Colin's Blog » Obama

Obama Laughs in Harper’s Face

Colin Carmichael — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:32:49 +0000

All Harper said was: “Well, Barack, when I get my majority…”

It's a photo caption contest! Leave your captions in the comments.

Photo courtesy of the White House

Electoral College Tie Still Possible

Colin Carmichael — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 03:05:43 +0000

I’ve mused before about the possibility of a tie in the Electoral College this week. I think it’s still possible even with Obama’s strong showing over the last several weeks.

Here’s the LATimes current analysis: (They have the coolest maps)

Here’s my best shot at what an Electoral College tie would look like:

What would it take?
* McCain takes Florida, Colorado & Virginia from the Obama column
* McCain takes the three tossups: Indiana, Ohio & North Carolina

A fairly plausible scenario.

Another possibility is that New Hampshire gets weird and goes red again. In that case, to maintain the tie, McCain would have to give up Colorado and take New Mexico instead. Either of those southwestern states are a possibility for McCain and New Hampshire is a New England maverick – having gone red in 2000.

Yet another scenario sees Michigan going to McCain, and Virginia, Colorado and New Mexico to Obama. Not as likely, but still plausible.

Update: I almost forgot to add what I think is going to happen…

Obama by just 7 electoral college votes.

Election 2008: A Tie?

Colin Carmichael — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:14:35 +0000

Did you know that it’s possible to tie the Presidential election?

The Presidential election is decided by Electoral College votes which are distributed among the fifty states roughly by population – California gets lots, Delaware not so much. There are 538 electoral college votes up for grabs – and they way they are distributed makes it entirely possible that the election could end in a tie! Using the LA Times interactive Electoral College map (hat tip) it’s clear that not only is it possible – it’s really not much of a stretch.

What are the odds of this happening?

Social Media in Real-Time

Colin Carmichael — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 13:30:44 +0000

I’m a political junkie. I have been fascinated by politics and government for many years a passion which eventually led to a now underused degree in political science.

I am also now a Twitter junkie. The "global watercooler" allows me to eavesdrop on many conversations and throw in my $0.02 on a variety of topics when I think I have something valuable to add.

In the past week or so, these two vices have collided in a spectacular way. It started with the Democratic primary in South Carolina last Saturday. A few of us social media/political junkies (@stuartma, @JillFoster, et al) began discussing the results as they came in. Those of us purists with online-only access to CNN’s raw feeds (TV is so 1.0) had to rely on others to report the numbers as they came in. We could then offer our thoughts on the how’s and why’s… Or just "listen" and learn.

Once the results were solid and the networks had made their projections, the speeches from each of the candidates began. This was the magical part of evening. Barack Obama’s speech elicited responses from my Twitterverse that were raw emotion and reflected his ability to reach down into people’s soul and stir it up.

That this communal emotional response was palpable in an online medium is, I believe, revolutionary. To the casual observer, Obama’s speech was a great one, to be sure. But the ability to witness the emotions it evoked in others in real-time transformed the speech from a political event into an emotional event shared by a community of pseudo-strangers. This has never really been possible before.

Last night I observed a similar event during the Super Bowl. Since I’m more of a CFL guy than NFL, I wasn’t watching the game. I was, however, watching a couple dozen folks twitter the game as they watched it. Thank to Jeremiah Owyang‘s social media experiment, most of the Twitter-banter centred on rating the (in)famous SuperBowl commercials as they aired. The results of Jeremiah’s experiment can be found by searching for @superbowlads at terramind’s search service. Currently, it lists over 2500 responses. hundreds of people sharing an event in real-time through an online medium. Very Cool. [late-breaking re-cap from Jeremiah]

In between commercials, there was, of course, a football game going on. While I was doing other things online (watching this stunning video, for example), I could get a feel of how the game was going just from the expletive-laced bursts of emotion emanating from my Twitter client.

I am very much looking forward to that other ‘Super’ event this week: Super Tuesday. I will miss the bulk of the day’s conversations since I’ll be in meetings and without internet access all day (though I may sneak a peek at TwitterBerry now & again).

As the polls close, however, I’ll be ensconced in my hotel room all a-Twitter about what the results will mean… even for us Canadians. My prediction? I think by wednesday morning (it’ll come early!) we’ll have a pretty good idea of the two names on the Presidential ballot come November.

I have some more thoughts brewing about the social-scalability of Twitter. Tonight may have been proof that we’ve finally seen the end of the technical scalability problems! I’ll post later in the week on what I mean by "social-scalability" and why I think it’s a problem. Stay tuned.