Are policies a hostage to swing states?
Oct. 22nd, 2012 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzribeirohttp://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-17-2012/exclusive---nate-silver-extended-interview-pt--2
I was watching this Jon Stewart interview with a statistician the other day - this is a guy who has explored the intricacies of polling and electorate research from a statistics perspective. In this segment of the interview he touches on a subject that caught my attention: election campaigns mining data to target increasingly shrinking, tiny portions of the electorate for the sake of winning swing states and thus, the election.
It was recently argued that the electoral college system is (quote) "better" than a direct vote system - for reasons unexplained, unfortunately. Now, I'm aware that, being a non-American, I'm by definition doomed to never quite "understand" how the US electoral system is "more awesome", so I'm humbly prepared to be enlightened on the subject.
Still, I'll venture to give it a shot, and see if the way I understand this system is anywhere close to reality...
I was watching this Jon Stewart interview with a statistician the other day - this is a guy who has explored the intricacies of polling and electorate research from a statistics perspective. In this segment of the interview he touches on a subject that caught my attention: election campaigns mining data to target increasingly shrinking, tiny portions of the electorate for the sake of winning swing states and thus, the election.
It was recently argued that the electoral college system is (quote) "better" than a direct vote system - for reasons unexplained, unfortunately. Now, I'm aware that, being a non-American, I'm by definition doomed to never quite "understand" how the US electoral system is "more awesome", so I'm humbly prepared to be enlightened on the subject.
Still, I'll venture to give it a shot, and see if the way I understand this system is anywhere close to reality...
