Entries for March 2008

Italy votes on April 13 and 14. Polling has shown Silvio Berlusconi's center-right coalition Popolo della Libertà ahead of former Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni's center-left Partito Democratico, as this article from today's Corriere della Sera suggests. But Italian law bans publication of polls within 15 days of the election, and I can't find any in today's Italian newspapers. But last week, a compilation of polls in Corriere showed the center-right leading the center-left by an average of 44 percent to 37 percent. Polling (.pdf) before the 2006 election showed the center-left ahead, but it actually won only by an exceedingly narrow margin. The center-left government of Romano Prodi lost its majority in the Senate, and Prodi is retiring from politics.

Many people like to make fun of Italy's multiparty politics; whenever I mention the Italian elections to non-Italians, they immediately bring up the porn star who was elected to the Chamber of Deputies several elections ago. But, in fact, Italy is developing a two-party system, with the center-right tending to lead. Its old multiparty politics came to an end in the early 1990s, when Italians had lost faith in Catholicism (the old Christian Democrats were very much a Catholic party) and communism (the old Communist party changed its name). In each election since, there have been center-right and center-left coalitions, each putting up only one candidate in single-member districts. (Here are the election results for 1994 to 2001;

The Clinton campaign has taken to boasting that its candidate has won states with more electoral votes than has Barack Obama. True. By my count, Clinton has won 14 states with 219 electoral votes (16 states with 263 electoral votes if you include Florida and Michigan) while Obama has won 27 states (I'm counting the District of Columbia as a state, but not the territories) with 202 electoral votes. Eight states with 73 electoral votes have still to vote. In percentage terms, Clinton has won states with 41 percent of the electoral votes (49 percent if you include Florida and Michigan), while Obama has won states with 38 percent of electoral votes. States with 14 percent of the electoral votes have yet to vote.

The Clinton campaign would do even better to use population rather than electoral votes, since smaller states are overrepresented in the Electoral College. By my count, based on the 2007 Census estimates, Clinton's states have 132,214,460 people (160,537,525 if you include Florida and Michigan), and Obama's states have 101,689,480 people. States with 39,394,152 people have yet to vote. In percentage terms this means Clinton's states have 44 percent of the nation's population (53 percent if you include Florida and Michigan) and Obama's states have 34 percent of the nation's population. The yet-to-vote states have 13 percent of the nation's population.

Here's a political map that's new to me, devised by Robert David Sullivan of the Concord Monitor for an organization called MassINC. Sullivan has divided the country into 10 regions, each of which cast about the same number of votes for president. The regions aren't all contiguous, and some of them don't make much sense to me: Chippewa contains Pittsburgh and Cleveland to the east and central Iowa to the west, but not Detroit and Chicago, which are in Mega-Chicago. George W. Bush carried five of the regions in 2004: Comanche (63 percent), Cumberland (60 percent), Frontier (58 percent), Southern Inland (57 percent), and South Coast (53 percent). John Kerry also carried five of the regions in 2004 (I've given Bush percentages so as to make these figures commensurate with those above): Upper Coasts (38 percent), Northeast Corridor (39 percent), Mega-Chicago (45 percent), El Norte (48 percent), and Chippewa (48 percent).

Perhaps not, says the redoubtable and often pessimistic Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post. His lead:

Regarding the economy, it's hard not to notice this stark contrast: The "real economy" of spending, production and jobs—though weakening—is hardly in a state of collapse; but much of today's semi-hysterical commentary suggests that it is.

Has Barack Obama been hurt by his association, now revealed to most American voters, with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? Has the pope been hurt by his association, among people who don't like Catholics, with the Roman Catholic Church? The numbers from Rasmussen Reports supply some answers—mostly in the direction of yes.

The key dates here are March 13, when ABC News ran its report of Wright's rantings, and March 18, when Obama made his speech in Philadelphia in which he condemned some of Wright's remarks but refused to renounce him. Keep in mind that Rasmussen's numbers represent those on, typically, the last three nights (or the last night) before the date of the release.

Will the preachings of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright continue to be a problem for Barack Obama? The balance of opinion, after everyone has had a chance to digest Obama's March 18 speech, seems to be yes. Or at least that's how I read such varied commentators as ABC News's Jake Tapper, Charles Krauthammer, the New Republic's Dayo Opolade, University of Chicago Prof. Charles Lipson, the New York Daily News's Michael Goodwin, and the international treasure Mark Steyn in the Orange County Register.

Here is an interesting denunciation in Pajamas Media of the Hawaiian sovereignty legislation long sponsored by the state's otherwise obscure junior senator, Daniel Akaka. I have blogged on this subject before. Akaka's idea is to give native Hawaiians something like the status of Indian tribes. There are just a few problems. Like who exactly is a native Hawaiian (there are very few people who are descended only from native Hawaiians and many with varying percentages of native Hawaiian ancestors)? And has the Indian reservation model worked so very well? This is a move toward racial separatism that comes to us just as we have been getting accustomed to the preachings of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, which Barack Obama went out of his way for 20 years to listen to.