A day to remember all who have died, and continue to die, in war. Let us hope that one day we can bring an end to this evil.

A couple of questions, one substantive and one rhetorical

1. What share of the aggregate popular vote did the two major parties receive in the US House elections ?

2. Why isn’t this reported anywhere (at least anywhere I can see) ?

As regards 2, I know that the aggregate popular vote doesn’t determine anything, but that’s true in all constituency systems and for indirect elections like the US Presidential elections, and the popular vote is generally reported in these cases. Also, I know there were some uncontested seats, but there are usually ways to adjust for this kind of problem.

Update Andrew Gelman writes:

Regarding your blog question on votes, you might be interested in our post-election summary here:

The short story is that the Democrats did much better in 2006 (56% of the average district vote) than the Republicans did in 1994 (when they only received 51.3%). In terms of national voting, the Democrats received much more of a mandate in 2006 than the Republicans did twelve years earlier. Our graph is helpful too, I think, both in showing this pattern and putting it into a longer historical context.

I’ve seen a range of estimates of the Democrats’ share of the two-party vote, from 53 to 57, but I’ve generally been impressed with Gelman and his cobloggers, so I’ll take this as the best estimate.

I still wonder that US national media don’t care about this. Even the exit polls reported by the NYT, which had all sorts of breakdowns, didn’t make it easy to get the aggregate result.

Further update Andrew Gelman has written again to advise that a more detailed recalculation produces an estimate of 54.8 per cent.

For the majority of pro-American people around the world, Election Day 2004 was a bitter pill to swallow. Just about everyone outside the country could see what a mess Bush was making in Iraq and what damage he was doing to America’s international standing, but the majority of electors voted for him (a narrow majority, but more than he got when falsely presenting himself as “a uniter not a divider” in 2000).

Still, getting things wrong from time to time is part of democracy, and some things are more easily seen from abroad than at home (think of how badly we collectively got it wrong on asylum-seekers in 2001, and how long its taken to achieve even a partial reversal of those policies). As Tuesday’s election results have shown, most Americans have come to the same view of Bush and his war as most people everywhere else in the world.

I’m watching the US election results with particular impatience, as I’ve agreed to do a piece for the Fin on implications for Australia, which are hard to figure out until we actually see the results.

My general desire for an overwhelming Democrat win is in line with personal self-interest. For the last two presidential elections, I’ve had to write three different pieces covering a win for either side or “too close to call by deadline time”. I really don’t want to do that again.

So far things look good for the Democrats. Leaked exit polls, for what they’re worth, show leads in most key races, and the early counting has confirmed some gains in the House, Senate and state governorships.

Update 1:40 I’m going to get in early and call a win for the Dems in the House. They’ve gained around nine seats already (no losses at all so far), and only need to hold onto leads to pick up the six more they need.

Update 3:15 It looks like the Dems will gain about 30 seats, which also means a majority of 30. The odds are still against a win in the Senate, but the size of the loss will make it hard for the Republicans to hang on next time around.

A big winner out of all this is John McCain. The Republican establishment will have their work cut out to stop him getting the nomination now, especially if they put up a member of Team Bush.

There can be few people on the planet more deserving of death than Saddam Hussein. However, the crime for which he has just been sentenced to die was, by his standards, relatively minor. Following an assassination attempt attributed to terrorists and traitors, his regime responded with indiscriminate arrests. Those seized were held incommunicado in secret prisons, tortured (in some cases to death) and then, in many cases, executed after trials by special tribunals set up to secure convictions where normal courts would not.

If the precedent set by this case is applied consistently, we can expect to see many more death sentences arising from events in Iraq and elsewhere, and not just among the remnants of the Baathist regime.

My piece from last week’s Fin is over the Fold. Report on the Rowat study is here.
Read More »

My knowledge on this topic is limited, so perhaps others won’t be surprised as I was, by the information in this Washington Post story that Russia, as a member of the Council of Europe, is subject to the European Court of Justice Human Rights, and that

Russians now file more complaints with the court — 10,583 in 2005 — than people from any of the 46 countries that make up the Council of Europe, according to court statistics

Among other stats, the Court has issued 362 rulings on Russia, all but 10 going against the government.

This and other things point to the fact Russia’s primary strategic relationship nowadays is not with the US, where things are still viewed through the prism of residual Cold War rivalry, but with Europe. And this relationship is full of ambiguities, starting with the old question of whether Russia is part of Europe, part of Asia, or belongs in a special category of its own.

This is a big problem on both sides, but it’s hard to see any positive alternative to the logic of gradual integration implied by membership of a growing range of European institutions, and ultimately of the EU itself. Europe could try to draw permanent lines that excluded Russia (and maybe also Belarus), rather than deal with the problems of integration, but that seems unlikely, even with the recent backlash against expansion. More plausibly, Russia could turn in on itself, perhaps repudiating bothersome institutions like the Court of Human Rights. That would be bad for (nearly) all concerned, but clearly there are powerful forces in Russia pushing in that direction.

As I said, lots of people here understand more than me about all of this, so I’d be interested in comments, pointers to further reading and so on.

The Washington Post is having a good day. There’s a nice article by Shankar Vedantam linking the research of Kahneman and Tversky on anchoring heuristics to widespread unwillingness to believe estimates of 600 000 excess deaths arising from the Iraq war.

And the Post which has kowtowed to Bush ever since he got in, finally seems willing to call him on obvious lies. Here’s Peter Baker and Eugene Robinson.

No doubt the collapse of hope regarding Iraq has something to do with us. The US media has finally come face to face with the reality that all the alternatives now on offer are disastrous. Even the hawks have now recognised that the costs of the war have far outweighed any benefits that might be achieved. Unfortunately, this recognition has come a few years too late for the people of Iraq, but there’s at least time for US voters to cast their verdict in November.

With Blair on the way out, the British military leadership seems to be in open revolt. Following the admission last week by the army chief that the Iraq war had made terrorism worse, there’s this

The invasion of Iraq prevented British forces from helping to secure Afghanistan much sooner and has left a dangerous vacuum in the country for four years, the commander who has led the attack against the Taliban made clear yesterday.

Brigadier Ed Butler, commander of 3 Para battlegroup just returned from southern Afghanistan, said the delay in deploying Nato troops after the overthrow of the Taliban in 2002 meant British soldiers faced a much tougher task now.

Asked whether the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath had led to Britain and the US taking their eye off the ball, Brig Butler said the question was “probably best answered by politicians”.

Not original, but significant by virtue of the source.

The only reading I can make of this is that the British top brass are desperate for a quick withdrawal from Iraq, as soon as Blair goes, and are applying as much pressure as possible (even at the cost of violating conventions about military comment on political issues) to ensure that Gordon Brown does not succumb to threats or blandishments from Washington.

Update Brigadier Butler claims he was misquoted