Wednesday, August 08, 2007--Andis Kaulins [8/08/2007 02:23:00 AM] - Home - About - My Book
The 2008 US Presidential Election : And the Winner Is .... Test the Issues : You vs. the Candidates
Via Boing Boing we were led to an interesting table (also found at Flickr) showing a list of the Republican and Democratic party candidates for the 2008 US Presidential Election and their position on numerous voter issues. These issues are listed at this link where the user can enter his own views on those issues and then find out which candidate holds the most similar views.
It is potentially an instructive experience.
For example, the LawPundit considers himself to be a political centrist who has supported both President Clinton and President Bush in many of their policies. We thus expected prior to filling out the list that our views would be closest to a middle-of-the-road hardnosed politician like Rudy Giuliani, who was our "political" favorite because of the great job he had done as Mayor of New York City.
Our expectation was that it was personalities that determined elections, with issues playing a subordinate role.
However, based upon the results of the comparison of our views with those of the Presidential candidates, perhaps the SUM of issues does in fact make the deciding difference in where the voters ultimately put their X. We discovered, for example, to our own amazement, that our views on the major issues in this election correspond most closely to those of Hillary Clinton (+51 points).
Here are our results.
Clinton 51 (plus 51)
Edwards 47
Dodd 45
Biden 43
Obama 36
Richardson 36
Giuliani 36
Romney 17
McCain 17
Kucinich 15
Huckabee 8
Hunter 4
Tancredo -8
Cox -8
Gravel -8
Thompson -9
Brownback -14
Paul -39 (minus 39)
Since we consider ourselves to be a typical pragmatic "swing voter", oriented to practical nuts-and-bolts politics and having little voter patience with nice but politically unrealistic candidates such as the benign obstetrician and gynecologist Ron Paul, a naysayer who seems to have little fundamental understanding of the American federal system of government and who turned up last on our list, we would wager the prognostication, based upon our above results, that if the voters go strictly by the issues, Hillary Clinton will win in 2008 and become America's first female President since she, in our opinion, has the best overall political stance on the SUM of the issues that count, even if we disagree strongly with her on isolated specific issues. Her political positions on the issues, more than any other candidate, seem to reflect what the majority of voters may actually want when they go to the polls next year.
Permalink : Andis Kaulins : 8/08/2007 02:23:00 AM
The 2008 US Presidential Election : And the Winner Is .... Test the Issues : You vs. the Candidates
Via Boing Boing we were led to an interesting table (also found at Flickr) showing a list of the Republican and Democratic party candidates for the 2008 US Presidential Election and their position on numerous voter issues. These issues are listed at this link where the user can enter his own views on those issues and then find out which candidate holds the most similar views.
It is potentially an instructive experience.
For example, the LawPundit considers himself to be a political centrist who has supported both President Clinton and President Bush in many of their policies. We thus expected prior to filling out the list that our views would be closest to a middle-of-the-road hardnosed politician like Rudy Giuliani, who was our "political" favorite because of the great job he had done as Mayor of New York City.
Our expectation was that it was personalities that determined elections, with issues playing a subordinate role.
However, based upon the results of the comparison of our views with those of the Presidential candidates, perhaps the SUM of issues does in fact make the deciding difference in where the voters ultimately put their X. We discovered, for example, to our own amazement, that our views on the major issues in this election correspond most closely to those of Hillary Clinton (+51 points).
Here are our results.
Clinton 51 (plus 51)
Edwards 47
Dodd 45
Biden 43
Obama 36
Richardson 36
Giuliani 36
Romney 17
McCain 17
Kucinich 15
Huckabee 8
Hunter 4
Tancredo -8
Cox -8
Gravel -8
Thompson -9
Brownback -14
Paul -39 (minus 39)
Since we consider ourselves to be a typical pragmatic "swing voter", oriented to practical nuts-and-bolts politics and having little voter patience with nice but politically unrealistic candidates such as the benign obstetrician and gynecologist Ron Paul, a naysayer who seems to have little fundamental understanding of the American federal system of government and who turned up last on our list, we would wager the prognostication, based upon our above results, that if the voters go strictly by the issues, Hillary Clinton will win in 2008 and become America's first female President since she, in our opinion, has the best overall political stance on the SUM of the issues that count, even if we disagree strongly with her on isolated specific issues. Her political positions on the issues, more than any other candidate, seem to reflect what the majority of voters may actually want when they go to the polls next year.
Permalink : Andis Kaulins : 8/08/2007 02:23:00 AM
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