I’d like everyone to give a nice, warm welcome to this blog’s first Second Author: Adeodatus. You know him and love him from his own blog (at least you should), but now an inclusive content-sharing agreement has made his work available at TimBerglund.com as well! Prepare to witness creative and analytic synergy the sheer magnitude of which you can now only scarcely imagine. (Hint: by “sheer magnitude” I mean that -ln|synergy| is large. It is a truly remarkable magnitude.)

Bear with him as he learns the ropes of Movable Type. In fact, as a test, Adeodatus, why don’t you add something to this post? You should have the necessary permissions to do that.

While you’re waiting to hear from him, you should nip over to his place and check out his review of Polar Express. First-rate stuff. I mean, I’m going to skip the movie now.

Confidential to Jerry: you play, you pay.

Enjoy.

Props are shared equally with Adeodatus, with whom this was a cooperative effort.

If you see your name in here and you’re wondering why, then be assured that you are merely an innocent bystander caught in the ironic crossfire. It is nothing even remotely personal, and any negative thing implied about you is likely false. If you’re in this list and you’re not wondering what you’re doing here, then say touch� and laugh with me.

If you don’t see your name here and you’re feeling left out, please note that I still love you. Other bullets were planned, but space was at a premium.

For those who don’t attend Southern Gables, this may be a bit confusing. You can read up on our current building program here, with the ruthless libeling of my good name found in this image. If two and two still aren’t adding up, email me, and I’ll explain the joke. It is, in the final analysis, worth a laugh.

By the way, if you’re wondering what “GK5″ might mean, you can read more about that here. It’s actually a very good thing, Certain Unrelated Building Programs notwithstanding.
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Via Instapundit, we find a very interesting piece of post-election analysis on TCS. The author’s primary concern was not so much Red Statism vs. Blue Statism as it was the relationship between population density and political beliefs. After considering the trend towards urbanization and the higher probability that city-dwellers will be liberal, he concludes:

The statistician’s perennial caveat is that “correlation is not causation,” but there is little doubt that there is connection, largely unexplained, between ideology and demography. Depressingly deterministic as it is, this correlation, if it continues, may mean that future elections will be decided by immigration patterns, reproductive rates and technologies that allow more businesses and workers to locate in suburban and rural locations.

I would be happy to be proven wrong.

The outcome of these trends seems less than certain; Americans are certainly urbanizing, but those of the Red disposition tend to have more children than do the Blue. I don’t know where the numbers really point when all is said and done. In any event, the most interesting part of the article was a bit of data visualization work done by Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman of the University of Michigan. I have mirrored their graphics here in compliance with their Creative Commons License, but by all means check out their analysis firsthand.

By now we’re all quite familiar with this picture showing the electoral college results. It perfectly captures the data it is intended to capture, but it quite misleading if it is pressed into service as an icon of the Great Divide that has suddenly gripped America. After all, the current vote tally is 60,607,335 to 57,286,778 (51.4% to 48.6%), and this map looks a whole lot redder than that.

My kids are even more impressed with the same map by counties. Look at all the red! Bush is triumphant! We need never fear the election of another Democrat in our whole lives! Well, maybe.

Everyone–even my kids, at least those older than five–knows that the Blue States have higher population densities, which is why this adjusted map of the states is close to the coolest thing you’ve seen all day. It’s called a “cartogram,” and it features state shapes that are distored such that their area is proportional to their population. Much more helpful. The same image by counties gets us somewhat closer to the 51/49% near-parity we see in the aggregate popular vote tally.

But no need to stop there! We are still coloring the counties either Bush Red or Kerry Blue based on who won 50% + 1 of the votes. This will produce quantization error that may well be more systematic than random; indeed, a glance at the county cartogram still tells you it’s a win for Bush, which still doesn’t jibe with the relatively narrow margin of the raw tally. What to do? Well, refine the coloring algorithm, of course!

This map by counties starts to get you there. It’s a much purpler country than you may have thought, given the more strident forms of sore-loser moonbattery we’ve seen. The whole excercise culimates in this linearly-colored cartogram by counties. That image is a purple smear–you can’t take a quick glance at it and say who won. And rightly so; a quick peek at 51 Junior Mints mixed in with 49 Raisenettes would reveal nothing about the relatively narrow edge the edible candy held over the pre-packaged human rights violations.

And don’t get me wrong here: a 3.3 million-vote victory is downright vehement compared to the squeaker four years ago. Still, the hyperventilating about the painful rending of the Republic in our day may be a bit overstated. If you start to think civil war is imminent, just remember the linear county cartogram. It’s not so bad.

And hey, four more years. Smile.

UNFORMED FURTHER THOUGHT: This is not to deny that we have a fairly profound divide between the emerging stakeholders in the Democratic party and the Red State Consensus. The people crying “Jesusland!” are not make believe, and they are not altogether off target. Maybe more on this later, maybe not. Let me know if you’re interested.

I recently stumbled across an email from my good friend, Paul. It was a small collection of essays sent to a group of several of us who all had the same infamous eleventh-grade Honors English teacher together. It reminded us of Mr. Gerkin’s uncompromising literary standards and the enduring influence he had on us as writers.

The original essays are posted here, and are given only as scanned images. I have mirrored them here for your convenience. Click on each thumbnail to see the whole thing.

El Niño

Most high school essays on El Niño would be sterile regurgitations of an entry in the World Book Encyclopaedia, or more likely, a brushed-up cut-and-paste from How Stuff Works. This young auteur transcends the antiseptic account of science by convincingly tying a meteorological phenomonon together with our most primal fears (which are about dying and seeing trees burn down).

Lightning

Sometimes trees don’t burn, but does it shake the human psyche any less to see them knocked down? Again the axe is laid to the root of Enlightenment scientific bravado as the same young wordsmith expounds not just the nature, but the true human significance, of lightning. So good it took two pages!

Walt Whitman: A Biography

This touching tribute isn’t content merely to grapple with the difficult circumstances of Whitman’s life, but instead it artfully identifies them with the full scope of the ugly viscera of the human condition. As such it contains some profanity, but it is easy enough to bowdlerize for reading to younger aspiring writers. (Homeschool parents, take note!)

5:41pm

News is on. Homebrew is not poured yet, which is lamentable, but coverage has begun nonetheless. FNC, CNN, NBC, and presumably others are calling IN, WV, KY, and GA for Bush, VT for Kerry. The fun hasn’t begun yet.

5:48pm

Oh, I dunno…there’s some fun over at PowerLine. It means nothing, but it feels good to say.

NOTE: I have disabled the PowerLine link to avoid stinking up their Trackbacks with my refreshes. Sorry, guys.

5:52pm
A quick 9 News break-in. They aren’t calling anything yet, since the polls don’t close for more than another hour here. Seeing a story now about emergency late registrations–people standing in line for hours at a local mall. People for whom I have very little sympathy. (I guess databases do have quality problems sometimes–I oughtta know–so late registrations may not all be the voters’ fault. But other than that, follow the rules, okay, folks? They are not exactly written in Sanskrit on a parchment locked in a file cabinet in a room at the end of a dank stone corridor with a sign on the door that says “Beware of the Leopard.”)

6:00pm
NBC is calling MA, NJ, MD, CT, ME (3), DC, DE, and IL for Kerry, TN, OK and AL for Bush. Graphics to come…

6:03pm
NBC guys are preening about how they can’t call NC and VA yet, which should be GOP lock-ups. Also NJ was a walk for Kerry. Bad sign? We’ll see…

6:07pm
Relief! FNC has started broadcasting on the local Fox affiliate. Remember, no cable here at Berglund manor, so this is a rare treat. Off to grab dinner. Back in 15…

6:25pm
Back. Mrs. Berglund did an excellent job with the Spaghetti. The American Wheat is a-okay.

6:49pm
Still no major breaks in anything, but the map above is updated. Keep refreshing Jay Cost for better coverage than you get here.

6:58pm
What, the Illinois Senate seat called for Barak Obama? When did this happen? I’m shocked!

Oh, wait, not I’m not.

7:03pm
The Fox guys are talking about gay marriage. It seems the eleven state constitutional amenments banning it are doing very well.

7:35pm
ESB is on. Florida is looking awfully good. Ohio is technically ahead, and Jay is saying he’s polling better precinct-on-precinct, but there still aren’t many returns in yet. I remind the reader that Bush can win with FL, WI, and IA while losing OH. Just something to keep in mind.

7:54pm
9 News is reporting that it’s been quiet at Democratic headquarters in Denver. I don’t blame them. They gave a loud cheer when the Salazar numbers came in, and justifiably so: with 1% reporting, Bush is up 10%, yet Salazar is also up 10%. If 1% of the precincts could mean anything, this means something. And I fear it’s not good for Pete Coors.

8:19pm
I’m sorry, but did Hugh Hewitt just say there is no room for confidence? Hugh “Bush Wins 40 States” Hewitt? Finally, some humility on election night.

(For the record, I do believe there is method to his seeming madness of late. He’s been an order of magnitude more confident than I am, but at least he’s been encouraging the troops.

8:22pm
Fox 31 is covering some local stuff. With 7% of precincts reporting:
Amendment 34 (full employment for lawyers vis-a-vis home improvement lawsuits): FAILING
Amendment 35 (tax mostly poor smokers to pay for healthcare for poor people): PASSING
Amendment 36 (idiotic proportional allocation of electoral votes): FAILING
Amendment 37 (mandate renewable energy sources in the state constitution): 50% yes, 49% no. Too close to call.

8:26pm
Fox has added AK and MO to the Red part of the map.

8:52pm
With 12% reporting, Fox 31 says:

Bush 52/47
Salazar 50/47
Amendment 34: 75/24 NO
Amendment 35: 63/36 YES
Amendment 36: 66/33 NO
Amendment 37: 52/47 YES
Fastracks: 60/39 YES

Amendment 37 is a bit of an unpleasant surprise, but otherwise all of this is as expected.

8:56pm
Fox is calling PA for Kerry, which is no surprise. They were waiting for lines of voters to clear out, apparently.

9:44pm
It seems ABC is calling Florida for Bush. We have a word for this. We call it “money.”

10:28pm
NBC has just piled on the Florida call. I should say it’s about time.

I’ve added a few other calls to the map that various networks are making. Any sensible way you game it at this point, it’s all down to Ohio. If Bush wins it and loses every other state yet uncalled, it’s 269-269. I’d tell you to do the math, but the math is already done. Given reasonable assumptions of where we go from here, Ohio decides this election.

10:32pm
NBC is calling the Colorado Senate race for Ken Salazar with 70% of precincts reporting (51% to 47%). Unfortunate, but not surprising.

10:43pm
What is this? Jay says that Fox is calling Ohio for Bush! I knew I should have bought cable for the year! Dan Rather is blathering away on the CBS affiliate, and the Fox affiliate is being worthless.

10:47pm
A few minutes ago I said Bush could lose all states not yet called as long as he had Ohio in his column. Of course this didn’t include Alaska, which Bush isn’t going to lose anyway. If Fox’s call stands, this election is over.

11:00pm
Fox is calling Alaska now. It’s over, considering the political realities of the tie-breaking procedure. George W. Bush is the next President of the United States of America.

Oh, not counting lawsuits in Ohio.

11:39pm
Pete Coors is giving his concession speech on the local channels. Farewell, Pete.

11:48pm
Ken Salazar’s acceptance speech now. Oh, how I wish I had cable. Imagine flipping between four news networks that wouldn’t snow any of this. Just imagine…

12:00am
Fox just called Minnesota for Kerry. Not a big shocker, but it makes Lileks sad.

12:01am
Sounds like the Kerry campaign is going to work the provisional ballots in Ohio. I somehow doubt we’ll have a concession speech tonight.

12:15am
NBC is reporting that Kerry won’t concede tonight. The Kerry campaign is distancing itself from any 2000-style legal challenges, instead claiming that we’re just not done counting ballots. Fie, I say. We’re done enough.

12:28am
Hair Boy is on. He looks tired.

“It’s been a long nayt,” he says, which explains the eyes. He’s promising that every vote would count, and every vote would be counted. Uh, then thanking the crowd. I guess that’s all I’m gonna get for a concession speech tonight. Darn it.

12:33am
NBC just called Hawaii for Kerry. CNN says it’s 55%/44% with 65% of precincts reporting–not so close as we would have enjoyed, but still not a part of our victory plan. Which at this point is just John Kerry conceding.

12:59am
Gonna hit the sack now. Bush has 269 electoral votes if Ohio stands, and the GOP has picked up between zero and three Senate seats, and seemingly one House seat. Kerry will want to see the vote counting be completed in the morning, but I think he’ll concede after that. He can have no motivation to litigate this thing to death, especially considering that the aggregate nationwide vote is 54,354,714 to 50,552,157–a 3% lead, and a clear majority for Bush. This will not drag on long.

Wisconsin, Iowa, New Mexico, and Nevada have not been called yet. NM is pretty clearly Bush country, as I expect Nevada to be. Iowa is even money, but I’ll be surprised if Wisconsin is colored red by tomorrow night.

Looks like at least one more day of fun. We’ll have a loser by Friday, tops.

7:39am
After a restful–if short–night’s sleep, it looks like we have a 286-252 Bush victory. The networks are reluctant to call everything, but I’m giving NV, NM, and IA to Bush and WI to Kerry. They’re all close, but the outcomes seem clear enough.

Whose prediction was right? If you recall, I made maps on Sunday night based on the numbers given by Tradesports, RealClearPolitics, and Horserace Blog. The result is Efficient Markets Hypothesis: 1, Kerry: 0. Tradesports called it perfectly, before they succumed to the Drudge/Corner exit poll madness of early yesterday afternoon. I will definitely have my eye on the gamblers in the next election.

So we have a winner, but what we don’t have at this point is a loser. Elections end when the loser concedes, and Kerry has not yet done that. The early buzz is that the provisional ballots are breaking heavily pro-Bush, and that Kerry won’t make a statement until after 10am EST. That’s in about 10 minutes, so stay tuned.

And finally, the race draws to a close. I’ll be dropping by my precinct mid-morning tomorrow to pull some touchscreen levers, children in tow. Call it a homeschool civics lesson, or call it madness if the lines are long. I’ll let you know if the kids intimidate any voters while they’re there.

The outstanding Horserace Blog–whose methodology has given me an idea for a fairly simple web app that I should prototype in the midterms–is feeling very optimistic tonight. He’s calling it 317-221 for Bush, notably including Pennsylvania as a red state:

RealClearPolitics’ state averages also got a bit better today. They don’t give Pennsylvania to Bush, but they do color Iowa, Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin red. Overall, it’s a 296-242 night for the President:

Finally, Tradesports is unchanged from yesterday. It’s a Bush win by 286-252, giving Ohio, Iowa, and Florida to Bush, but Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to Kerry:

This ends the guessing. I’ll be more or less liveblogging tomorrow night, God willing. Oh, and for some insight into Colorado, Boulder County (one of our two Democratic bastions) is saying they may not be able to declare results until Wednesday night. If this is any indication of the other untested voting procedures in equipment we’ll be shaking down in the morning, we might have a lot more than 24 hours to go. May it not be so.