Some interesting blog statistics

For the first time in a while, I looked at which pages on my blog have been viewed the most:

My "Who's on Heart?" posts dominate the board, as it is a popular segment whenever Heart radio plays it and it attracts tens of thousands of searches, at a minimum. I don't see the rankings here changing much for the time being; I'll post an updated screenshot of this in about a year.

Ohio's voting record

In my post about US state nicknames, I wrote that I mistakenly thought Ohio to be nicknamed the "Bellwether State". I led myself into thinking that because of Ohio's ability to vote with the winning candidate of the presidential elections over 90% of the time.

Since 1896 onwards, Ohio has voted for the winner in all except two elections: 1944 and 1960. In 1944, Governor Thomas E. Dewey narrowly carried the state over President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and in 1960 Vice President Richard Nixon comfortably won the state over Senator John F. Kennedy; in addition, 1960 was the last time Ohio voted against the victor of an election.

Missouri had the best record of being a bellwether until the 2008 election, when it voted against the winner (although the state was incredibly close); before then the last two times it voted the opposite way to the victor was in 1956 and 1900...hence its lower win rate than Ohio. Despite Ohio's record, apparently the state with the better track is Nevada, as it has supported the winner in every election since 1912 except for 1976; however, if Nevada is put on the same timeline as Ohio, it voted against the winner in 1896, 1900, and 1908.

2012-2020 electoral map

Last night, my brother and I played a game of Run Off. As I mentioned in my first post about the board game, it uses the Electoral College from the 1990 Census; for a change, we decided to start playing it on the Electoral College makeup from the 2010 Census. This was the result:

My states are in purple, and my brother was the victor in the election with a vote of 282-256. He calculated that had we played it on the 1992-2000 electoral map I would have performed marginally better with 260 votes to his 278. The numbers for each of the states on the above image are their electoral votes for the 2012, 2016, and 2020 United States presidential elections.

The thing that both my brother and I found funny about this particular game is that it makes us the first (and only) people we know about who have gone through an election on this electoral map (even if the said election took place on a board game)!

Note: the above image is not originally mine, but rather, is our modified version of http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ElectoralCollege2012.svg. Licensing is listed on that page.

United States presidential elections 2000 and 2004

Here are some statistics about the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections in the United States that I find interesting. In 2000, then-Governor George W. Bush won the presidency by winning the electoral vote but losing the popular vote; meanwhile, then-Vice President Al Gore lost the electoral vote but did win the popular vote. Bush won 271 electoral votes and 50,456,002 popular votes while Gore won 266 electoral votes (though should have won 267 but there was a faithless elector in Washington D.C.), and 50,999,897 popular votes. Florida was highly disputed in that election, and had the state been given to Gore he would have won both votes.

In 2004, then-President Bush was running for re-election, and his challenger was Senator John Kerry (D-MA). Bush won this election, this time winning both the electoral vote (286) and the popular vote (62,040,610); while Kerry only won 251 electoral votes (he should have won 252, but an electoral voter in Minnesota accidentally voted for Kerry's running mate instead) and 59,028,444 popular votes. The margins of victory here, while a little too close for comfort, are more significant than in 2000; however, the state that was most disputed in this election was Ohio, although not to the extent Florida was.

Had Kerry won Ohio, Bush would have been narrowly defeated in the electoral college with 266 votes to Kerry's 272 (or 271 when factoring in the Minnesota voter, making the result 271-266 as it was in 2000, but this time it would have been the winner who would have lost a vote), but won the popular vote by more than three million voters. Bush would then have had the record of being the first person to have been elected president without winning the votes of the people, and subsequently voted out after losing in the electoral college but winning the larger share (and even majority) of the popular vote. I am not sure if that would be a record anyone would want to hold, but I suppose it would be better than having the record of winning every state in one election to end up losing them all in the next.

Of course, this outcome did not happen, but I do find these statistics fascinating. I also find it interesting that both Gore and Kerry did not receive the total amount of electoral votes they should have (one because of the faithless elector making a protest, the other from an error), and that had Bush lost Ohio in 2004 he would received the same amount of electoral votes as Gore.