A Visit With The Lomblog Election Desk



A recent study of 18-to-35-year-olds that I personally know determined that the majority get their news and information from Lomblog. With that in mind, I felt now would be a good time to check in with the site's election desk, headed by our National Affairs editor William Sliender. William is a senior fellow of Self-Evident Political Analysis at the Bricklined Institute, a Washington-based think tank. His recent study of the 2004 campaign, Too Close To Call: This Election Is Too Close To Call, appears in this month's Atlantic Monthly. He discussed his findings with me earlier this evening.

LOMBAIRE FAN: Thank you for joining us, William. So Bill, exactly how close is this election?

WILLIAM SLIENDER: This election is sooo close that if the election were held today, literally either candidate could win.

LF: And is that unusual?

WS: Yes. In most elections, only one candidate wins.

LF: And why is the race so close?

WS: Simply put, the country is very polarized. It's a fifty-fifty nation - half the electorate is Democratic, another half is Republican, and twenty percent is in the middle.

LF: Wait - that adds up to more than a hundred.

WS: That's how divided the country is - people can't even agree on basic math!

LF: And what do you think is responsible for this partisan divide?

WS: Political scientists have many theories, but I personally believe it's the legacy of the 1960s. Republicans tend to embrace the "Ozzie & Harriet" values of the 1950s, the Eisenhower era; Democrats, on the other hand, are much more comfortable with changes in contemporary social mores. For example, a recent Gallup poll determined that the majority of regular church-goers routinely vote Republican, whereas 61% of Democrats said they would only step into church if it was for a same-sex wedding.

LF: Uh...I find that a little hard to believe.

WS: Granted, that survey had a very small sample size, consisting mostly of people living in David Geffen's beachhouse, but the numbers don't lie.

LF: With such stark polarization, who will decide the election?

WS: The election will be decided by the undecided, ie. the people who are not presently decided.

LF: And which way are the undecideds leaning?

WS: The undecideds are currently split - get this - fifty-fifty between Kerry and Bush! It's amazing. We haven't seen a presidential election like this in at least four years.

LF: Analyze, if you will, the individual candidates one by one, beginning with the president. Where is he vulnerable?

WS: The president is vulnerable in essentially two areas: foreign affairs and the economy. Other than that, he has no significant liabilities.

LF: What about his overall approval ratings?

WS: Well, the president's approval rating is currently 46%. Now, historically, no president has been re-elected with a rating that low. On the other hand, a popular wartime president has never been defeated at the polls.

LF: I'm not sure I understand....if his ratings are low, how can be described as "popular"?

WS: Because it's a fifty-fifty nation! In the fifty-percent of the nation that's voting for Bush, he has a 96% approval rating! So you can see, the president is still very, very popular and will be difficult to beat. Unless he gets beat.

LF: And how about Senator Kerry? Where is he weak?

WS: I think it's commonly agreed that Kerry's greatest weakness is his stiff, somewhat formal presentation of himself in public. He's not loose and engaging like, say, Bill Clinton or Jack Black. I'm thinking of the time Senator Kerry appeared at a fundraiser with Nipsy Russell and tried to tell a dirty limerick: "There once was a man from Nantucket...who lost his health insurance when his job was exported to India." The crowd did not respond favorably.

LF: And where is he strong?

WS: His biggest strength is that he's not George W. Bush. In fact, fully 99% of Kerry voters are not voting for Bush.

LF: What about the other 1%?

WS: The other 1% is split between people who are undecided about who they're not voting for, and people who are not voting for Ralph Nader.

LF: Speaking of Nader, what kind of impact will he have this year? He ran as a Green last time, and many people say his candidacy cost Al Gore the election. What about this time?

WS: My calculations are that Nader will hurt John Kerry if he gets anywhere between 0% and 5% of the vote.

LF: 0%? So even if Nader gets no votes, he still hurts Kerry?

WS: Yes. If Nader gets between 1% and 5%, that means the Left is divided, and that could make all the difference in the critical swing states. On the other hand, if Nader gets no votes at all, that means the Left has been marginalized and Kerry is doomed.

LF: Gee...for Kerry, that almost sounds like a no-win situation.

WS: Yes, it is. Unless he wins.

LF: With all that as background, what do you think will decide the election?

WS: Well, I have no idea what will decide the election, as I wrote in my last column, No Idea What Will Decide The Election: I Have No Idea What Will Decide The Election. But there's one thing I know is going to be very critical, and that's GOTV.

LF: What's GOTV?

WS: GOTV stands for Get-Out-The-Vote. Come this fall, the parties will be working overtime to make sure their base constituencies - that is, the constituencies that form their base - turn out to vote in large numbers. For the Democrats, that means African-Americans and labor union members; for the Republicans, that means gun owners and religious conservatives; and for the Greens, it's people who sell patchouli oil on e-bay.

LF: And which group would you say is the most enthusiastic?

WS: It's early, but judging by their feedback comments, I'd say the patchouli oil salesmen are particularly enthusiastic.

LF: Thank you, Bill. Insightful as always.

WS: My pleasure. In fact, it's been my pleasure.