Election Results 2008

This afternoon I checked the results of yesterday's election.

Here are the Oregon results. Because of the way Oregon's ballot measures work, we routinely put into law proposals that still need fine tuning. This election the state voted to work on how to warehouse criminals and refrained from experimenting with building permit exemptions and elementary school policies. (This seems a sensible choice to me even though I do not expect required prison treatment programs to work since there is not yet a successful model to follow. Perhaps Oregon will invent something effective. In any case, all our prisons built years ago with bond money but currently lacking funding for a full staff will fill up; their resulting budgetary crisis will promote useful discussion that can only help the state.)

Here are the Lane County results. The race for Eugene mayor was very, very close. Both LCC and the school district renewed their property tax funding.

Regarding the presidential election, I am waiting for a 3D map by county: the recent version of this map from 2004. For the moment, here are the state results on a map. But the increasing national divide along urban and rural lines is more significant than state results.

In early October it seemed reasonable to me that McCain could win one of Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Ohio. However, he got none of these states, beyond merely losing the election.

Finally, a report about how the stock market responded to Obama's victory.

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The mathematician part of me is as interested in the recent discussion about voting polls as the actual election results.

The Washington Post raised several issues about poll accuracy. DJ Drummond wrote often about sources polling error, summarized here. Bob Krumm has a related observation.

I'll have to wait a few more days to see how generally accurate the polls were this year.

In any case, they must be more accurate than asking Israelis what they think about Jesus.

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Lastly, I wonder about whether election fraud, which received more attention this year, will be fought seriously. I do not know where to keep informed about such news.

UPDATE: Joel Kotkin believes the increasing social divide is not urban versus rural, but a "creative class" of entertainment, academia and software verses a "producer class" of manufacturing, agriculture, energy, and construction.

UPDATE: Another poll-related article, about racial effects.