The Obameter

Politifact.com has something they call an 'Obameter'. They've compiled of 500 of Obama's campaign promises and are keeping track of how many he has kept, compromised, broken, stalled, or hasn't got around to yet.

I'd love to see a Ruddmeter.

Hillary as Secretary of State?

I didn't believe it at first, but it's seeming more and more likely that Hillary will be Secretary of State.

Here's my little theory. On the night that Obama and her met after he'd won the primaries they did a clever little deal. He knew that she wouldn't want a crap job like Vice President, one because it's a crap job, two because if he lost the election she'd be untainted and the presumptive nominee for 2012. So he promised to offer her Secretary of State if she played nice during the presidential campaign. If he won, which he did, she gets the option of a great job. If he loses, she's a shoe-in for 2012.

We all assumed he didn't want her as VP because then he'd have Bill hanging around all the time. But it's probably that SHE didn't want to be VP! She wanted a real job! NoDramaObama probably feels like he can handle Bill now that the election is over.

No one as irish as Barack O'Bama

It's fascinating how affectionate the satire surrounding Obama is. And yes, I admit it, I too have turned into an irrational Obama fanboy.

Congratulations Mr President Elect

Congratulations Barack.

Sarah Palin can't say 'nuclear' either

Mike Huckabee on Bees

"It is aeronautically impossible for the bumblebee to fly. However, the bumblebee, being unaware of these scientific facts, goes ahead and flies anyway."

- Mike Huckabee, Governor of Arkansas and republican presidential candidate for 2008

Longevity with a hard 'g'

The new leader of the Australian Liberal Party, Brendon Nelson, pronounces the word 'longevity' with a hard 'G'; 'G' as in 'gap' rather than 'G' as in 'gee wiz'.

What's with that?!

The right to bare arms?

Word has it that the US Supreme Court is going to take another look at the 2nd ammendment of the US constitution and give an opinion on what 'the right to bear arms' really means. Personally, I'm convinced that the founding fathers made a typo.

Election wrap-up

Oh what a night! Labor has swept into government with a massive 6% swing, and for the first time in Australian history, the incumbent prime minister has lost his seat.

A few observations from election night:


- The Prime Minister elect will mirror the former PM in many ways. Notice that Rudd has already adopted Howard's trademark gold tie.


- There's something about being the Member for Bennelong that seems to provoke the two-arm celebratory wave.


Last night was a great night for Labor, but also a great night for 'bone-heads'. If you watched the ABC TV election coverage last night, you might have noticed the record number of people making faces, waving, and holding up giant Rudd heads in the background. The crowd in the tally room were also making a lot of noise, and at one point Kerry O'Brian got quite annoyed. In the future I think the ABC will want to do election coverage from a controlled studio, A) because of the bone-heads, and B) because the rumour is that the Australian Electoral Commission are planning to no-longer make use of an actual tally-room in the future in favour of a virtual tally room.


When the previous Labor prime minister, Paul Keating, won in 1993 he called it a win for the 'true believers'. That was code for a promise to govern from a foundation of Labor ideology. Rudd, however, borrowed Howard's line, and promised to 'govern for all Australians'. So expect to see a very conservative policy - a small target approach. The 'true believers' will have to look to Julia Gillard for traditional Labor values -- she's the 'light on the hill'.

An insiders guide to how-to-vote cards

Once upon a time, I used to be a member of a now largely defunct minor Australian political party. And for a couple of elections I was one of those annoying people who stand outside the polling booth handing out how-to-vote cards.

A quick primer on how-to-vote cards:

Australia has preferential voting. When filling out a ballot paper, voters don't merely vote for one candidate, but rank all of the available candidates in order of preference. This means that you can support an unpopular candidate but still influence which of the front-runners will ultimately win. This is because if your first choice can't win, then your second choice counts as a full vote. And if your second choice can't win, then your third choice counts as a full vote, and so on.

That's how it is for the House of Representatives election, anyway. It's more complex for the Senate, although still a preferential system.

With preferential voting, voters are free to distribute preferences however they like. However, the political parties also like to make recommendations. So on election day, each party organises to have people handing out how-to-vote cards outside polling booths around Australia. These how-to-vote cards are a last ditch attempt to impress voters with a nice photo of the candidate, win their vote, and influence their preferences.

Now, the electoral act prohibits any campaigning within the designated polling booth. Therefore, how-to-vote card handerouterors (is that the term?) have to lurk outside the entrance. There's usually half a dozen at each polling location. Waiting, ready to pounce. The poor voters have to run the gauntlet.

In my experience as a handerouteror, there are 4 kinds of voters when it comes to how-to-vote cards:

1) No card McGees - these voters keep their heads down and try to run the gauntlet, refusing all how-to-vote cards.

2) Angry no card McGees - these voters refuse all cards, whilst abusing the how-to-vote-card handerouterers ("You're corrupt bloody mongrels, the lot of yehs. I'm not voting for any of yehs. Grumble grumble...")

3) Proud Partisans - refuse all cards except that of their favourite party. These voters are happy to make their allegiance known.

4) Aquiscents - take a card from all of the parties, not wanting to offend anyone.

5) Recyling Acquiescents - take a card from all of the parties, then return them on the way out, in the interests of recycling.

Why do voters have to put up with this? And aren't how-to-vote cards a huge waste of paper? Why not just change the electoral act to allow parties to poster their recommendations on the wall inside the booth? Why not just have a copy of each card available in each of the little cardboard cubicles?

There's a good answer to that actually. The major parties can afford to pay people to hand out cards at every single booth in Australia. However, the minor parties, not having much money, have to rely on party members and volunteers (like me) to hand out cards, and there's just not enough to go around. Thus, minor parties can only afford to have how-to-vote cards at some booths. The minor parties would much prefer to just post voting recommendations inside the booths. But it's only the major parties that have the power to change the electoral act.

Surprisingly, how-to-vote cards make quite a difference. My minor party did much better at booths where its how-to-vote cards were handed out.

But I wonder what effect the quintessential polling booth sausage sizzle has on election outcomes? Factor that in Antony.

P.S. For any would be handerouterors out there, a tip: the spot closest to the entrance is the best. Yours will be the last card they get, and therefore will likely be on top of the pile.

Inferences of Competence from Faces Predict Election Outcomes

In Australia, we have a federal election coming up. On November 24th, we'll vote for one of the above men to be Prime Minster.

How will we decide? On policy? Party allegiance? Boondoggling?

Perhaps. However, I recently came across a very cool study (Tondorov, Mandisodza, Goren, & Hall, 2005) that seems to show that elections are determined, to a surprisingly large extent, by candidates' facial characteristics -- yes facial characteristics.

Participants in this study were shown pairs of photographs of politicians. Each pair depicted the winner and runner up of from a US Senate or House of Reps race. Each pair was flashed on a screen for 1 second, and participants were asked "which person is the more competent?". Care was taken that the participants had no prior knowledge of the politicians.

Amazingly, participants' competency ratings predicted the winner about 70% of the time. It suggests that our initial intuitive judgments about politicians (uninfluenced by advertising, policy, social pressures, party endorsement etc.) have quite a large influence on who we vote for.

But could competent people just have competent looking faces? Did Howard tame his eyebrows just as he tamed the economy?

And for any non-Australian readers out there, please tell us, from your naieve standpoint, which of the gentlemen shown above looks the most competent?

More on the Tondorov et al. study here and here.

(And for the stats nerds out there: the correlation between the differences in competency ratings and the difference in the proportion of votes between the winner and runner up was .44 -- equivalent to nearly 20% of the variance in the winning margins). That seems quite impressive to me.

References

Todorov, A., Mandisodza, A. N., Goren, A., & Hall, C. C. (2005). Inferences of competence from faces predict election outcomes, Science (Vol. 308, pp. 1623-1626): American Association for the Advancement of Science.