Election Stuff
I was moved by a conversation with a skeptical friend to analyze New York City's impact on our state's voting in the 2004 Presidential Election. I'm sure this has been done elsewhere and more expertly, but whatever. The problem? New York City is dragging the rest of the state along with it by voting consistently 70% liberal. My solution is simple: separate NYC's EC votes from the rest of the state and give Upstate NY a chance at actually, you know, mattering in an election.
Basically what I wanted to see was how the rest of the state voted without including NYC's voting population; interesting results, for sure. Kerry won upstate NY over Bush by a mere 60,737 votes, a margin smaller than that in OH, PA, or FL, much touted battleground states. OH went to Bush by about 136,000, PA went to Kerry by about 129,000, and FL turned out to be a rout: Bush won by 421,000. The point is that Kerry won upstate NY by a relatively thin margin with
barely any Bush campaigning (Did he campaign at all here? No idea.). I understand that some of both blue and red voters probably stayed home believing it to be a foregone conclusion, so I can't factor in would-have voters, but it is my belief that had upstate NY been treated as a swing area and Bush had campaigned here with the mind to win it, there's a good chance it would have gone red. That cuts both ways of course, since Kerry hardly worried about losing NY and neglected it as well. It's all speculation but what I'm looking for here is the chance to not be carried along with NYC.
Consider it this way: a mere 18.5% of the red voters in NY voted in NYC; in contrast, 40% of the blue voters in the state are in the Big Apple. That means that in the rest of the state's population--and it is an entirely separate population, believe me--each conservative voter is worth 0.72 to each liberal voter's 1. So unless upstate NY can scrape up 39% more red voters than blue, it IS a foregone conclusion. The suburban and rural populations have lost their autonomy.
If we're going to insist on using the electoral college by popular vote, why are we clinging to the state divisions anyway? Once upon a time states could be seen as relatively united internally and state populations on the whole had at least closely unified goals and positions, but with the shift from state vs state to urban vs suburban/rural, maybe we should think about reorganizing the electoral college. The net result of lumping together the populations of NYC and Upstate NY is the liberals get an extra 18-20 EC votes at no charge for this state alone. PA is another example of one city dragging the rest of the state with it: Philadelphia went to Kerry by 400,000 votes, while Kerry's margin in the state was a mere 129,000. Separate Philly from the rest of the state and you have a more realistic representation of the population on the whole.
I realize this can be seen as an undesireable step toward direct democracy but in reality I simply want to reorder the system in the interest of fairness and realism. I would be saying the same thing if cities went red; this is a perversion of the system that should not be tolerated, no matter who benefits.
For those of you that think urban dwellers have any idea what life is like in even the suburbs, much less a rural area, get a fucking grip on reality. There's a marked rift between the psychology of a city and the country: city dwellers are the ultimate specialists. In the country, and the suburbs to a lesser extent, people are more self reliant and responsible. That's the principle difference, in my opinion.
