By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/
In the 2008 presidential election, 65.3% of eligible blacks voted – a voting rate about equal to the 66.1% of eligible whites who voted.
This is actually quite amazing. Indeed, in demographic terms this should not be happening.
The reason why below.
By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/
The World Cup has ended, and with it South Africa’s reputation has soared. The country has enjoyed a boost of free and entirely positive publicity from the event, in contrast to most reports from the Western media – which tend to focus upon the AIDS epidemic and the country’s complicated politics.
South Africa today is a product of Nelson Mandela’s work. It was Nelson Mandela’s continuous (and mostly successful) outreach to South Africa’s white minority ensured a degree of racial peace few dared hope would pass during after the days of apartheid.
Indeed, the more one explores the history of countries afflicted with similar problems, the more remarkable the man’s achievement seems.
More below.
By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/
It has been fashionable to compare President Barack Obama to many of his predecessors. Liberals, facing the toughest midterms since 1994, have taken to recalling the presidencies
Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan – two men who faced similar challenges during the same parts of their terms, yet ended their terms with high approval ratings and respected legacies. Conservatives prefer the example of former president Jimmy Carter.
In the early days of the Obama presidency, it was also rather fashionable to measure Mr. Obama against another president: the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Nowadays this comparison is less used. Mr. Obama and Mr. Roosevelt, however, do have at least one interesting similarity – and it is a similarity few talk about.
It begins with Mr. Obama. The current president is a consistent consumer of the tobacco industry’s products.
More below.
This is the second part of two posts analyzing Louisiana’s 2003 gubernatorial election, in which Republican candidate Bobby Jindal narrowly lost to lieutenant governor Kathleen Blanco. It will focus on racial dynamics in the 2003 election. The previous part can be found here.
Race and Bobby Jindal’s 2003 Run
In my previous post, I began analyzing the electoral coalition that voted for Mr. Jindal. As a map of the election below indicates, he drew support heavily from the New Orleans suburbs, while doing extremely poorly in the rural north:
More below.
This is the first part of two posts analyzing Louisiana’s 2003 gubernatorial election, in which Republican candidate Bobby Jindal narrowly lost to lieutenant governor Kathleen Blanco. The second part can be found here.
Bobby Jindal’s Strange Coalition
In 2003, an ambitious Bobby Jindal ran for Louisiana governor against Democratic candidate Kathleen Blanco. Despite holding a narrow polling lead throughout most of the campaign, Mr. Jindal ended up losing by a three-point margin.
The story of the coalition that voted for Mr. Jindal constitutes quite the interesting tale. It is much different from the Republican base as commonly envisioned in the Deep South.
To begin, let’s take a look at a map of the election – which is substantially different from most modern electoral maps. Here it is:
More below.
By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/
With Spain’s 1-0 victory over the Netherlands, the World Cup has come to a close. A spectacle watched by millions – perhaps billions – around the world, the four-year tournament constitutes the world’s most popular sporting event.
In the United States, long a hold-out against football-mania, interest in the World Cup has been steadily rising. While still below Latin-American or European levels of enthusiasm, the number of people watching games has reached new degrees. In my hometown, for instance, a number of my peers expressed surprising amounts of enthusiasm about the latest soccer news. Even individuals one wouldn’t expect – 10-year-old kids, young teenage girls – displayed passion throughout the event.
My hometown is also fairly liberal place. Indeed, one could get away with describing it as one of the most liberal suburbs in America. Coincidence?
More below.
By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/
Wisconsin, the badger state, constitutes a perennial battleground state. Like many of its Midwestern neighbors, the state leans Democratic but remains readily willing to vote Republican. While voting for Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama by double-digit margins, the state also came within one percent – twice – of voting for Republican candidate George W. Bush.
These voting patterns have quite interesting historical roots. Indeed, they stretch back for more than a century.
To examine these roots, let’s first take a look at a map of German immigration patterns in 1890:
More below.
I recently wrote a post title: The Great Twitter/Facebook Revolution Fallacy. This post noted that:
For some strange reason, the American media has always been obsessed with Twitter and Facebook…
This applies to foreign affairs as well. In the context of the events occurring in the Middle East, the Western media loves to argue that Twitter and Facebook constitute catalysts for revolution in the modern era. Indeed, some articles called the 2009 Iranian protests the “Twitter Revolution.”
It then went on to argue that, in fact, Twitter and Facebook played a negligible role in the Arab revolutions, given the very very few individuals in those countries who use Twitter or Facebook (let alone have access to the Internet in the first place).
More below.
By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/
Algeria’s World Cup soccer team is a strange thing. Most of the players weren’t actually born in Algeria, and many of them don’t speak Arabic. In fact, an astonishing 17 of the 23 players on the Algerian squad were born in France – children of Algerian immigrants, who chose to play for the country of their parents instead of the country of their birth.
France’s national team could use some help.
More below.
By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/
What if only white females voted in the 2008 presidential election?
This is the type of question social scientists and individuals like me love to explore, and which everybody else presumably finds quite boring. More fascinating still, there is actually a somewhat reliable answer to the question. This is because, in every state of the union, there are exit polls of the white female vote in 2008.
It turns out that if only white females voted in 2008, Senator John McCain would have won the popular vote 53% to 46%, taking a comfortable eight-point lead.
Senator Barack Obama, however, would be president. He would win a razor-thin, 273 to 265 majority in the electoral college:
More below.