March 10, 2011, 11:20 am
This is the response from the Left to a proposed 1.6% cut in the Federal budget, that would reduce the annual deficit by a whopping 6%. Greece here we come!
The Senate is expected to vote this week on alternative plans to approve spending for the rest of this year. They will vote on whether to agree to the extreme cuts passed by the House (H.R. 1) - $65 billion less than last year's spending for domestic programs. The House bill will deny vital services to millions of people, from young children to seniors. Please tell your Senators to VOTE NO on H.R. 1 and to vote FOR the Senate alternative. The proposed Senate bill cuts spending $6.5 billion below last year's levels, compared to more than $60 billion in cuts in H.R. 1. Most of the extreme cuts in the House plan listed below are not made in the Senate bill.
Call NOW toll-free 888-245-0215 (the vote could be as early as Tuesday)
Please call both your Senators and tell them to VOTE NO on H.R. 1 and FOR the Senate full-year FY 2011 bill. Tell them to vote NO on harsh and unprecedented cuts that will deny health care, education, food, housing, and jobs to millions of the poorest and most vulnerable Americans, while at the same time jeopardizing the economic recovery for all.
November 4, 2004, 10:36 pm
CNN has some pretty fun exit poll data here. As both an engineer and an analyst at heart, I enjoy plowing around in data to find new conclusions.
One interesting thing I found was where the vote for Bush and Kerry came from in terms of urban vs. rural locations:
| VOTE BY SIZE OF COMMUNITY |
|
|
KERRY |
|
NADER |
|
TOTAL
|
2004
|
vs.2000
|
2004
|
2004
|
|
|
Urban (30%)
|
45% |
+10
|
54% |
0% |
|
|
Suburban (46%)
|
52% |
+3
|
47% |
0% |
|
|
Rural (25%)
|
57% |
-2
|
42% |
0% |
|
Because people are thinking of the red/blue state map, and even more the red/blue county map, they want to portray the red/blue split in part as an urban-rural split. This is reinforced by the perception of Bush as the NASCAR loving gun toting country redneck and Kerry as the overeducated stiff urban intellectual.
The problem is that the exit poll results don't necessarily support this. Note two things:
- The suburbs drive the result. Rural and urban basically cancel each other out, with a larger urban than rural population but a larger relative Bush lead in rural. In both '00 and '04, the suburban vote split closely mirrors the total tally.
- Bush won the popular vote because he improved about 3 points and added 4 million votes to his differential. This table says that nearly all of that came in the urban vote, with a whopping 10 point improvement that drove a 3 point improvement in the total.
Because a lot of this urban improvement occurred in Blue states, the electoral college margin was still close because he ended up closing the gap in blue states rather than flipping many.
Assymetrical Information mines the same data to demonstrate the surge in Latino support for Bush. Interestingly, it also shows that Bush led among both high school and college graduates (defeating some of his stereotype). Kerry, on the other hand, carried both high school dropouts and post-grads (ie, the under and over-educated)
UPDATE
Welcome to Professor Bainbridge readers. If you are not burned out on election news, here is my winner for the most over the top post-election article, and my response.
UPDATE #2
Confirming data from New York City via The Galvin Opinion
