Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you’re probably aware that the US General Election is just around the corner. Given the electoral college system that the US employs, the goal for Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama is to carry a number of states that would allow them to come up with the necessary amount of electoral votes. The magic number for the US election is 270.
Four years ago, George Bush handily beat John Kerry 286 to 252. This was an especially traumatic blow to the Democrats considering how close they came to victory back in 2000 – Al Gore ‘lost’ to George Bush by about 500 votes in Florida thus swinging the final tally at 271 to 266. It’s also worth mentioning that Gore actually won the popular vote that year.
Winning and losing elections boil down to protecting states that are traditionally aligned towards a particular party and aggressively attempting to capture so-called swing or battleground states. These states are areas wherein the deficit between the supporters of the two parties are workable enough to merit allocation resources and valuable campaign time.
As it stands now, Obama is poised to win the general election and if current trends hold, we may very well see a landslide of Clintonesque proportions. According to CNN projections, the senator from Illinois just needs one more battleground state to clinch magic number while McCain needs to win every single one (and keep all the red states) to stand a chance.
But what if the rest of the world were to be given an opportunity to vote? Would the outcome be any different? Well, yes and no. No in the sense that Obama will still win. But here’s the big difference – it would be a literal landslide of apocalyptic proportions.
The Economist – easily the favorite publication of debaters worldwide — has assigned electoral votes proportional to a country’s population. Less populous countries like Fiji get three electoral votes while the more populous countries get to have 1,588 (India) and 1,900 in China’s case. Since the Philippines is the 12th most populous nation in the world, we get 132 imaginary votes.
Just look at that map! Save for three little smidgens of pink and red, the entire world is on the blue side. For those keeping tabs at home, the three countries that are leaning McCain’s way are the Eastern European nations of Macedonia, Moldova and of course, Georgia. All the rest are heavily slanted towards Obama and Biden. The score? Obama/Biden 8571 McCain/Palin 23.
You can still vote. As of this posting, Obama was leading 79% to McCain 21% among Filipino voters.
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I also hope that Obama wins… it would be a shame if Mc Cain & Palin would win the elections.
Well I hope Obama wins… it would be a shame if it was Mc Cain & Palin who would win.
I wish Obama the best of luck, though I won’t be surprised at all if he finds himself in the path of an assassin’s bullet. Race issues still play a pivotal role.
Whoever wins, I hope it leads to alleviation, if not ending, of financial crisis. The ripple effect is very much felt.
i’m also for obama. whenever i see mccain, i feel empathy rather than admiration. he looks tired and old and weary, attributes that would not make an effective leader. add palin, whose english diatribe makes you realize you’re smarter and that you could probably run for veep, to the picture and you’d rather that mccain is better off without her. we need a visionary like obama.
i am for obama. whenever i see mccain, i feel empathy rather than admiration. he looks tired and old and weary, attributes that would not make an effective leader. add palin, whose english diatribe reminds you that you are smarter and that you could probably run as a veep as well, to the picture and you’d rather that mccain is better off without her. the world needs a visionary leader, and that is obama.
McCain all the way!
there was a gallup poll that listed Georgia and Philippines as the only two countries favoring McCain. i sure hope that poll is wrong.
i am for universal healthcare, socialism, scientific progress, social liberties, freedom of expression, separation of church and state ..