A truly American story

by ~MVI~
Rooms to rent for inauguration – at eye-popping prices:
[Via Ed cetera]

My favorite story of the week involves the eye-popping entrepreneurial spirit on display in the nation’s capital in advance of the once-in-a-lifetime inauguration in January. The New York Times has a terrific story on windfall profits some are dreaming of by renting their homes for, get this, as much as $57,000 a week.
The math is very simple. The five-country metro area has 95,000 hotel rooms. Inaugration planners expect more than a million people to show up for the inauguration.
Every possible arrangement is being considered – RV’s to rent, couches for rent, spots on the basement floor.

I guess the economy can’t be that bad if $6000 a night does not scare people away. The key will be how man people actually pay that price.

Technorati Tags: Economy, Politics

I love playing with numbers

The Population and the Popular Vote:
[Via FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right]

In response to our post from earlier this week on the size and scale of Barack Obama’s popular vote victory, several readers wrote in to ask how Barack Obama’s popular vote total ranks as a share of the United States population at the time of his election.

Obama has received at least 68,724,397 popular votes for the Presidency. I say “at least” because they’re still counting in California and several other states, and so Obama’s total should wind up comfortably over 69 million; 70 million appears unlikely, but is not entirely out of the question.

This total represents 22.62 percent of the Census Bureau’s 2008 estimate of United States population, which was 303,824,640. That figure doesn’t sound that impressive at first glance — fewer than one in four Americans actually voted for Barack Obama — but it’s actually the second-highest percentage ever, trailing only Ronald Reagan in 1984:

(Note: for 1900 onward, population figures are based on yearly Census Bureau estimates as of July 1st of the year in question. For years prior to 1900, they are based on a linear extrapolation of population figures from the nearest decennial Censuses.)

[More]

Only one other President ever had a greater percentage of Americans vote for him than voted for Obama. For Obama to get more than Reagan, he will need more than 70 million votes.

What is interesting is that Obama got that high a percentage on his first run for President. Reagan’s election in 1984 was as an incumbent. In fact, the only other President to get more than 20% of Americans to vote for him when not the incumbent was Eisenhower in 1952.

Now there are some obvious glitches in this approach. It counts infants as well as teenagers in the mix. But it does answer the question which President had the largest percentage of Americans vote for them.

How meaningful that is may be open to interpretation.

Technorati Tags: General, Politics