incumbent. > (This > is a nice way of > saying "what's up your nostril, dude?") Nothing at all, except for this. Ideas have consequences. You have previously asserted ideas that, were anyone to take them seriously (and sadly many people do) would result in the (further) impoverishment of much of the Third World. So in that case, these are ideas that don't just have consequences, they're actually incredibly dangerous. Here, implicit in the ideas that you are spreading is an enormous danger to the Democratic Party and, because of that, the country. If the Party were to go off on some wild goose chase after non-existent voters who are so alienated that they don't vote, it would (further) marginalize itself and leave the Republican Party with no meaningful opposition. This would be a very bad thing. So since ideas have consequences, it's worth challenging bad ones. I would ask you what's your particular resistance to supporting ideas with evidence from the real world, not just speculation? ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. www.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
