Reply #220: I think you are refuting a point I didn't make

[OnTheOtherHand]

Actually, I'm aware that Austin, Texas, is not a whole lot like Kingston or Woodstock or even New Paltz, New York.

Meanwhile, back in Brooklyn ("Kings County"), Bush got 90,355 votes or about 14.1% of the vote in 2000, and 159,200 votes or 22.9% of the vote in 2004. He lost Staten Island in 2000 with 41% of the vote, and won it in 2004 with 53% of the vote. He improved his vote percentage in every borough. (Kerry's overall vote margin in the five boroughs in 2004 was just a bit smaller than Gore's in 2000, around 1.2 million votes. But his percentage share was over six points lower.)

Could those numbers have been jiggered? Maybe, but I doubt it. Kerry officially won the state by 17.3%. The last four polls showed him winning by an average of 16.5%.

So I don't think we can safely reason from the climate of any one place to the climate of the whole country -- any more than we can infer from the fact that Gore lost his own home state in 2000 that he must have gotten destroyed in the popular vote.