[extropy-chat] Enlightenment and the election

[David Lubkin]

Brent Neal wrote:

>"big-city liberal" does not equal "educated."  "Uneducated," however, does 
>equal a likely Bush voter as has been amply covered on most of the major 
>news sources.

Amply covered, perhaps, but apparently untrue. See the exit polls CNN 
reports at http://tinyurl.com/57l72

No high school (4%) -- Bush 49 % / Kerry 50%
H. S. graduate (22%) -- Bush 52% / Kerry 47%
Some college (32%) -- Bush 54% / Kerry 46%
College graduate (26%) -- Bush 52% / Kerry 46%
Postgrad study (16%) -- Bush 44% / Kerry 55%

(It would be interesting to see a breakdown by field of study. Engineers 
are notoriously conservative and scientists liberal.)

>Your fallacy here is that you are assuming that "blue-state" and 
>"red-state" persons are homogenous groups. You also got your cause and 
>effect backwards.

Given the abundance of red in nominally blue states, the state-level view 
is inadequate, and leads to erroneous conclusions. See

2000    http://tinyurl.com/3ndap
2004    http://tinyurl.com/3l2uz

on USA Today for maps color-coded by county. Notice how red New York is, where
Bush got about 40% of the vote (and 50% of the white vote).

The exit polls show that the pre-election predictions and post-election 
rationalizations for Kerry's loss misstate and oversimplify what went on.

Bush got 48% of women voters (up from 43%), 25% of Jews (up from 6%), 44% 
of Latinos (up from 35%), 44% of Asians (up from 41%), 23% of gays (another 
source says 35%), 45% of young voters (18-29), 13% of self-declared 
liberals, 31% of atheists, 46% of new voters, and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Bush improved his results over 2000 in nearly every category in the poll 
and in nearly every state.

James Carville seems to be one of the few on the left who both understands 
that the world has changed and has remained committed to the left. He 
grasped 9/11/01 and 11/3/04 immediately. Of course, there's no sign that 
anyone's listening to him; instead, there's talk of Howard Dean becoming 
the DNC chairman.

Some among the libertarians, like John Hospers and a few on this list, have 
reconsidered and adapted in the wake of 9/11, but most have not. The LP was 
even more of a joke this year than ever. There are profound questions to be 
answered, such as those raised in

Spencer Weart, Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another
Thomas Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map
Fareed Zakaria, The Future of Freedom

that have been blithely ignored by the LP's candidates. A typical 
candidate, unfortunately including several I've known for years and 
otherwise respect, presents a fantastic position on how we should proceed 
on the issues of Iraq and terror.

One would think that viable non-statist solutions exist.


-- David Lubkin.