I thought I would post what the national results (in both the popular and electoral vote) are in "binary notation" (I'm not sure if that's the right way to say it, but anyway...). In the binary numeral system, instead of the natural numbers going, in ascending order, 1, 2, 3, 4, ..., they go 1, 10, 11, 100, ... . I will post, for each candidate, the number of popular votes (according to the data in
https://uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/national.php?year=2004&minper=0&f=0 ), the binary portion of the popular vote, where 50% or .5 in base 10 equates to 1/10 (one divided by two) or .1 in base two, the number of electoral votes, and the binary portion of the electoral vote (including the one elector whose voted for John Edwards for both President and Vice President). Since one divided by two to the thirteen and two tenths power is roughly equal to one hundredth of a percent, I will post the portion data to thirteen digits to the right of the binary equivalent of the decimal point (should I call it the binary point?). And since two to the tenth power is roughly equal to one thousand, I will add commas before every tenth digit before the "binary point". Well, here I go...
Respective Presidential & Vice Presidential Candidates, Political Party, Popular Vote (portion of total popular vote), Electoral Vote (portion of total electoral vote).George W. Bush & Richard Cheney, Republican, 111011,0010101010,1000011110 (0.1000000111100), 100011110 (0.1000100000011).
John Kerry & John Edwards, Democratic, 111000,0100101100,1010001101 (0.0111110110010), 11111011 (0.0111011101110).
Ralph Nader & Peter Camejo, Independent, 111000100,1100011111 (0.0000000011111), 0 (0.0000000000000).
Michael Badnarik & Richard Campagna, Libertarian, 110000011,1110101111 (0.0000000011011), 0 (0.0000000000000).
Michael Peroutka & Chuck Baldwin, Constitution, 10001101,0001101001 (0.0000000001010), 0 (0.0000000000000).
David Cobb & Pat LaMarche, Green, 1110101,0000110011 (0.0000000001000), 0 (0.0000000000000).
Write-ins, -, 101010,1100000010 (0.0000000000011), 0 (0.0000000000000).
Leonard Peltier & Janice Jordan, Peace & Freedom, 11010,1111010111 (0.0000000000010), 0 (0.0000000000000).
Roger Calero & Arrin Hawkins, Socialist Workers, 1010,1101110110 (0.0000000000001), 0 (0.0000000000000).
Walt Brown & Mary Alice Herbert, Socialist, 1010,1001000110 (0.0000000000001), 0 (0.0000000000000).
None of these Candidates, -, 11,1001101000 (0.0000000000000), 0 (0.0000000000000).
Thomas Harens & Jennifer Ryan, Christian Freedom, 10,0101010011 (0.0000000000000), 0 (0.0000000000000).
Gene Amondson & Leroy Pletten, Concerns of People, 1,1110011000 (0.0000000000000), 0 (0.0000000000000).
Bill Van Auken & Jim Lawrence, Socialist Equality, 1,1101000001 (0.0000000000000), 0 (0.0000000000000).
John Parker & Theresa Gutierrez, Workers World, 1,1001101110 (0.0000000000000), 0 (0.0000000000000).
Charles Jay & Marilyn Taylor, Personal Choice, 1110110010 (0.0000000000000), 0 (0.0000000000000).
Stanford Andress & Irene Deasy, Independent, 1100100100 (0.0000000000000), 0 (0.0000000000000).
Earl Dodge & Howard Lydick, Prohibition, 10001100 (0.0000000000000), 0 (0.0000000000000).
Other, -, 0 (0.0000000000000), 1 (0.0000000001111).
In the Political Party “column”, I used the same designation for each pair of candidates as used on Dave’s national 2004 Presidential Election Results pages. As in those pages, the “Other” row includes the popular and electoral votes received by all candidates other than those shown above (which depends on whether you’re viewing the main page or that which can be accessed by pushing the “link colored” ‘+’ sign in parentheses in the table just below either the frames or the advertising strip, depending on what exact page you’re viewing). That includes the electoral votes cast by an elector from Minnesota for John Edwards and John Edwards, even if those votes were deemed to be invalid.
Why am I posting this? I have recently become interested in the binary numeral system, particularly in binary fractions. Since that time, when I have looked at and analyzed election results, which I often do although often just in my head or with/on my computer’s calculator and spreadsheet, I have thought about how the decimal or base 10 numeral system is arbitrary. While one could argue that a binary numeral system, for day-to-day use, would be just as arbitrary and less convenient, but because of the significance of halves in elections (elections buffs talk about majorities or lack thereof all the time, so displaying election results using a numeral system that, as far as fractions are concerned, is based on halves, or halves of halves, or halves of those, and so on makes some sense. While I am not saying election results should be displayed that way (although I’m not saying they shouldn’t either), I thought it would be worthwhile to show the results of the last of what to most of the Americans on this forum are probably the “biggest” elections, United States Presidential elections, in binary form.
Kevin
