Tricia Yeoh

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G96VTyAQ6xg]

Barack Obama speaking in Pueblo, Colorado this afternoon

We cancelled our afternoon session to drive two hours from Denver to Pueblo, a small town in Colorado, when we heard Obama was coming to speak at a rally here. Obama had been to this town once before, and this time there were an estimated 20,000 people spilling onto the streets.

McCain Supporters outside Obama Rally

McCain’s supporters were demonstrating outside the rally, with slogans like “Nobama” and “Babies will die when Obama becomes President”.

People flocked from all over the United States to come, either because they had come earlier to volunteer or they drove to watch the rally intentionally. But many of those present were locals, who were hardcore Obama supporters. Young, old, a mix of faces – white, Hispanic, blacks, Asians. Security surveillance men in full black stood atop the buildings, scouring the crowd for suspicious faces.

Obama is in white on the far right of the stage

After several speeches (including Michelle Obama), Barack Obama – the man himself – came on stage, amidst a throng of cheers. The man certainly has a commanding presence, no doubt about it. That he leaves you believing in something at the end is certain, but the speech seemed a little too nicely packaged. I had watched his speech the day before elsewhere, and it sounded like it was an exact recording of it. Granted, this late into the Elections you don’t want to be making any last-minute mistakes or a new concept that might shock voters (although one third of registered Americans would have voted by Tuesday morning). Although making some mention of Pueblo, and State Senator and Congressman Ken and John Salazar (Hispanics), it might have been good to make specific mention of Pueblo as a town in its own right – making relevant his Presidency to them. The counter to this, however, is that the speech is broadcast on network TV to the rest of America – and the world – and hence the message must appeal to voters all across.

The “nicely-packaged” messages included making sure that he mentioned “all of us” who were Americans – “black, white, Asians, hispanics”, “straight and gay”, “young and old”, and so on. But again, a necessity for him whose brand involves representing a wide variety of Americans. The only new message stated was in response to the morning announcement earlier that Dick Cheney was endorsing McCain, something he played up to the hilt.

The rally was like a big party, akin to the ones we’ve witnessed ourselves in March 2008 this year in Malaysia. Loud music was played on the speakers, shops were selling paraphernalia (badges, shirts, hats, banners, stickers) all the way out. People were asking for volunteers to do call-ups, asking people to make sure they went out to vote: this intiative is called a standard “Get Out The Vote” (GOTV) initiative across campaigns.

This close to the election, almost every pundit predicts a landslide victory for Obama.

Moving away from Washington DC, I’ll be going down to the ground tomorrow onwards. I’m looking forward to seeing Denver, Colorado for the first time. This will involve meeting with those organising voter canvassing, state level campaign strategists, youth groups, the league of women voters, and hopefully go to a political rally.

Here is a profile of the Colorado state, one of the battleground states:

Mr. Bush won this state by less than 5 points in 2004 and Democrats are making a big push here this time. Look no further than Denver, where the Democrats held their national convention. It seems to be paying off: Polls show Mr. Obama taking a lead here and Republicans are growing increasingly glum about holding the state.

All polls show that Obama will likely win, but things may shift slightly over the final days. The Latin American vote will be important in this state.

Aside from the pollsters, statistical models and pure guesswork-cum-analysis, here are two fun ways to determine which US Presidential candidate will win this year’s Elections, it is said.

First Method

For 72 out of 76 years, the victory or the defeat of the Washington Redskins has predicted who would win or lose the Presidential race. If the Redskins loses or ties with its opponent, the incumbent party loses. If the Redskins wins, then the incumbent party also wins. This result corresponded with 17 out of the last 18 elections. The game is on, on Monday night, the very night before the Election Day, so all eyes will be on the lookout.

Second Method

The 7-Eleven Poll, it is called, where outlets all across the country are selling large cups of coffee in either Red or Blue colours. They are trying to see how many Reds (representing the Republican McCain) or Blues (representing the Democrat Obama) they can sell over the counter, and use that as a predictive tool. I have to go out to buy my very own 7-Eleven cup (of course I would skew the poll since I am not actually an eligible voter..)

Mark Penn, CEO of a communications strategy company, who has been advisor to numerous politicians including Tony Blair and Hillary Clinton, drew out some demographic statistics of the voting public. Although some of these may seem too general, without specifying state-by-state differences, these are good indications of what to expect:

• In general, 50% of Americans are economy voters,
• 25% are security voters,
• 25% are values voters.

Those concerned with the economy would vote Democrat 2:1, and for those concerned with security and values would vote Republican 2:1. Ever since the economic crisis hit, this has increased the percentage of voters concerned with the economy, and every additional percentage point that “economy” is cited as a greater issue of concern over the other two, the Democrats get an advantage. Essentially, people want the candidate that they see can handle the situation at present.

Economy is Most Important

Penn stipulated that this elections is so gratifying for many because it shows a rejection of the Right. The American voting population is roughly 40% conservative, 20% moderate, and 20% liberal. Obama wins 9 in 10 liberals and has successfully managed to swing the moderates to his side, getting about 6 in 9 moderates.

• Religious conservatives still vote Republican 2:1
• Obama is losing the white vote by 10-12 percentage points, which is less than Kerry. Analysts are saying that race may not necessarily be the reason those rejecting him are doing so – it may be more to do with policy stances than race (which is a positive sign)
• Obama is getting 80% of the Latin-American vote. This will be a constituency to watch out for, since it is the fastest growing electorate and in the next elections will swell even larger with many more to be registered.

Each candidate has a general base, which would be something like this:

• Obama’s base = African Americans, upper income, upper education, liberal, democrats, young voters
• McCain’s base = Whites, conservatives, traditional Republicans, national security voters, most religious.

Viewers should not rely on exit polls to determine the predicted outcome of the elections. We must see actual votes from precincts, one by one. Exit polls are not accurate indicators at all and supporters have either falsely celebrated or cried over what they thought was the final result.

The key thing to note from all this is that a Centre-Left Coalition has emerged from Obama’s campaign. The Centre is making their decisions known in this election. In a sense, McCain is not necessarily the preferred typical Republican candidate. He has been, in his own words, a maverick of the party. He has been known to stand up to Bush, and other party members. This may be a reflection of how America’s ideology is shifting from centre-right to centre-left. What I am interested in is how this will change the population’s capitalist ideology in the future, further what would make of its free market system, trade policy (FTAs).

With the economy cited as one of the main issues in the US Election ’08, political pundits are trying to project the effect of the recent stock market rebound.

Wall Street shook off more signs of global economic troubles Tuesday and headed for a rebound while investors awaited the Federal Reserve’s next move on interest rates. Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 368, or 4.59 percent, to 8,379.

The most recent polls show a slight tightening of the race between Obama and McCain. Can this be attributed to the recent McCain attacks of Obama being socialist? (a taboo word in capitalist America)

Gallup experts told us today that the worse the economy is doing, the better it is for Obama. With such an inverse relationship, does this spell a turn for the worse for the Democratic candidate? It is traditionally the case though, that a few days before polling the race tightens. Watch the Editor-in-Chief of Gallup, Dr. Frank Newport, state his case here.

Gallup Polls - Influencing Voters Pre-Elections?

One of the questions that we have been asking political analysts here in Washington DC is whether or not these two things are influencing voters in advance of the elections (notwithstanding the 18% of voters who have already cast their votes in early elections!):

1. Polls

2. Op-Ed pieces and Reports

This casts a new light on the issues of integrity in polling and journalism: How far should they go, without influencing the vote? To be honest, they are going to go ahead anyways, but the issue is where do you draw the line on integrity?

First, let’s talk about polling. The questions that are being asked may have a certain bias to them, perhaps? Every question asked has an expected outcome, surely. Most of the polls (check www.electoral-vote.com) conduct interviews with landline phones at home, not on handphones which would give you younger, more pro-Obama results. Secondly, only 9% of respondents complete the poll in full. So you are getting 91% of people not finishing the poll.

Further, as Obama is polling higher rates than McCain, will these lead people on to believing that they should “go with the winner”? Or will they instead react in slight fear and cause the vote to swing McCain’s way? (mind you, much of Southern America is still conservative to the full, and Obama is still a black man running for the highest seat in the country.)

Journalism. We had the honour of Bill Nichols speaking to us today, who runs Politico, an online news site which although started in January 2007 is one of the leading Elections sites today. (He worked in USA Today for 20 years and covered the White House and the State Department). His site was the first to run the story on how the Republican Party spent $150,000 on Palin’s clothes. When asked why he decided to run it, and not focus on say, the clothes of Obama, he replied that there was value to the story and he followed journalistic integrity through objectivity.

Others might argue, though, that this is not necessarily objective reasoning since the party was validly using the money that had been validly donated to them through valid means, for reasons they thought best and most suitable. All writing has a biased agenda, based primarily on the writers’ own political sentiments, and did this perhaps shine through in the selection of coverage?

Whatever it is, everyone can agree that the polling results and online articles are definitely having an influence on the perception of voters.

Capitol Steps - Hilarious Comedy Act on American Politics

American politics is not all about hard analysis and serious discussions (although this is what I have been doing practically 24 hours a day – okay, okay, minus the sleeping hours). There is great humour in all of this, as we can certainly thank Tina Fey for. Capitol Steps is a group of ex-Congress staff members who came together in the ’90s. During a Christmas party, they were supposed to have come up with a nativity play but (quoting the guy who introduced this to us), “they couldn’t find Three Wise Men and a Virgin”.

So instead, they’ve been the primary source of entertainment for Washington DC folks (yes, all the penguin-suited people on Capitol Hill and K street in town), and they were certainly cracking me up tonight. From fabulous adaptation of songs (“Obamamia” sung to the tune of “Mamma Mia”) to George Bush’s exit speech where he slurs everything and mixes things up completely (“I’ll try to explain this mess in a way everyone can understand, including me”).

Palin Sports her Favourite Moose-Shooting Rifle

 

Oprabama is the Chosen Candidate

The Democrats and Republicans are not organised the same way ours are in Malaysia. We tend to think of “political parties” as strict systems, with strict party lines, constitutions, manifestos and membership. This is not the case in the United States. As many have been telling us on this program (International Visitors Observe The Elections or I-VOTE), there are 51 different Democratic and Republican parties, for each state.

This tells of the Federalism the US practices, one where even the elections are run by the State or Local Authority. There is no such thing as a National Elections Commission. As a result, each state has their own voting system, and rules can even vary within a state.

It is a misconception to think that Americans are voting their President on 4th November, next Tuesday. What they are doing is to vote either the Democratic or Republican representatives to become members of the Electoral College. The moment there is a majority of those selecting either party, that party will sweep all available seats for that particular state. Oklahoma, for example, where I am going to be on Election Day, has 7 electoral college seats. If the voters give a majority vote to the Republican, all 7 representatives will “win” their right to vote in the Electoral College. There are 538 Electoral College seats to be filled, and a candidate would need 270 to win the Presidency.

The Electoral College then meets on the 15th December 2008, where they officially vote the President of their choice. Most of the time they vote according to the candidate their party has endorsed. There have been times where delegates have voted the independent candidate. Finally, on January 8th after the votes are tallied, only then can the new President of the US of A be officially announced as head of the country.

What continues to fascinate me is that there is no one hardline stance taken by the parties, neither do they shove their party belief system down any of their supporters (nay, not even the Presidential candidates themselves). The words Democrat and Republican have become more adjectives than nouns, in that they are descriptive of the character of people. I can be “Democrat today, Republican tomorrow”. Presidential candidates hence become their own agenda setters, each choosing to champion a particular policy stand of choice.

Presidential elections are really, at the end of the day – determined by the state. It gives further truth to the meaning of “United States” of America, since really, it is about the states independently choosing their representatives, and then uniting because they happen to think they want a common leader who will take care of the Federal issues. Any other issue, leave it to the State and National governments!

511,000 people hold public office in the United States. Yes there is 1 Federal Govenrment, but also 50 States and the District of Columbia, 561 Native American Indian tribes (that have their own elections), 3033 County Governments (like our States), 14561 School Systems (voters elect their own School Boards who can shape education policy!!), 35949 Towns, Townships and Municipalities, and 17381 other special districts.

This Election is NOT just about Obama and McCain. There are Senate elections going on; other township and school board elections going on too. I will be observing all of these simultaneously! And THIS is actually the heart of American politics. The fact that it is locally-driven, bottoms-up, participatory. (Unfortunately, this is also the reason why Americans are so myopic and think little about foreign policy. Because they spend all their time keeping their representatives accountable to the voters, and what makes them care are the details of everyday living, not so much, at the end of the day, what happens in Iraq or Afghanistan).

American politics is Local, Local, Local. I have to keep reminding myself of this!