On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal published an astonishing letter from famed Venture Capitalist Tom Perkins, in which he compared the purported demonization of the 1% to Kristallnacht, the beginning of the Nazi Holocaust. About a hundred Jews were killed, and at least 30,000 were rounded up that night and sent to concentration camps, as the German authorities looked on. A year later, it was the authorities themselves that were doing the rounding up.
Perkins made an apology on Bloomberg for using Kristallnacht, but he reiterated his astonishing misunderstanding of the goals of the Occupy movement, and of the anarchists who tried to disrupt it in a few places. Occupy was a well intended but poorly strategized movement, which opened opportunities for nihilists like the vandals that broke the windows Perkins complained about (a few windows--not "all the windows" as he said. The main target seems to have been a Bentley dealership and most of its windows survived) and became an invitation for legions of homeless to join them. All of this confused the message. The Occupy protests in most places were completely peaceful and positive, and even in the few places that there was violence or vandalism, the vast majority of it was committed by the police. The Occupy demonstrators themselves were nearly all strongly opposed to it. The seated, huddling students in Davis who were sprayed in the eyes by a policeman had not been violent or threatening. The women in New York who were trapped and sprayed by police and brought the protests to national attention for the first time, a week after they'd begun, had not been either. 84 year old Dorli Rainey had not been either before she was sprayed. Nor had Iraq veteran Scott Olson, prior to his skull being fractured by a lead-filled bean bag round fired at him as he stood at a barrier with other uniformed vets, nor were the protesters who were fired upon while trying to take him to the hospital.
By and large, Occupy was not demonizing the 1%. They were supporting the 99%. The people being targeted for demonization are the people who stole the opportunities from the 99%. This is a tiny fraction of the 1% and they have mostly committed some crime, such as fraud, bribery, theft, or worse. The majority of the 99% has very little opportunity. The cost of college has doubled relative to wages. Millions have lost their jobs, their homes and more. For years now, there have been three or more times as many job seekers as jobs, and most of those jobs that are available are far worse than those that were lost in the crisis.
Rich people will always be a target. As Willie Sutton put it: that's where the money is. If you don't like it, you can stay below the radar, you can hire security, you can give your money away. Perkins and people like him are far more at risk from fraudsters and thieves than from anarchists and nihilists, although they are potentially a problem too. Unlike Kristallnacht, they are not at much risk from the anger of these people or Occupy spreading to government. Perkins is suggesting that his "class" is being demonized because of who they are. The Jews could not hide, could not change who they are and had no political or financial power to protect themselves. None of these things is true for Perkins.
But about one thing, Perkins is right--he, far more than most fabulously rich people, really has created jobs. But he is wrong that regulation and taxation are the problem. Regulation is about preventing things like the economic crisis that befell us 5 years ago and has left us with the employment crisis. Taxation funds this regulation and the safety net when it fails. Regulation needs to work better. Raising taxes on people like Perkins--and me--is not the same as Kristallnacht, and there's no credible case to be made that this is a step on a slippery slope. Nobody is suggesting raising taxes even to the rates that prevailed under Eisenhower, when the economy did so well. Taxes on investors like Perkins are still lower than they were even under Reagan and Clinton. Preventing scammers from stealing peoples homes and livelihoods is not the same thing as Kristallnacht. What the police did to the mostly peaceful Occupy movement is very much closer--but it too is a far cry from Kristallnacht.
28 January 2014
"Where Were You" Events
Practically every American who was older than about 5 at the time remembers exactly what they were doing when they first heard about the JFK assassination. I was in my classroom and remember the principal coming on the intercom and announcing it and asking for a minute of silence. Thinking about it years later, my memory is so clear that I remember exactly what the intercom panel on the wall looked like, and the hesitation in his voice--for a moment he was about to ask for a minute of silent prayer and caught himself. School-led prayer had been banned from US public schools just a few months earlier. I don't think anybody would have faulted him for making the mistake though, under the circumstances, and I'm sure lots of others did. The teacher (Mrs. Beggs) did her best to make it a learning experience, explaining how presidential succession worked and so forth.
There are other events that are nearly as universal.
Titanic Sinking 15 Apr 1912
Pearl Harbor 7 Dec 1941
VE Day 8 May 1945
Hiroshima 6 Aug 1945
Sputnik 4 Oct 1957
JFK assassination 22 Nov 1963
First orbit around the moon 24 Dec 1968
First moon landing 20 Jul 1969
Challenger disaster 28 Jan 1986
September 11th 11 Sept 2001
There are other events that are nearly as universal.
Titanic Sinking 15 Apr 1912
Pearl Harbor 7 Dec 1941
VE Day 8 May 1945
Hiroshima 6 Aug 1945
Sputnik 4 Oct 1957
JFK assassination 22 Nov 1963
First orbit around the moon 24 Dec 1968
First moon landing 20 Jul 1969
Challenger disaster 28 Jan 1986
September 11th 11 Sept 2001
24 January 2014
The Economy is a Competition
So the Heritage Foundation has just hired the astonishingly clueless Stephen Moore to be it's chief economist. For example, here's Moore completely embarrassing himself on Chris Hayes' MSNBC show--yet his fans somehow think he made a sensible case. Moore is arguing that rich liberals want their taxes to go up, yet are hypocrites for not paying more than they owe. That's just silly. It's bad economics and completely innumerate. Rich liberals are like anybody else. They want to pay the lowest taxes they can get away with.
The economy is a competition. Like all competitions, it has rules. If we all play by the same rules, the game is fair. If it's a "three legged race", and everybody's legs are tied together in the same way, it's fair, but if some people are running on their own two legs while others are tied together, it's not. In the same way, if I voluntarily pay more taxes than my neighbor, I have given myself a disadvantage. But if the tax law takes it away, approximately equally, from everybody, nobody has a disadvantage.
In sports, some people have advantages, and we have rules to keep things fair. We don't let teams of adult athletes compete on an equal footing with small children. 250 pound giants don't compete on an equal footing with 98 pounders in wrestling, weightlifting, and a number of other sports. In the economy, we build in advantages for some people who have an analogous built in disadvantage: the marginal tax rate for rich people is higher than it is for poor. We give the poor subsidies for food, housing, education. In sports, nobody questions whether this is fair. But Moore thinks it shouldn't matter exactly where it matters most.
This nonsense hurts us at a lot of levels. For example, states (and countries and smaller entities) are constantly competing with each other for business. If a state has a lower tax rate, businesses are a little more likely to relocate there. But if they do it at the expense of roads, education, and other services, it's a false economy. Businesses need these things, but they're hoping to get somebody else to pay for them. For a little while, they can skate by on the good planning from the past. But not for long.
Each individual business is hoping it can get away with not paying for the services it uses--explicitly in the case of roads, or implicitly, as in education. So they hire people like Moore to make the case that not paying is sensible, and hope that enough people aren't paying attention that they can get away with it. And sure enough, they've been winning elections. They like it when the umpires are on their side.
The economy is a competition. Like all competitions, it has rules. If we all play by the same rules, the game is fair. If it's a "three legged race", and everybody's legs are tied together in the same way, it's fair, but if some people are running on their own two legs while others are tied together, it's not. In the same way, if I voluntarily pay more taxes than my neighbor, I have given myself a disadvantage. But if the tax law takes it away, approximately equally, from everybody, nobody has a disadvantage.
In sports, some people have advantages, and we have rules to keep things fair. We don't let teams of adult athletes compete on an equal footing with small children. 250 pound giants don't compete on an equal footing with 98 pounders in wrestling, weightlifting, and a number of other sports. In the economy, we build in advantages for some people who have an analogous built in disadvantage: the marginal tax rate for rich people is higher than it is for poor. We give the poor subsidies for food, housing, education. In sports, nobody questions whether this is fair. But Moore thinks it shouldn't matter exactly where it matters most.
This nonsense hurts us at a lot of levels. For example, states (and countries and smaller entities) are constantly competing with each other for business. If a state has a lower tax rate, businesses are a little more likely to relocate there. But if they do it at the expense of roads, education, and other services, it's a false economy. Businesses need these things, but they're hoping to get somebody else to pay for them. For a little while, they can skate by on the good planning from the past. But not for long.
Each individual business is hoping it can get away with not paying for the services it uses--explicitly in the case of roads, or implicitly, as in education. So they hire people like Moore to make the case that not paying is sensible, and hope that enough people aren't paying attention that they can get away with it. And sure enough, they've been winning elections. They like it when the umpires are on their side.
23 January 2014
Miles, Acres and Furlongs
A mile was originally 1000 (latin mille) paces--counted left to left, what we would today call 2000 steps. Roman legions were trained to march all together, which led to a pretty consistent distance--5000 Roman feet or about 4851 modern English feet. There have been dozens of different miles through history, but most have fallen away, save for two: the English mile of 5280 feet (1609.344 m) and the nautical mile of 1852 meters (about 6076.12 ft). The nautical mile is a metric distance and is exactly 1/5400ths of the distance between the north pole and the equator, or one minute of latitude, which makes it very useful for navigation. More on the mile in a minute.
An acre was meant to be the amount of land that a man and an ox could plow in a day. Obviously this depends on the soil conditions and the strength and skill of the man and ox, and it was eventually standardized as an area of one chain (22 yards or 66 feet--20.1168meter) by 10 chains. Thus an acre is 4840 square yards or 43560 square feet (4046.82 square meters). An American football field, not counting sidelines or endzones, is 5333.333 square yards, pretty close to 1.1 acres. A hectare is 10,000 square meters, 2.47107 acres. It's fairly convenient to pretend that an acre is .4 hectares...it's off by just under half a percent.
A furlong is the length of a furrow in such a field--10 chains. Thus an area one furlong square (660 feet by 660 feet) is ten acres. Because it meant they didn't have to turn the plow and animal as often, farmers preferred to break up their fields, when necessary, into rectangles that retained the furrow-long length.
In 1593, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Parliament passed a statute declaring the mile to be exactly 8 furlongs, or 5280 feet. Thus we get the term statute mile. A square mile is thus 64 square furlongs or 640 acres.
Virtually all navigation is done in nautical miles. One of the advantages is that you don't need a scale of miles on the chart: you can get it from the latitude scale. On some map projections, the scale of miles changes as you get closer or farther from the poles, but latitude allows you to measure correctly. Mercator is such a projection. You can't measure long distances with it, but you only do approximate navigation with such a map anyway.
A useful factoid: 13 nautical miles is 14.96 statute miles--so close to 13/15 that it's an easy conversion to do in your head. 11 kilometers is about 5.94 nautical miles. Not quite so close to11/6 but still useful.
An acre was meant to be the amount of land that a man and an ox could plow in a day. Obviously this depends on the soil conditions and the strength and skill of the man and ox, and it was eventually standardized as an area of one chain (22 yards or 66 feet--20.1168meter) by 10 chains. Thus an acre is 4840 square yards or 43560 square feet (4046.82 square meters). An American football field, not counting sidelines or endzones, is 5333.333 square yards, pretty close to 1.1 acres. A hectare is 10,000 square meters, 2.47107 acres. It's fairly convenient to pretend that an acre is .4 hectares...it's off by just under half a percent.
A furlong is the length of a furrow in such a field--10 chains. Thus an area one furlong square (660 feet by 660 feet) is ten acres. Because it meant they didn't have to turn the plow and animal as often, farmers preferred to break up their fields, when necessary, into rectangles that retained the furrow-long length.
In 1593, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Parliament passed a statute declaring the mile to be exactly 8 furlongs, or 5280 feet. Thus we get the term statute mile. A square mile is thus 64 square furlongs or 640 acres.
Virtually all navigation is done in nautical miles. One of the advantages is that you don't need a scale of miles on the chart: you can get it from the latitude scale. On some map projections, the scale of miles changes as you get closer or farther from the poles, but latitude allows you to measure correctly. Mercator is such a projection. You can't measure long distances with it, but you only do approximate navigation with such a map anyway.
A useful factoid: 13 nautical miles is 14.96 statute miles--so close to 13/15 that it's an easy conversion to do in your head. 11 kilometers is about 5.94 nautical miles. Not quite so close to11/6 but still useful.
12 January 2014
Jonathan Edwards
The first Jonathan Edwards was a philosopher and theologian, and one of the earliest great American intellectuals. Born in 1703 in Connecticut, he became interested in the works of John Locke, Isaac Newton, and many others. He is most famous for shaping the First Great Awakening, which had a very profound legacy in American Evangelism, although not of the intellectual sort he would have hoped for. He died in 1758 of smallpox.
The second Jonathan Edwards was a popular musician, born 1946. He had a really big hit in 1971: "Sunshine (Go Away Today)". It was a protest song--against the Vietnam war and the draft, but it's a catchy tune. He's still out there, writing songs, recording and performing, but hasn't had another hit so big.
The third Jonathan Edwards (born 1966) is the greatest triple jumper ever. He's held the world record for almost 19 years and has 4 of the best 6 jumps ever, including two Olympic medals, silver in 1996, gold in 2000. Today, he's a TV presenter for the BBC, mostly on track and field subjects. He was born to a very religious family and for a time, refused to compete on sunday. After retiring as an athlete, he did a lot of preaching. However, in recent years, he says he has lost his faith completely. He refuses to talk very specifically about it.
John Edwards (not quite the same name) was an American politician from North Carolina, who was a US Senator and came very close to becoming vice president in 2004 (it is known that there was a lot of election fraud in that election--it's entirely possible that he won). A few years later, he managed to completely destroy his career with an extramarital affair, conducted while his wife was ill with cancer. He's still alive, but his political career isn't.
Three of these four at one time purported to be very religious. The fourth, the musician, played a preacher in a movie. What he (and the politician) actually think about religion is unclear. There are numerous other Jonathan Edwards (10 of them famous enough be in wikipedia's disambiguation page). Wikipedia lists 20 politicians named John Edwards
The second Jonathan Edwards was a popular musician, born 1946. He had a really big hit in 1971: "Sunshine (Go Away Today)". It was a protest song--against the Vietnam war and the draft, but it's a catchy tune. He's still out there, writing songs, recording and performing, but hasn't had another hit so big.
The third Jonathan Edwards (born 1966) is the greatest triple jumper ever. He's held the world record for almost 19 years and has 4 of the best 6 jumps ever, including two Olympic medals, silver in 1996, gold in 2000. Today, he's a TV presenter for the BBC, mostly on track and field subjects. He was born to a very religious family and for a time, refused to compete on sunday. After retiring as an athlete, he did a lot of preaching. However, in recent years, he says he has lost his faith completely. He refuses to talk very specifically about it.
John Edwards (not quite the same name) was an American politician from North Carolina, who was a US Senator and came very close to becoming vice president in 2004 (it is known that there was a lot of election fraud in that election--it's entirely possible that he won). A few years later, he managed to completely destroy his career with an extramarital affair, conducted while his wife was ill with cancer. He's still alive, but his political career isn't.
Three of these four at one time purported to be very religious. The fourth, the musician, played a preacher in a movie. What he (and the politician) actually think about religion is unclear. There are numerous other Jonathan Edwards (10 of them famous enough be in wikipedia's disambiguation page). Wikipedia lists 20 politicians named John Edwards
08 January 2014
Hydrogen Cars
Hydrogen fuel cells sound to some like a promising technology: it allows an electric car which can be refueled quickly and its only emissions are water. But it's up against some laws of physics that make it tough to be practical. The main one is that the energy density of hydrogen is very low. Liquid hydrogen has an energy density 1/4th that of gasoline. This means to get a car with the same range, you'd need a gas tank 4 times as large. But liquid hydrogen is incredibly expensive and the tank would be impractical. Carrying it at much higher than about 3000 PSI (roughly what is used in a SCUBA airtank) is probably impractical, but at that pressure, the energy density is about 1/20th that of gasoline. To replace the the 11.9 gallon fuel tank and internal combustion engine in a Prius with fuel cell and a 3000 PSI hydrogen tank and get the same range would take a tank of around 250 gallons. This is a volume of about 33 cubic feet. This is roughly the entire interior volume of the Prius....if you take out all the seats!
The bottom line here is that without some significant technological breakthrough (for example extremely high pressure tanks, or some scheme that where the hydrogen is dissolved in some other material at much higher than 3000 PSI equivalent), a hydrogen car isn't likely to have much range. A bus or truck is a different story: it has a lot more places to put the tank(s). Hydrogen does have one big advantage over gasoline or battery electric: the mechanism, tank, fuel (even 250 gallons), fuel cell and electric motor, is a lot lighter. This may help with mileage to some extent but nothing like enough to give it the range we've come to expect.
Nevertheless, Toyota has just announced the Toyota FCV, a Camry-sized Hydrogen fuel cell car to be put on the market in 2015, which they claim has a 300 mile range and can be refueled in 3 minutes. I'm skeptical. None of the pictures show the interior or even say how many passengers it carries. It pretty much has to be a bunch of hydrogen tanks on wheels, with very little room for the occupants.
In most places the cheapest way to make hydrogen involves heating natural gas with steam to split the hydrogen from the CO2. This produces as much CO2 as burning it (even more if you burned something to produce the steam) and is at least as bad for the CO2 levels in the air as other fossil fuels. It is NOT a green fuel, it is a fossil fuel, with all the problems that come from it. The CO2 isn't coming out of the tailpipe of the car, but just as much (more actually) is coming out of the plant.
In some places, where you have extremely cheap electricity, you can make hydrogen with electrolysis of water. It takes more energy to do this than you will get out of it, so it makes the hydrogen a sort of storage battery, but because of the ease of refueling and the light weight may give it an advantage. Iceland, with abundant geothermal electricity, is such a place, and as the whole island is only 250 miles across, a low range car is pretty practical.
Hydrogen is no more flammable than gasoline, although if punctured, a high pressure tank would spray a stream of hydrogen until it's exhausted. If it ignites, that's potentially a very hot, very focused flame.
The bottom line here is that without some significant technological breakthrough (for example extremely high pressure tanks, or some scheme that where the hydrogen is dissolved in some other material at much higher than 3000 PSI equivalent), a hydrogen car isn't likely to have much range. A bus or truck is a different story: it has a lot more places to put the tank(s). Hydrogen does have one big advantage over gasoline or battery electric: the mechanism, tank, fuel (even 250 gallons), fuel cell and electric motor, is a lot lighter. This may help with mileage to some extent but nothing like enough to give it the range we've come to expect.
Nevertheless, Toyota has just announced the Toyota FCV, a Camry-sized Hydrogen fuel cell car to be put on the market in 2015, which they claim has a 300 mile range and can be refueled in 3 minutes. I'm skeptical. None of the pictures show the interior or even say how many passengers it carries. It pretty much has to be a bunch of hydrogen tanks on wheels, with very little room for the occupants.
In most places the cheapest way to make hydrogen involves heating natural gas with steam to split the hydrogen from the CO2. This produces as much CO2 as burning it (even more if you burned something to produce the steam) and is at least as bad for the CO2 levels in the air as other fossil fuels. It is NOT a green fuel, it is a fossil fuel, with all the problems that come from it. The CO2 isn't coming out of the tailpipe of the car, but just as much (more actually) is coming out of the plant.
In some places, where you have extremely cheap electricity, you can make hydrogen with electrolysis of water. It takes more energy to do this than you will get out of it, so it makes the hydrogen a sort of storage battery, but because of the ease of refueling and the light weight may give it an advantage. Iceland, with abundant geothermal electricity, is such a place, and as the whole island is only 250 miles across, a low range car is pretty practical.
Hydrogen is no more flammable than gasoline, although if punctured, a high pressure tank would spray a stream of hydrogen until it's exhausted. If it ignites, that's potentially a very hot, very focused flame.
07 January 2014
Third Party Candidates
Third party candidates have often swung elections, frequently undermining the cause they purport to be working for. I did a little research (mostly on wikipedia). several of these elections have been pretty interesting, including several free for alls. quite a few November elections have seen two or more candidates from the same party, and several have switched parties. My bottom line: there have been 6 third party candidates which caused a consequential change in the results, but far more where they did not. There were several who were plainly out to undermine another candidate, the most recent being John Anderson. Here's a list
2000:
Gore: 48.38%
Bush: 47.87%
Nader: 2.74%
Bush won the electoral college by 1 vote. Gores margin of victory was probably much larger than official counts, due to various vote rigging. Nader pretty much stood against everything Bush stood for, although Bush ran as a very different guy than he governed. Nader's votes clearly changed the election, although it's probably also the case that Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris did too.
1996:
Clinton: 49.24%
Dole: 40.71%
Perot: 8.40%
Nader: .71%.
Add up Clinton and Nader, and Dole and Perot, Clinton/Nader wins. but without Nader, Dole/Perot win. But I suspect all Nader votes would have gone to Clinton and 1/3rd of Perot's would have too.
1992:
Clinton: 43.01%
Dole: 37.45%
Perot: 18.91%
Dole/Perot is a clear winner. 1/3rd of Perot to Clinton, 2/3s to Perot, and Clinton wins, but just barely. But the places Perot did well are places that Dole won anyway, so the electoral college probably would have ended up about the same.
1980:
Reagan: 50.85%
Carter: 41.01%
Anderson: 6.61%
Anderson probably took votes from Carter, which is probably the main reason he ran. Didn't matter.
1968:
Nixon: 43.42%
Humprey: 42.72%
Wallace: 13.53%
In the first post-civil rights act election, Wallace could not bring himself to support either the race-traitor Humphrey or the Party or Lincoln member Nixon. He won big in most of the south, but nowhere else. The southern states he didn't win were fairly close between Nixon and Humphrey. Hard to call. Had RFK not been murdered, I think he'd have won big.
1948:
Truman: 49.55%
Dewey: 45.07%
Thurmond: 2.41%
Thurmond probably took votes away from Truman. Dewey was a liberal republican. No change.
1924:
Coolidge: 54.04%
Davis: 28.82%
LaFollette: 16.61%
I can't speak to the messaging: LaFollette though was a progressive, Davis a pro-business democrat, and Coolidge, one of the most conservative presidents in history. By vote count, it wouldn't have made a difference.
1912:
Wilson: 41.84%
Roosevelt: 27.40%
Taft: 23.17%
Debs: 5.99%
Together, the two nominal Rs had more than 50%, but Roosevelt didn't like Taft turning against his agenda. This is the best showing by a Socialist, Eugene Debs, ever.
1892:
Cleveland: 46.02%
Harrison: 43.01%
Weaver: 8.51%
Weaver ran as a populist. this was pro-union, anti corporation, pro gold standard. Probably closer to Cleveland (the D) than Harrison. no change.
1888:
Harrison: 47.80%
Cleveland: 48.63%
Fisk: 2.20%
Streeter: 1.31%
Cleveland won the popular vote but Harrison the electoral college. Streeters Union Labor party votes probably would have gone mostly to Cleveland, which might have swung the election. Fisk was from the Prohibition party.
1884:
Cleveland 48.85%
Blaine: 48.28%.
St. John: 1.51:
Butler: 1.33%
Butler's anti monopoly votes would probably mostly have gone to Cleveland, who won anyway. St. John was prohibition.
1880:
Garfield: 48.31%
Hancock 48.22%
Weaver: 3.31%
Weaver's votes would probably have swung the election to Hancock. this is by far the closest election in US history, with both winning 19 states and a vote difference of about 9000.
1860:
Lincoln: 39.8
Douglas: 29.5
Breckenridge: 18.1
Bell: 12.6
the issues were so much larger than party I throw up my hands.
1856:
Buchanan: 45.3
Fremont: 33.1
Fillmore: 21.6
Had Fremont stayed with the Whigs, it have been a clear whig victory. definitely swung it
1848:
Taylor: 47.3
Cass: 42.5
Van Buren: 10.1
Van Buren's votes probably would have mostly gone to Taylor. No difference
1836:
Van Buren: 50.83
Harrison: 36.63
White: 9.72
Whites votes probably would have gone to Harrison but it didn't matter.
1824:
Jackson: 41.4
Adams: 30.9
Clay: 13.0
Crawford: 11.2
There was no winner in the electoral college, but Clay (who was speaker of the house) gave his votes to Adams, which made Adams the winner. third party definitely did matter.
1812:
Madison: 50.3
Clinton: 47.6
King: 2.0
King's votes would probably have gone with Clinton but it didn't matter.
2000:
Gore: 48.38%
Bush: 47.87%
Nader: 2.74%
Bush won the electoral college by 1 vote. Gores margin of victory was probably much larger than official counts, due to various vote rigging. Nader pretty much stood against everything Bush stood for, although Bush ran as a very different guy than he governed. Nader's votes clearly changed the election, although it's probably also the case that Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris did too.
1996:
Clinton: 49.24%
Dole: 40.71%
Perot: 8.40%
Nader: .71%.
Add up Clinton and Nader, and Dole and Perot, Clinton/Nader wins. but without Nader, Dole/Perot win. But I suspect all Nader votes would have gone to Clinton and 1/3rd of Perot's would have too.
1992:
Clinton: 43.01%
Dole: 37.45%
Perot: 18.91%
Dole/Perot is a clear winner. 1/3rd of Perot to Clinton, 2/3s to Perot, and Clinton wins, but just barely. But the places Perot did well are places that Dole won anyway, so the electoral college probably would have ended up about the same.
1980:
Reagan: 50.85%
Carter: 41.01%
Anderson: 6.61%
Anderson probably took votes from Carter, which is probably the main reason he ran. Didn't matter.
1968:
Nixon: 43.42%
Humprey: 42.72%
Wallace: 13.53%
In the first post-civil rights act election, Wallace could not bring himself to support either the race-traitor Humphrey or the Party or Lincoln member Nixon. He won big in most of the south, but nowhere else. The southern states he didn't win were fairly close between Nixon and Humphrey. Hard to call. Had RFK not been murdered, I think he'd have won big.
1948:
Truman: 49.55%
Dewey: 45.07%
Thurmond: 2.41%
Thurmond probably took votes away from Truman. Dewey was a liberal republican. No change.
1924:
Coolidge: 54.04%
Davis: 28.82%
LaFollette: 16.61%
I can't speak to the messaging: LaFollette though was a progressive, Davis a pro-business democrat, and Coolidge, one of the most conservative presidents in history. By vote count, it wouldn't have made a difference.
1912:
Wilson: 41.84%
Roosevelt: 27.40%
Taft: 23.17%
Debs: 5.99%
Together, the two nominal Rs had more than 50%, but Roosevelt didn't like Taft turning against his agenda. This is the best showing by a Socialist, Eugene Debs, ever.
1892:
Cleveland: 46.02%
Harrison: 43.01%
Weaver: 8.51%
Weaver ran as a populist. this was pro-union, anti corporation, pro gold standard. Probably closer to Cleveland (the D) than Harrison. no change.
1888:
Harrison: 47.80%
Cleveland: 48.63%
Fisk: 2.20%
Streeter: 1.31%
Cleveland won the popular vote but Harrison the electoral college. Streeters Union Labor party votes probably would have gone mostly to Cleveland, which might have swung the election. Fisk was from the Prohibition party.
1884:
Cleveland 48.85%
Blaine: 48.28%.
St. John: 1.51:
Butler: 1.33%
Butler's anti monopoly votes would probably mostly have gone to Cleveland, who won anyway. St. John was prohibition.
1880:
Garfield: 48.31%
Hancock 48.22%
Weaver: 3.31%
Weaver's votes would probably have swung the election to Hancock. this is by far the closest election in US history, with both winning 19 states and a vote difference of about 9000.
1860:
Lincoln: 39.8
Douglas: 29.5
Breckenridge: 18.1
Bell: 12.6
the issues were so much larger than party I throw up my hands.
1856:
Buchanan: 45.3
Fremont: 33.1
Fillmore: 21.6
Had Fremont stayed with the Whigs, it have been a clear whig victory. definitely swung it
1848:
Taylor: 47.3
Cass: 42.5
Van Buren: 10.1
Van Buren's votes probably would have mostly gone to Taylor. No difference
1836:
Van Buren: 50.83
Harrison: 36.63
White: 9.72
Whites votes probably would have gone to Harrison but it didn't matter.
1824:
Jackson: 41.4
Adams: 30.9
Clay: 13.0
Crawford: 11.2
There was no winner in the electoral college, but Clay (who was speaker of the house) gave his votes to Adams, which made Adams the winner. third party definitely did matter.
1812:
Madison: 50.3
Clinton: 47.6
King: 2.0
King's votes would probably have gone with Clinton but it didn't matter.
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