Terrapin Tables

Hey Farvah, what's that stupid restaurant you like with all the shit all over the walls?

But seriously, I can't recall seeing, in the last five years, a report that indicated any Democrats or Independents were attempting to lie and cheat voters. Meanwhile, we're killing a shitload of Americans and tens of shitloads of brown people all over the Middle East under the auspices of spreading Democracy. I usually like irony, but after a while, I just wanna go all Guy Fawkes day with a subway train full of [the remainder of this paragraph has been stricken, but we can tell you Chris spoke in full support of our president George W. Bush, the Patriot Act, Carnivore, Diebold, and our peacekeeping operations in the Middle East. He also said nothing about a "new Vietnam" or the fact that the current U.S. administration is made up of men and women who should be tried as war criminals and run up on felony charges of election tampering. Thank you - your friends at the FBI].

Stupid FBI, they beat us to the punch every time. No wonder they can't actually take any of our terrorism cases to trial, they're too busy monitoring TT. Stupid G-men.

Random thought of the day:
Why doesn't someone just create a website called "Who Did You Vote For?" so people from various states can go on and submit who they voted for and it can be like exit polling?
I know it's more complicated than that, but it's an idea.

That'd probably be skewed, since I'm betting the people who would blog about their vote would lean heavily toward young Democrats. So, the sample wouldn't be representative of the population and the data would be inherently flawed. But yeah, otherwise, good idea.

This would be even more insulting if I were Roy, because I could use words like "trend," "standard deviation," "Mu," and "dodecahedron" for a really technical dressing-down. And there'd be something about flip-flops and rum too.

I don't have a reference for it, but I heard on NPR today that the people who perform exit polls have been instructed to change the way they do their samples. Apparently there has been a bias towards Democrats, leading to some inaccurate exit polling data in the last two elections. This caused the Dow Jones to decline in 2004, only to find out that the polls themselves were biased, and in fact fewer Democrats won than were predicted.

I think Chris should be performing exit polls, leading to a bias towards whatever 18 year old blond chicks vote for.

There is some research to show that polls almost always skew in favor of democrates because there is absolutely a selection bias issue in who talks to reporters. the same is true of the internet.

Mike, I am insulted. Are you implying there's something wrong with brunettes and redheads?

For what it's worth, there voting mishaps that favor Democrats out there. Although admittedly, this is the only story I've heard that doesn't favor the GOP.

The bias in exit polls exists (so much that NPR doesn't use exit polls anymore - they only reported on official figures), but you would think they could be characterized to take away some bias. But then again, a lot of the races that people watch are 51% to 49%, and it's probably impossible to remove the bias to that level of accuracy.

Anywho, all in all the election is good news. Dems got the house and it's down to Montana and Virginia now to see if the GOP loses control of the Senate, and both states are currently slightly favoring the Democratic runners.

I'm glad the Democrats did so well, but I'm still not too optimistic, though, considering that their big advantage in these elections wasn't so much anything that they actually stood for, but just that they weren't Republicans. Just look at some of the ballot measures - America's still full of bigots.

Well, the Democrats have two years to make a mark before the next election. Let's see what they can do.