Aesthetics

I was just looking at the electoral map, now filled-in with the exception of Iowa. I'm so glad that Bush and Kerry swapped New Hampshire and New Mexico. It creates an aesthetically pleasing look, with a large, connected grouping of red states and several large pockets of blue. NH and NM used to be flies in the ointment, but this works.

I saw a breakdown of the voters (from the very useful exit polling--that was misused and misunderstood on election day) and here's an intersting stat:

Gun owners are 36% of the voters, and they went for Bush 65% to 35%. Non-gun owners are 64% and they went for Kerry 57% to 43%. So it's clear what should be a high priority for the second Bush Adminstration--getting everyone a gun.

Actually, (and this is the only slightly serious item here), the results were shocking. Bush won by 3% of the vote and only squeaked out an Electoral College victory. I remember some academic (it may have been Gary Orfield at Harvard, but don't quote me on it) who was unhappy, years ago, when Republicans claimed they had a lock on the White House regardless of voting percentage. He claimed, mathematically, if you win by at least 1%, it's almost impossible not to get the EC win. The 2000 election might have made you question this, but Bush only lost the popular vote by .5%, so it didn't disprove it. But now, with a solid popular victory, Bush is still only President because he took Ohio in a close vote. If Kerry, somehow, could have turned that state around, he'd be President now, even with 3,000,000 less votes than Bush. Astounding.