Reply #20: I heard what you were saying, PP.

[Zan_of_Texas]

I was looking at the polls that were showing Bush has 45% support now.

With just a few reasonable assumptions, this leads one to some amazing conclusions. Namely:

If the 45% number were applied to Bush on November 2, then instead of the original 3 million vote margin for Bush (which the Bush people call a "mandate"), Bush would lose by 11 million votes!

Okay, how did I get that? Follow along.

I also find a mountain of evidence that the presidential election in most states and many many counties was flawed, sometimes fatally.

But, let's play with the 45% number and just see what happens to the much ballyhooed "mandate." (The mandate claimed after the election was a popular vote margin of 3.5 million votes. Actually, according to the official numbers below, the popular margin was 3 million votes. The real difference, of course, was electoral votes -- one highly contested state, Ohio, and about 118,000 votes.)

If you assume that those who voted and those who were polled are similar, and assume that "support" is similar to "would vote for", then Bush either didn't get his 50.8% claimed in November 2004, OR he has lost the support of seven million people who voted for him in November, in just five months.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One Poll:
Poll Shows Bush's Job Approval Rating Slumps to 44 Percent; Congress Slips Further, to 37 Percent
By WILL LESTER Associated Press Writer

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=652602
WASHINGTON Apr 8, 2005 -
~~~~~~~~~~~
Another Poll:
Another poll, I got in an email. I consider polls more for entertainment than fact. But, I found this entertaining.

Perhaps Bush's numbers haven't really changed since the election, and these reflect something of the truth....

Gallup: Bush Approval Rating Lowest Ever for 2nd-Term Prez at this Point

By Editor & Publisher Staff

Published: April 05, 2005 11:45 AM ET

NEW YORK It's not uncommon to hear or read pundits referring to President
George W. Bush as a "popular" leader or even a "very popular" one. Even
some of his critics in the press refer to him this way. Perhaps they need to
check the latest polls. President Bush's approval rating has plunged to the lowest level of any
president since World War II at this point in his second term, the Gallup
Organization reported today.

"All other presidents who were re-elected to a second term had approval ratings well above 50% in the March following their re-election," Gallup reported.

Bush's current rating is 45%. The next lowest was Reagan with 56% in
March 1985. More bad signs for the president: Gallup's survey now finds only 38% expressing satisfaction with the "state of the country" while 59% are "dissatisfied." One in three America! ns feel the economy is excellent or good, while the rest find it "only fair" or poor.

...
Here are the approval ratings for presidents as recorded by Gallup in the March following their re-election:

Truman, 1949: 57%.

Eisenhower, 1957: 65%.

Johnson, 1965: 69%.

Nixon, 1973: 57%.

Reagan, 1985: 56%.

Clinton, 1997: 59% .

Bush, 2005: 45% .

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First off, John Kerry tallied 48.3% of the vote on November 2nd -- 3.3% more than the poll numbers are currently showing for Bush. Say, so does that mean that on November 2, Kerry polled a 3% higher mandate than Bush has right now?!?!

But, what if the current poll numbers are right and the election tally was wrong?

What if Bush actually got 45% instead of 50.8% in the election? Let's look at it. Just for grins.
The numbers are rather astounding. I surprised even myself!



REPORTED VOTE TALLY
Presidential Election of 2004, Electoral and Popular Vote Summary

InfoPlease Almanac http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922901.html

Bush
Popular Vote . Percentage
62,028,772 . . 50.8

Kerry
Popular Vote . Percentage
59,026,150 . . 48.3

Electoral Votes: 286 to 252

MY NOTES:
1. That's a 3.0 million vote difference. Not the 3.5 million vote difference the press are found of bandying about.
2. Once again, the "winner" of the US popular vote in 2004 was "NONE OF THE ABOVE". Of the voting age population, 90 million did not vote. That compares to 62 million tallied for Bush and 59 million tallied for Kerry.


NOTE: Total electoral votes = 538. Total electoral votes needed to win = 270. Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding and other candidates.
Source: Figures are from the Certificates of Ascertainment and Certificates of Vote sent to the Archivist of the United States in December 2004. www.archives.gov/federal_register/electoral_college/index.html <http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/electoral_college/index.html> .
Voting age population (Census Bureau Population Survey for Nov. 2000): 205,815,000
Estimated number of voters in 2004 election was 115.7 million (Associated Press).
Information Please® Database, © 2005 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.

NOTE: In the calculations below, I used a presidential vote total of 122,155,616, which is implied by the 50.8 and 48.3 percentage numbers and total votes for Bush and Kerry. I have no idea why the AP estimated that there were 115.7 million voters.
ASSUMPTIONS: (1) Bush got 45%. (2) Kerry gets the votes that Bush seems to have gotten wrongly. (3) Total presidential voters were 122,155,616.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
HERE ARE TALLIES ADJUSTED TO SHOW 45% FOR BUSH
Bush
Popular Vote . . Percentage
54,970,027 . . . . 45.0

62,028,772 - 54,970,027 = 7,058,745 less votes for Bush, if the 45% figure is used

If all those votes should have gone to Kerry, add those to his total and you get:

Kerry
Popular Vote . . Percentage
66,084,895 . . . . 54.1

So, in other words, if Bush's actual vote was 45% on election day, and the votes that were tallied wrongly somehow for him are put into Kerry's column, the election comes out

. . . . . Bush 45% to Kerry 54.1% (percentage margin = Kerry + 9.1%)
rather than Bush 50.8% to Kerry 48.3% (percentage margin = Kerry - 2.5%)

Bush gets 7 million less votes than were tallied. Kerry's new total becomes 66 million votes.

If the 45% number were applied to Bush on November 2, then instead of the original 3 million vote margin for Bush (which the Bush people call a "mandate"), Bush would lose by 11 million votes!


At a minimum, if the poll is right and the election was right, Bush has lost the support of 7 million voters in five months.