Electoral College Maps - 1972 through 2008

Presented as a public service....

Here are the Electoral College Presidential Election maps going back to 1972, all from the American Presidency Project. Fascinating stuff.  (I might be the first person to put this many of the Red/Blue maps on one page.)  This should make it easier to scroll up and down and watch the voting patterns change.  For instance, if someone can knock Minnesota out of their blue habit, he'll be the first to do so since 1972.   

Hitting the link above each map will take you to a detailed analysis of each election, a tally of the Electoral College votes allocated to each state at the time, plus a state-by-state vote total and other trivia. 

For instance, if you dig into the first link, you'll learn that in 1972, the Libertarian Party's candidate, John Hospers, received one electoral vote from a "faithless" elector in Virginia.  (If you sat through a Republican primary campaign and wound up having to vote for Richard "Wage And Price Controls" Nixon.....well, you would do what you had to do.  May his tribe increase.)   

Here's 1972. Richard Nixon got 520 Electoral votes with George McGovern only taking 17 (Massachusetts).

Here's 1976.  Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon's Vice-President, had just resigned.  Gerald Ford was appointed to fill in as V.P.  Then Nixon resigned.  Ford then slid up to the Oval Office.  The Republicans went ahead and gave Ford the nomination, since it appeared to be his turn.  Then Jimmy Carter won the 1976 election with 297 votes to Ford's 240. 

Here's 1980.  Jimmy Carter couldn't accomplish much for the economy (but thank God almighty he deregulated the trucking, airling, and beer industries) and he couldn't get the hostages out of Iran.  Ronald Reagan defeated Carter 489 to 49, with Carter carrying only his home state of Georgia, plus West Virginia, Maryland, Hawaii, VP Walter Mondale's Minnesota, Hawaii, and D.C. 

Here's 1984.  Ronald Reagan handily defeated Walter Mondale, 525 to 13.  Mondale captured nothing but his ever-loyal Minnesota, plus D.C. 

Here's 1988.  Riding on the popularity of Reagan, George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis 426 to 111. 

Here's 1992.  Bill Clinton came from out of nowhere to beat George Bush the Elder by a total of 370 to 168.  Ross Perot may have helped take some votes from Bush.  Remember this, Republicans....If you say "no new taxes", you better mean it.  There's a lot of blue spread over this map. 

Here's 1996.  Clinton had been doing well.  The Republicans trotted out Bob Dole because it was his turn.  Clinton won handily, 379 to 159.  (Montana, Georgia, Arizona and Colorado did some flip-flopping this time as compared to 1994.) 

Here's 2000.  George W. Bush barely squeaked by Al Gore, Clinton's V.P., by a score of 271 to 267.  Broward County, Florida.  Hanging "chads".  The Everglades rose from the weight of all the lawyers in Florida.  Incredibly close.  Democrats can safely blame this one on Bill Clinton's zipper issues.

 

Here's 2004.  George W. Bush beat John Kerry, 286 to 252.  Looks like New Mexico and Iowa changed sides after the previous contest. 

Here's 2008.  The Democrats had a new guy named Barack Obama.  The Republicans nominated John McCain because it was his turn.  Obama won, 365 to 173.  Hit the link to learn why Nebraska has a blue zit coming out of its nose. 

To be continued, sometime in November.  Pretty cool, huh??

Tarrant County Libertarian Meetup, Saturday October 24th, The Flying Saucer

The Tarrant County Libertarian Meetup will be holding services at The Flying Saucer in downtown Fort Worth this Saturday afternoon (the 24th).

1:00 P.M.
111 E Fourth Street, Fort Worth
817.336.pint

This will be fun. There's plenty to talk about (I think we have some elections coming up in 2010, don't we?) and Big Daddy John Spivey is going to buy libations for the first person to show up with a libertarian themed book for the giveaway(s).

Hit the link for more info.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

The Mouse That Roared....

Remember the concern about who is going to do reporting if the traditional print media goes under?
Remember when people cared if CNN's coverage of an event was any good or not? People are writing letters to the New York Times about how crappy CNN's coverage of the Iranian protests has been.
That was then, this is now.

If you haven't heard, there's a revolt going on in Iran.
I've had ample opportunity today to listen to the radio. I didn't hear a peep about the revolt in Iran on KERA, our National Socialist Radio affiliate. None of the right wing AM stations - KSKY, KLIF, or WBAP were talking about it. KMNY, the lefty station (1360 on your AM dial) spent the day damning Rush Limbaugh.
AS OF 8:09 P.M., THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM'S WEBSITE DOESN'T MENTION IRAN ON THE FRONT PAGE ! ! !

Well....like the old men said when Ebeneezer Scrooge died, I'll go to their funerals if refreshments are served.

This revolution is being broadcast all over the world, as it happens, but without the CNN/FOX/ABC/NBC content filter, or Voice Of God network anchorman.

It's amazing. Check this out from Little Green Footballs, especially at the .30 mark where the woman gets knocked down by police, hops up like she's got Allah on her side, and goes back for more:



I'd like to meet that lady.

When you get a chance, look at the Tehran Twitter Feed. Amazing, depressing, and exhilarating. There are thousands of voices out there, Tweeting away, many of them doing it in English for YOUR benefit. Be grateful.

Andrew Sullivan has been going at it for four days straight, posting a fraction of the tons of material sent to him. Talk about your "first draft of history".... Eat your heart out, Newsweek.
Here's a sample of what Andrew's been posting. Warning: neither of these videos is for the squeamish.





Here's where things started getting out of hand....



When Iranian "students" took Americans hostages during the Jimmy Carter Era Of Darkness, the clerics who led the Iranian revolution claimed that the students were acting on their own.
Years later, six of the former hostages now claim that one of their student captors was.... Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, now semi-legitimate president of Iran.




It's funny how those revolutions will turn on a guy. Trotsky, Che, Danton, and now Ahmadinejad.
But, I digress.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. It will be Tweeted, Texted, Blogged, Emailed,and YouTubed. Coming straight to that little screen in front of you.

Suzette Watkins

For my friend and neighbor Suzette Watkins, who tried valiantly to unseat Kathleen Hicks in yesterday's Fort Worth City Council election:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man (or woman) stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

A few predictions:

The potholes will continue to multiply.
East Fort Worth will continue to decline.
District 8 will continue to be in last place in every category except mail-in ballots.

We have the government we deserve.

Clyde Picht for mayor of Fort Worth

I got to meet Clyde Picht about a month ago. He's a great guy, plus he had some terrifying stories about the Fort Worth city council.
I hope you'll vote for him.
And from now on, let's start calling the "Man With Briefcase" sculpture the "Donor From The Gas Company".

Boris Johnson for Mayor of London

An Eton-educated libertarian with a reputation as a bumbling, fumbling comedian is running for mayor of London. Here is Boris Johnson, as quoted in Time magazine: "I'm a libertarian. I think people should get on with their lives as far as possible independently of bossiness and intrusion of all kinds."





Contrast that approach with this quote from Hillary Clinton: I have a million ideas. I can't do all of them. I happen to think in running a disciplined campaign--especially when it comes to fiscal responsibility, which is what I'm trying to do--everything I propose I have to pay for. You know, you go to my website, you'll see what I would use to pay for what I've proposed. So I've got a lot of ideas, I just obviously can't propose them all. I can't afford them all. The country can't afford them all."

Here's Johnson on "Convictions", as quoted by the always interesting Catherine Mayer :

Readers not yet acquainted with his signature style will get a flavor of it from this verbatim response to TIME's question about whether he considers himself a conviction politician. (For full impact, the passage must be declaimed in the poshest of English accents.) "I certainly have a range of convictions. Not for anything serious. God. I don't have convictions actually by the way. No, no, no. Sorry, I don't have any convictions in a court of law, apart from speeding when I was very young. But I have plenty of political convictions. Can you rescue me? God."

Johnson and Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger once addressed a Tory party conference (Arnold by video link), and Johnson was doing one of his comedy routines. Arnold loudly objected to both the content and the delivery style, not knowing his microphone was switched on.....Johnson later gave this mock apology: "A man not famed for his eloquence found fault with my delivery and general mastery of public speaking. And these are things I obviously have to overcome."

In Boris Johnson's case, the apple didn't fall very far from the tree. Here's a line from his father, Stanley Johnson, a former member of the European Parliament. The elder Johnson defines Libertarianism as "the fight against crooks and nannies looking into nooks and crannies."

(All of this is from Catherine Mayer, in Time.)

There's been some controversy surrounding Johnson's refusal to be trumped by anyone playing a victim card. See Samizdata for details. Most of the comments below the Samizdata post are worthy of printing, commiting to memory, and memorializing on a needlepoint sampler. (Someone actually uses the phrase "Crikey Moses", which is nice to hear outside of a Harry Potter novel.)

Here's one last Johnson quote, about his wonderful tendency to say whatever comes into his head: "Things come into my head that I find simply impossible not to say and then all sorts of chaos breaks out. But I think it's much better that way than endlessly pre-rehearsing, sanitizing, homogenizing, pasteurizing everything you say to the point of macrobiotic extinction."

As someone who has watched the over-sanitized U.S. presidential debates to the point of drooling on the rug, I hope Boris Johnson gets elected Mayor of London, bumbling, fumbling, or not.

May his tribe increase.

Buying A Job

Here's the Wall Street Journal's link to a graph of the current fundraising totals for each Presidential candidate.
The job pays about $250K per year, but has great benefits and retirement.
All figures on the graph are expressed in millions.
Unbelieveable. And we're just getting started.
The cost of the Apollo Space Missions, which put a man on the moon - $126 billion.
The cost of giving Saddam Hussein a necktie party and a dirt nap? - $800 billion, and counting.
The cost of putting someone into The White House? The candidates have gotten their hands on about $300 million so far. I'm betting total spending will top 1 billion.