Obama Would Lose To McCain, Hillary Would Win

[Richard]

It’s a scary thought that McCain might be our next president. That means 4 or 8 more years of Bush. There is very little difference between McCain and Bush. :X

June 6, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Vote by Numbers
By NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON

IT appears that Hillary Clinton is going to suspend her presidential campaign this weekend, at the urging of Democratic Party leaders and superdelegates. Before that happens, Mrs. Clinton and the superdelegates might want to know this: if the general election were held today, Barack Obama would lose to John McCain, while Mr. McCain would lose to Mrs. Clinton.

This conclusion comes not from wishful thinking but from a new method of analysis on the statistics of polls that has been accepted for publication in the journal Mathematical and Computer Modeling. The authors, J. Richard Gott III, a professor at Princeton, and Wes Colley, a researcher at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, are not political scientists. They are astrophysicists. And one of the tasks of scientists is to clarify the apparent complexity of the universe by using the language of mathematics.

Here’s what they discovered: in swing states, the median result of all the polls conducted in the weeks prior to an election is an especially effective predictor of which candidate will win that election — even in states where the polls consistently fall within the margin of error.

This method provides a far more accurate assessment of public opinion than most people’s politically informed commentary. In the 2004 presidential election between John Kerry and George W. Bush, many political analysts said the race was too close to call. But when Professor Gott and Dr. Colley applied the median method in 2004, they correctly predicted the winner in 49 states, missing only Hawaii.

That remarkable success left me wondering what result this method would give if I applied it to the 2008 presidential race. So I examined the past six weeks of polls, taken in 19 important states, that separately pitted Mrs. Clinton against Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama against Mr. McCain. The polls were compiled by realclearpolitics.com and include states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.

I followed the simple rules established by Professor Gott and Dr. Colley: in states in which a poll has not been taken, you give that state to the party that won it in 2004. You do the same for states where the median poll is a tie.

In 2004, Mr. Kerry won 251 electoral votes, 19 shy of the 270 that would have won him the election. Which states among those that had gone to President Bush would today swing only to Mr. Obama, or only to Mrs. Clinton? And which of Mr. Kerry’s states would swing away from only Mr. Obama or only Mrs. Clinton? All this, of course, is based on current polls.

In Ohio, for example, Mr. McCain beats Mr. Obama two polls to one. But Mrs. Clinton beats Mr. McCain two polls to nothing. So Ohio, which Mr. Kerry did not win in 2004, would go into Mrs. Clinton’s column, giving her an additional 20 electoral votes.

In Florida, Mr. McCain beats Mr. Obama three polls to zero. But Mrs. Clinton shuts out Mr. McCain two to zero. Because Florida went to President Bush four years ago, Mrs. Clinton grabs 27 more electoral votes.

In Michigan, Mr. McCain beats Mr. Obama three polls to zero. But the median poll between Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton is a tie. Mr. Kerry won Michigan in 2004, so Mrs. Clinton gets to keep it. But Mr. Obama loses its 17 electoral votes.

When you complete this exercise for each state, Mr. Obama picks up Colorado, Iowa and New Mexico, three states that went Republican in 2004, but he also loses Michigan and New Hampshire, two states that Mr. Kerry had won. Mrs. Clinton loses the previously Democratic states of New Hampshire and Wisconsin, but she would nab 57 electoral votes from the Republicans by winning Florida, New Mexico, Nevada and Ohio.

If the general election were held today, Mr. Obama would win 252 electoral votes as the Democratic nominee, while Mrs. Clinton would win 295. In other words, Barack Obama is losing to John McCain, and Hillary Clinton is beating him.

This analysis does not predict what will happen in November. But it describes the present better than any other known method does.

Poll results can shift, as Mrs. Clinton learned over the past year. The conventions held by both parties usually give candidates a bounce in the polls. Heavy campaigning in close states can swing the sentiments of undecided people. And political gaffes can turn voters away from one candidate and toward another. But these effects would show up monthly in the polls and be duly tracked by this method. The important point is that right now, Mrs. Clinton is ahead of Mr. McCain, and Mr. Obama is behind him.

Two questions arise in the face of this result. Whom should the Republican candidate prefer to run against to maximize his party’s chances of retaining the White House? And what does it say of the Democratic delegate selection system when its winner would lose the presidency if an election were held today, yet its loser would win it?

The median method has gotten us this far. The political analysts need to take it from here.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist and the author of “Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries,” is the host of “Nova scienceNOW.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/opinion/06tyson.html?_r=2&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[Richard]

LaRouche Warns Of McCain Defeat Of Obama

By Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
6-6-8
 
(LPAC) -- I warn that as matters stand right now, the ham-handed actions on Senator Obama's behalf by financier circles aligned with Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, are handing the general election of the next U.S. President of the Republic to the candidacy of Senator John McCain. I therefore denounce the Democratic National Committee Chairman, and his accomplices such as London stooge George Soros, for conducting a flagrantly fraudulent operation against the vital interests of the United States and civilization generally.
 
The evidence, thus far, is that an Obama nomination at the August Democratic convention would virtually guarantee a massive victory of Republican candidate John McCain over Dean's choice, Obama. Whereas, trend analysis shows that Senator Hillary Clinton would almost certainly sweep a current election against rival Senator McCain.
 
Chairman Dean may control those top Democratic circles which Soros' and other money, or fear of bullies could buy. Thugs may muscle or buy weak Democratic delegates and others into shameful capitulation to an Obama nomination, but the majority of the citizens from the lower eighty percentile of income brackets have vital interests which Senator Clinton has addressed, and Senator Obama's campaign has not only failed to address, but which involve vital issues which Obama has either chiefly ignored, or has gone in a directly opposite direction. The best estimate of seasoned experts is that the McCain machine would virtually eat a Presidental candidate Obama alive--a fact which may help to explain the help to Obama's pre-nomination campaign from Republican forces, which will be backing McCain in the November general election.
 
Dean and company have conducted what must be assessed as a fraud- packed operation against the vital interests of the U.S.A., particularly against the interests of those Americans in the lower 80 percent income-brackets, who have voted, at current account, overwhelmingly for Senator Hillary Clinton, because they view her as the only candidate running who has been addressing the life-and-death issues that concern them the most.
 
Between now and the time of the Democratic convention in August, the country is going to be hit with crises beyond belief. The entire financial system is coming down, and nothing is being done about it--certainly nothing is coming from the Bush Administration. By November, the crisis will be far worse. This is reality. Voters would have been betrayed, and would react at the polls with massive political punishment of a Democratic Party leadership, a party which will be viewed by citizens in the lower eighty percentile of income-brackets, and many others, too, as a party to be punished at the polls. It is more than merely possible, unless the Dean policies are reversed dramatically and profoundly during the two and a half months preceding the August Convention. Without that change, the Democratic Party, whose Congressional body has done virtually nothing for the nation or its people since the November 2006 elections, could find itself virtually destroyed as a major party through the reactions by an angered citizenry.
 
At the International Level
 
As bad as the Obama candidacy looks when viewed from the standpoint of the probable coming November election-results, it looks far, far worse when attention is turned to the already dangerous effects that Obama's candidacy is having on the strategic position of the United States in the world at large.
 
Think of the effect of the internationally known fact, that London's boy George Soros and his Democracy Alliance of billionaire speculators, are literally attempting to buy up the Democratic Party on behalf of a foreign power. They are attempting to force Hillary Clinton to drop out of the race at precisely the moment of the greatest popular support for her candidacy. This is a London-directed operation against the United States, and no patriotic American who sees this disgusting conduct can can tolerate it.
 
LPAC is now preparing a dossier on Soros' crooked operations, for immediate release. This will document the operations through MoveOn and other Democracy Alliance conduits, to buy off Democratic delegates, directly against the will of the people. LPAC will call on Senator Obama, as a matter of conscience, to save his sullied personal honor, by denouncing this action by MoveOn, a representative of a foreign agency, that in an action which has thus sullied Senator Obama's personal honor, and that of the party whose officials have gone as far in corruption as they have in this way.
 
This fraudulent operation by Howard Dean, George Soros, et al. is a copy of the same operation that was attempted against Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the 1932 Democratic Convention in Chicago, on behalf of a foreign power, the United Kingdom. This is the same United Kingdom which is intervening now, to control our political parties, top-down, and is attempting to seize control over the Presidency of the United States.
 
This is a threat to our nation which every patriot must act to defeat, a threat by a foreign power to take control over the Presidency of the United States. This attempted betrayal of our nation must be struck down now, while we still have a sovereignty to defend.
 
http://www.rense.com/general82/cmc.htm