Day 37-Oregon

[Gabu]

definitely possible for Republicans in 2008.  Bush only lost here in 2000 by about 7,000 votes.

As memphis said, that was more due to Nader than anything.  In 2004 it was back to voting Democratic by a fair margin (a little over 4%).

It's certainly not as much of a long shot for the GOP as, say, New Jersey, but it's still a lean-Democratic state, and I don't see why that would change in the near future.

[Gabu]

eh, Nader was a vote-splitter, but not as much as Democrats like to think.  An exit poll showed people who voted for Nader that if he was not running 38% would vote Gore and 25% would vote Bush.  So, Bush does loose a little too.

I saw an exit poll that said that a little under two-thirds of Nader voters would have otherwise voted for Gore.  Given this contradiction, I don't think that these exit polls are that reliable.

I'm just looking at what Nader stood for.  Given that info, why exactly would someone voting for Nader vote for Bush instead?  I can't see a lot of logic behind doing that.

[Gabu]

eh, Nader was a vote-splitter, but not as much as Democrats like to think.  An exit poll showed people who voted for Nader that if he was not running 38% would vote Gore and 25% would vote Bush.  So, Bush does loose a little too.

I saw an exit poll that said that a little under two-thirds of Nader voters would have otherwise voted for Gore.  Given this contradiction, I don't think that these exit polls are that reliable.

That's not too bad.

Assuming they were pushing voters to actually vote there, 38%-25% would be equatable to 60%-40%, which is not all that under "just two thirds," although certainly it isn't all that close either.

They weren't pushing voters to actually vote in the exit poll I looked at; "wouldn't have voted" was an option that they provided.  It was something like 50% for Gore, 20% for Bush, and 30% wouldn't have voted.

After thinking about it, it wasn't "just under two-thirds" and was more along the lines of "a half", but the margin for Gore was nevertheless a lot larger than the one in M&C's exit poll.