PolITiGenomics

Yesterday, Missouri was called for Sen. McCain. He has won Missouri 1,445,812 to 1,442,180; a margin of 3,632 or 0.126%. When taken at face value, it appears Sen. Obama made up a lot of ground compared to the previous Democratic presidential nominee who lost by 8%. However, when compared to the results of this year’s Missouri gubernatorial race where Democrat Jay Nixon defeated Republican Kenny Hulshof 1,680,611 to 1,136,363, a margin of over 19%, one has to wonder about the origin of the discrepancy between the two sets of results. Nixon and Obama campaigned together in Missouri. The policy positions of Nixon and Obama are not that different, even on social issues which can turn an election in socially conservative Missouri. Was race a determining factor in the rural parts of Missouri?

Around election time, there is always a lot of talk about red states and blue states, but as with most things presented by the media, the true picture is less strident than reality. Here is a map from Mark Newman, Paul Dirac Collegiate Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan, showing electoral college results with each state resized according to its share of the electoral college vote.

While the map clearly shows that Sen. Obama won the electoral college, it still shows sharp contrasts between red and blue. To get a finer grained, more nuanced picture of the results, Prof. Newman presented the county by county results with the counties shaded blue or red if Obama or McCain, respectively, received over 70% of the vote. More balanced counties are colored in varying shades of purple depending on the way they voted. In this map, the counties are resized according to population.

Clearly, there is a lot of purple and a lot of mixing. Take heart, we aren’t as divided as we are constantly told. You can find more maps and further explanation at Prof. Newman’s election maps site.

There may be much more to do, but these are more than just words today.

There have been many times over the past few months that we have needed Tim Russert. There have been many times he has been missed, but perhaps no time more acutely than tonight.

Well, it is all more or less over, except for the voting. You can find out where you are supposed to vote using the 2008 US Voter Info Google Maps application. You can find information on voting, polling places, ballot initiatives, and sample ballots on your state’s Secretary of State web site. If you live in Missouri, you can enter your personal information on the Vote Missouri web site to find your polling place and look at a sample ballot. So get out and vote (if you haven’t already).

If you have any problems when you vote or have any questions about voting, contact 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683).

This past weekend, Newsweek posted a good story about one of my favorite authors, George Orwell. The story, entitled Why We Need to Call a Pig a Pig (With Or Without Lipstick), discusses, among other things, his terrific essay on the sloppiness of the English language, Politics and the English Language. If you have not read it, it is well worth your time. I particularly like the last paragraph of the article, as it is a sentiment I have expressed in the past.

Today, [Orwell]’s name is invoked to describe anything involving surveillance, paranoia or even books about animals. Orwell’s ideas have been bastardized and simplified over time, so that “Big Brother,” the totalitarian, state-run citizen-control mechanism of “1984,” is now the name of a reality-TV show that bears little resemblance to the book, except for the fact that contestants are watched by cameras. “When writers use the word ‘Orwellian,’ you can be pretty sure they’ve read very little of him,” says Packer. Rather than describing surveillance devices, or pig farms, a more accurate application of the adjective would mean something that aspires to the lucidity and integrity of Orwell’s writing. In that case, it would be the highest praise.

The complete works of George Orwell are available at george-orwell.org and you can read his diary published as a blog with a seventy year delay at Orwell Diaries. If you have not read 1984, you should stop whatever you are doing and read it immediately.

Tomorrow, 30 October 2008, at 12:30 EDT, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, representing Sen. McCain, and former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, representing Sen. Obama, will participate in a Technology Policy Smackdown hosted by the New America Foundation and Wired Magazine. It is a pretty lame name for a discussion of the candidates’ tech agendas, but it should be interesting. The debate will be webcast live starting at 12:25 EDT (see above link for more details).

Now that we are three weeks away from the election, the polls are actually worth looking at (that is, of course, if you are interested in that sort of thing). The Gallup Daily Tracking Poll is updated daily at about 1 p.m. EDT. NPR and CNN have interactive maps with the current state of the Electoral College. If you are more interested in multiple polls being mashed together into some unholy algorithm to produce a prediction, check out FiveThirtyEight.com, RealClearPolitics, and Electoral-vote.com. They are each also updated daily with the latest polls and the resulting predictions. FiveThirtyEight.com is maintained by Nate Silver who makes his living as a baseball statistician. Electoral-vote.com is maintained by Andrew Tanenbaum, a Computer Science professor and frequent thorn in Linus Torvalds’ side. I have added a graphic at the top-right of this blog that has the latest predictions from Electoral-vote.com. All of the above sites also have blogs that are updated at least daily with election news/opinions.

Below is an interview of Nate Silver on The Colbert Report where Nate explains some of the different graphs and statistics on his site. For more detailed information about his site, you can read the site’s extensive FAQ.

Update: Added link to NPR’s interactive electoral map and The Colbert Report video.

Update2: Added link to CNN’s interactive electoral map.

Update3: Added link to RealClearPolitics.

If lately you have been asking yourself, “Just who is Barack Obama?” or, for that matter, “Who is John McCain?”, you have an excellent opportunity to find out. Tonight, Frontline is airing their quadrennial, in-depth look at the major party presidential candidates in their special The Choice 2008. You can watch it in its entirety (two hours) below. Also, don’t forget that the final debate is tomorrow night.

You can also download the show for free from the iTunes Store.

Update: Replaced preview videos with full episode.

Francis Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, has written an op-ed in The Virginian-Pilot endorsing Sen. Obama for President of the United States. Apparently The Virginian-Pilot does not post the text of guest opinions on their web site, but you can read the entire piece by clicking the image below. For the impatient, Francis Collins begins by discussing the importance of scientific research to the growth of our economy. Establishing that, he quickly describes the current, declining state of scientific research funding and funding for science and mathematics education. He then briefly discusses Sen. McCain’s scientific and research proposals, finding them lacking in specifics. He only mentions two specifics of the McCain policies. The first, making the research and development tax credit permanent, is shared by Sen. Obama. The second, a funding freeze, Mr. Collins believes would have a deleterious effect on research in the U.S. The remainder of the piece discusses Sen. Obama’s plans in broad strokes, ties it to economic recovery, cites the support of Nobel laureates for Sen. Obama, mentions a specific genomic-research-related bill introduced by Sen. Obama, and urges his election because “the stakes for the future of our world are very high”.

You can get more information on Sen. Obama’s and Sen. McCain’s science and technology plans on their web sites.

Here’s something to ponder: It is widely accepted that low taxes stimulate the economy, but taxes over the last seven years have been low and the economy is tanking. Perhaps we should be investing in science, a proven engine of the economy, rather than focusing so much on lowering taxes further and further.