It’s Election Day here in Canada. A low turnout is expected (which in Canada means about 65 to 70% of registered voters, with registration being an automatic process), probably because many people share the feelings that Ed outlines. I don’t share that view, although I will be holding my nose while I vote – all the candidates stink. But government does have a huge impact on every aspect of Canadian society – including the stock market and the economy at large.
Steven Johnson weighs
in on the election two weeks hence: “[…] after all of this, there will be only one indisputable fact about the Florida vote: The margin of error was larger than the margin of victory.”
I almost missed
Steven Johnson’s additional comments about his Times piece, Go With Fuzzy Logic, in Feed’s ‘Loop’ discussion area. Due to an ampersand in the URL I can’t make the direct link, but head on over and take a look. “According to Florida election officials, punch card machines had 32 errors per 1,000 votes, while the OpScan devices had only 2. As I said in the piece, the real question is: which counties are using punch cards, and which are using OpScan.”
Feed’s Steven Johnson
Feed‘s Steven Johnson in the New York Times (Reg. req’d): Go With Fuzzy Logic. “[…]The issue turns out to be whether perceptual and analytic skills of machines are better than those of humans – a strangely fitting theme for the first election of the 21st century.”
Thanks to two people
, Peter Merholz and Meg Hourihan, for pointing out this map of the US election results by county. The additional level of granularity yields some really interesting information – particularly concerning the urban/rural split in US politics.
The same thing exists in Canadian politics as well, with the ruling Liberals electing MPs in most major cities while the upstart Reform/Alliance has otherwise swept the West and is threatening a breakthrough in outlying parts of Ontario. Likewise, in Quebec the Bloc is predominant except in Montreal, and didn’t sweep Quebec City either. An important difference between Canada and the US is that Canada is slightly more urban than the US – though it’s only marginally so.
