But there is an old reliable friend, who with us from the beginning: a widespread misunderstanding about how to count. In addition, there is every reason to believe that this ignorant overshadow the political conversation, as soon as the general election.
He started early, in Iowa, where cable networks struggled until late at night, breath, waiting to enter and Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum won by 8 votes against 24 votes, or 32 votes. In any rational standard, it did not matter. Meetings ended in a draw, none of the candidates will receive any measurable advantage in delegates, and - as happened often in the battles of the Republican Party in Iowa had no impact on future contests (not counting the official end of the nomination of Michelle Bachmann).
So why is the madness of false excitement of this contest, is not it? Just to explain the persistent registration errors of the primary process as a whole: the inability to distinguish between primary and election.
If the contest in Iowa is part of the election in November, a few votes would matter much, in the fall, by a margin of victory for a candidate wins all the electoral votes by state. When George W. Bush won Florida and thus the presidency of the 537 votes out of six million that were cast in 2000, they continued to play all the notes of "Hello, Chief," when he entered the room.
But that's not how the most basic work. At some level, most people who follow politics know. When Romney won in Michigan Santorum by three percentage points, its net profit was, and delegates. On the same day, his victory in Arizona, gave him all 29 delegates from that state. However, if he lost Michigan by three points or half a point), he would be described not only as a blow to his campaign, but as a blow that left her reeling, the maimed, life - even though his campaign would have ended in night with a net profit of about two dozen delegates. Something similar may well be on Tuesday, Romney should lose Ohio, despite all this, but I'm sure to get out of this 10-day competition with a large number of delegates than any of his rivals. "Romney loses to Ohio!" it is more convincing than slogging through numbers, though this name is misleading to convey the idea that Romney lost all delegates to win.
It's as if we can not forget that the primaries are not elections, "earn" their is nothing else than the victory of the state in November. The fact that in 2008 net of Barack Obama more delegates from Idaho, Kansas, that Hillary Clinton won Ohio and Pennsylvania's only understandable if we recall that the democratic rules of the game is generally more favorable to win the small states by large margins, which big states by narrow. In the autumn, of course, exactly the opposite.
The most important lesson in all this, I think, not to prosecute based on the results of national polls, which will be carpet-bombing us Labor Day on an almost hourly basis. Most often, they offer a distorted measure of how close the difference between victory and defeat in many of our presidential election.
When the margin is a razor's edge in 1960 (one tenth of a percent) or 2000 (half percent), no one will tell, as a result. But there are other cases where clear popular vote distribution of latent surprisingly close election.
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson beat Charles Evans Hughes, Justice of 3 percentage points - a clear, if somewhat overwhelming, distribution. But in the electoral college, the result was 277 to 254 (266 needed for victory). The difference was in California, and its 13 electoral votes, which Wilson won 3.773 votes. 1900, if Californians changed their minds, Hughes would have won the presidential election.
In 1948, Truman won a historic reversal with a lot of decent margin by 4.5 percentage points of votes. But spend a 3550 vote in Ohio (about 2.9 million cast), and 9,000 votes in California (3.8 million), and the vote Truman disappears (segregation Strom Thurmond carried four southern states) and the election was thrown into the House of Representatives.
In 1976, Jimmy Carter, a two-point national plurality (1.8 million votes) significantly underestimated how amazingly close to his election was. Change a little over 5,600 votes in Ohio (about 4 million) and 3600 in Hawaii (about 287,000) would have given the election, Gerald Ford.
There was no victory for more than 3 million votes against George W. Bush in 2004, almost as big as this room offers: change 60,000 votes in Ohio (about 4.5 million votes) and John Kerry will be the second president in a row to win time of loss of votes.
What these numbers tell us, goes far beyond the obvious prohibition to remember that voice, not the popular vote that determines who wins the White House. Turns in a particular state can affect the outcome. Hughes is likely to lose in California, and the presidency in 1916, as Hiram Johnson, Governor of the State and the leader of the progressive wing of the Republican Party, said insulted missed an appointment and is sitting on their hands on election day. I have long believed that Gerald Ford "is not the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe" debate misses cost him weeks of ill will with Poland and other Eastern European descendants, who in the state of Ohio in large numbers.
In 2004, the measure of gay marriage to vote in Ohio was decisive. The New York Times noted, two days after the election, "political analysts credit the voting measure of increased participation in the Republican strongholds in the south and west, and by pressing the swing voters in the Appalachian region of south-east towards Bush."
I do not want to repeat the old story that "all politics is local" - as a political principle that all exaggerated. Clearly, the state of the economy, or the influence of a potential international crisis, have prompted many elections. But some politicians on the local computer. And more often than we think, these local issues influenced the number of votes, the votes, which, in turn, is determined by whose hand is on the button.
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