If scientists ruled the world, then the world would be extremely blue. Mind you not blue as in its mood, but blue as in its political party affiliation. The Scientist's recent mock election showed a clear trend towards Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee. Barack Obama carried a staggering 56% of the total votes while his Republican counterpart, John McCain, only received 39% of the total votes. This is a margin of 17% which is statistically significant.
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 Barack Obama Democratic Party |  John McCain Republican Party |  Bob Barr Libertarian Party |  Ralph Nader Independent Party |
As most Americans know all too well, the popular vote doesn't determine the winner of the presidential election. Al Gore actually won the popular vote in 2000, but lost the election due to electoral votes. (For more details Google: +Florida +2000 +"hanging chads"). So if The Scientist wanted to determine a "true" presidential winner, then The Scientist would have to breakdown the voting by state in an attempt to calculate the electoral votes. Using Google Analytics to determine state locations of our voters, The Scientist found that Barack Obama would carry a whopping 464 electoral votes (the most since Ronald Reagan1) and that's not even including the 45 votes still up for grabs.
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As if the US votes weren't bad enough for John McCain, it turns out that he isn't very well liked outside of the US either. Barack Obama won the international vote winning 86.2% of the total votes compared to 6.9% that John McCain received. A large number of Obama supporters were from Canada, the UK, Italy and Australia. McCain had some support in Brazil, Belgium, and France but not enough to win the international popular vote. John McCain almost lost the international vote to Ralph Nader, who happened to score votes in Canada.
| Candidate | Pct of Total International Votes |
|---|---|
| Barack Obama | 86.2% |
| John McCain | 6.9% |
| Ralph Nader | 6.0% |
| Bob Barr | 0.9% |
Continuing the concept of "If scientists ruled the world", The Scientist ran a mock election of some of the top biologists to see which biologist would win the popular vote. This race was actually quite close with many lead changes throughout. In the end Craig Venter won a close race against his fellow scientists Stanley Falkow, Rita Colwell, EO Wilson and others. Congratulations on the victory Craig Venter - the next 4 years are all yours!
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[Comment posted 2008-10-28 10:10:26]
[Comment posted 2008-10-22 13:52:41]
[Comment posted 2008-10-21 13:52:00]
[Comment posted 2008-10-21 13:01:42]
[Comment posted 2008-10-21 08:50:48]
Actually, Gore lost due to a decision by 5 members of the Supreme Court. The electoral votes would have favored Gore most probably if they had been counted.