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Cheney said they had a mandate because they won the popular vote.
First of all, the popular vote is TOTALLY MEANINGLESS. I've been saying this since 2000. The popular vote is like the number of hits in a baseball game: it often happens to correlate with the number of runs, but it's completely irrelevant to winning. The popular vote is not only irrelevant, it's an inaccurate measure of the "will of the people". An actual direct vote would look totally different, because turnout would be much higher in the non-swing states, and three of the top five most populous states are strongly Democratic.
Bush got more votes than any other presidential candidate in history. Well, that's just silly—so did Kerry!
Bush got a higher percentage of the popular vote than any presidential candidate since his father in 1988. Well, Kerry got a higher percentage than Bush did last year, and once all the provisional and absentee ballots are counted, he may even eclipse Gore's percentage (48.38%; Kerry is currently at 48.0%, according to the New York Times).
First of all, the popular vote is TOTALLY MEANINGLESS. I've been saying this since 2000. The popular vote is like the number of hits in a baseball game: it often happens to correlate with the number of runs, but it's completely irrelevant to winning. The popular vote is not only irrelevant, it's an inaccurate measure of the "will of the people". An actual direct vote would look totally different, because turnout would be much higher in the non-swing states, and three of the top five most populous states are strongly Democratic.
Bush got more votes than any other presidential candidate in history. Well, that's just silly—so did Kerry!
Bush got a higher percentage of the popular vote than any presidential candidate since his father in 1988. Well, Kerry got a higher percentage than Bush did last year, and once all the provisional and absentee ballots are counted, he may even eclipse Gore's percentage (48.38%; Kerry is currently at 48.0%, according to the New York Times).
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From:
fun with absolutes
Basically, they're playing the Atkins game. The Atkins diet says that, for the past 20 years, the percentage of fat in people's diets has actually been decreasing, while the percentage of overweight people in America has been increasing. The reasoning is that: fat doesn't make you fat, because there otherwise would have been a positive corelation, and not a negative one.
The error is that, while indeed the percentage of fat has been decreasing, the total CALORIES from fat has been *increasing*. The only reason the percentage decreased is that more Americans have been increasing calories from simple sugars as well (e.g. soft drinks, candy).
In this case, the absolute number (the number of votes) leads to the wrong conclusions, because it's saying nothing more than "the population of America increased." Alas, most people don't seem to care about these finer points. (Similarly, people don't care to learn some economic principles.)