United States 2017 elections

Yesterday, the United States held its 2017 intake of off-year elections. This included various mayoral elections, such as those in Los Angeles and New York City, but more notably featured the gubernatorial races of New Jersey and Virginia.

New Jersey's election result - a Democratic heavy victory - wasn't a surprise. The outgoing, term-limited Republican governor is deeply unpopular and New Jersey is a blue state; the Democratic candidate was expected to win unless they were to take it upon themselves to openly sabotage their own campaign.

The more interesting result was in Virginia. The Democrats took that governor's seat from the Republicans in 2013 and since 2008, the state has voted for Democrats at the presidential level. In the elections yesterday, the Democrats not only held the governor's mansion by a convincing margin but also picked up swathes of seats in the state's legislature. It's an astounding result for a state that was red not so long ago.

Just say no to Nazis

As a result of the recent neo-Nazi protect in Virginia, there have been people saying that perhaps Nazis need to be reasoned with, talked to...given a platform to present their views so that they can be debated and refuted. Treated with respect!

Just one...no, two...problems with that - we already know what Nazi views are and they've already been refuted. Need proof? Look up World War II and Nazi Germany; for anyone who wants to hear Nazis "give their side of the story", those two subjects will provide all the information needed.

Tonie Nathan

This morning, I learnt that on March 20th, 2014, Tonie Nathan died. Nathan was the first woman and first Jewish person to win an electoral vote in a presidential election in the United States.

In the 1972 election, Nathan was the vice presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party, which was a new party at the time, serving as the running mate to John Hospers. The party was only on the ballot in two states, Colorado and Washington, but a Republican elector in Virginia chose to vote for Hospers and Nathan instead of Richard Nixon, thus making Nathan the first woman to win an electoral vote; Nathan's being of Jewish faith also made her the first Jew to win an electoral vote (in 1964, Republican candidate Barry Goldwater was of Jewish origin and he won electoral votes, but he was an Episcopalian).

The result of the election was not affected by the faithless elector; while Richard Nixon lost an electoral vote in Virginia, he still won the rest of that state's votes (11 out of 12) and secured 49 of the 50 states overall, giving him a landslide victory. It should also be noted that the 1972 election is, to date, the late time a person who wasn't a Democrat or a Republican won an electoral vote, although there have been faithless electors since then.

Nathan's achievement came more than ten years before Geraldine Ferraro won electoral votes as Walter Mondale's running mate in 1984. While it will most definitely be a day to celebrate how far women have come when the United States does elect a woman president, Nathan will be almost completely forgotten to anyone who isn't familiar with US presidential elections and the non-major party candidates. She's already a footnote, given that most people haven't heard of her; as I wrote earlier, I only learnt about her today.

With Nathan's death, all six people who received electoral votes in the 1972 election - plus Roger MacBride, the faithless elector - are now deceased.

Scholastic Student Vote

For the past couple of weeks the polls for the presidential election in the United States have gone haywire. Given both the abundance of polls and how President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney are continually switching back and forth in swing states and in the national popular vote, no one really knows whether to trust any of the polls or not. Do we really need yet another poll?

The results of the Scholastic Student Poll were released today, and 51% of the poll's respondent's chose to re-elect Obama, with 45% going to Romney, and remaining 4% going to other candidates. They predicted that Obama would win all of his 2008 states minus Indiana and Virginia, but would pick up Arizona and South Carolina. Only young people below the age of 18 could participate in the vote.

Why is this vote significant? After all, who cares what kids think...right? I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the result: the Scholastic Student Vote has correctly predicted the outcomes of 16 of the past 18 elections. The only two they got wrong were 1948 and 1960 - backing Thomas E. Dewey and Richard Nixon over the victors in each election; neither of these are surprising given how the polls showed that Harry S. Truman was supposed be defeated in 1948, and the 1960 election was incredibly close with John F. Kennedy winning only 0.2% more of the popular vote over Nixon.

I am glad that the vote does spark young peoples' interest in politics; with the way adults often behave, I'm inclined to trust kids more - in a variety of circumstances! Will the Scholastic Student Vote correctly predict the results for the seventeenth time? We'll just have to wait and see what happens.