2010 Wisconsin Senate Race

I found this @ http://www.rasmussenreports.com/
This may mean a few things. One, the Russ has a pretty strong fallowing, probably because of his time in office and name recognition. Two, Ron has been steadily growing in popularity, possibly because of the independent voters finally switching to him, and the undecided members also may be choosing Ron. This may show that Russ is not attracting new voters while Ron is.

	Ron Johnson (R)	Russ Feingold (D)	Some Other Candidate	Not Sure
September 15, 2010	51%	44%	1%	4%
August 24, 2010	47%	46%	1%	5%
August 10, 2010	47%	46%	2%	5%
July 27, 2010	48%	46%	2%	5%
July 13, 2010	47%	46%	2%	6%
June 21, 2010	45%	46%	3%	6%
May 25, 2010	44%	46%	3%	6%

*NOTE: Results from surveys conducted prior to September 15 do not include leaners.

Candidate for the WI Senate Race	Very Favorable	Somewhat Favorable	Somewhat Unfavorable	Very Unfavorable	Not sure
Feingold	32%	19%	18%	28%	3%
Johnson	29%	32%	14%	19%	5%

This is also interesting, because people for Feingold find him 52% Favorable, and 46% Unfavorable.
The people for Johnson find him 61% Favorable and only 33% Unfavorable.
This is something that I think shows that Johnson has a stronger base with less chance of swing voters.

Uh Oh for Obama

This could be very serious for Obama, and the Democrats in general.

http://sas-origin.onstreammedia.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/er24smwlmk2sckuqwsjo4g.gif

 http://sas-origin.onstreammedia.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/ovc2gafzhu2l2600zv_-qw.gif



This would mean that Obama would have to fight more friction in getting his legislation passed, and therefore would lead to the possibility increasing of him becoming a one term president. This is because these groups are the Presidents bread and butter. Leading those groups to assumably vote Democrat.

Economy/Food Supply

These are very nice charts of Brazil's change in agriculture in response to the reemerging concerns of a world food crisis due to population, renewable water, and land resources, also known as "agro-pessimism". These show hope.

http://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/images/images-magazine/2010/35/bb/201035bbc172.gif




Found at Economist.com & check out the first link, it's another chart that's very cool, same site as the second, but would not paste!

First Assignment

The site http://bostonreview.net/BR34.5/ndf_election.php lists many factors that can be used to predict the outcome of an election, specifically the 2008 presidential election. Although you can test and represent certain factors based on data including only those subjects, conclusive data is not shown. What is shown is specific to Obama's victory is, young voter's swung Democrat 2 to 1 when under 30years old. Obama won dramatically against Kerry in the minority vote. While Obama did not win the majority from any white's, he was 3% higher in the white vote, 7% higher in the black vote ( with 2 million more black votes in 2008 than 2006 ), 12% higher Asian vote, and 13% higher in the  Latino vote than Kerry. However, determining factors did not seem to include racism from working class whites. Also, for 2008, Democrats gained 5% in both congressional and presidential votes. Factors that seem prevalent in all elections are these: stability of the economy (which was not noticeable with the fall of the Lehman Brothers, or the bailout of AIG, for whatever reason) but historically it is true that the party who is in house with a failing economy is blamed for the failure, therefore there is a switch in momentum for the opposing party; as well as party affiliation, where 90% of Americans are either Republican or Democratic. It is true that even these factors may not be written in stone nor is it proven whether there is a significance in policy's or agenda's per candidate. Contrary, it is shown that lack of proposals can hurt a campaign. But of course, the Iraq policy, the health debate, and as always, speaking ability were contributing factors. As a problem however, it is very difficult to presume where a certain candidate, or election for that matter went wrong, or right, or even how much of the campaign had any significance at all, which has constantly changing variables. Predictability however is apparently very good based off the median scores from pre-election analysis.