Elections!

Electing the United States House of Representatives

On November 2nd, 2010 we were all anxious to head to the voting polls and elect our newest members of the House of Representatives. There were 435 seats available and 50 states to choose from. Obviously by now we all know that the Republican party dominated in the election. But let's take a closer look at the statistics of it all. 

Results of the Election

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_2010

Red represents either Republican hold or Republican gain and blue represents the same for the Democratic party. Even without any percentages or numerical justification, we can clearly see that the Republican party has pretty much complete control in the House of Representatives vote.

Statistics

Previous to the election, democrats held 256 seats while republicans only held 179 seats. However, during the most recent mid-term election, The republican won 242 seats, leaving the democrats with only 192 seats.

How Does This Relate Class?

This relates to class because it deals with different political parties and political ideologies. We explored which kinds of people are more likely to vote for which parties, what beliefs people of a certain political party have, etc.

Questions to Think About:

* What political party would you most likely consider yourself to be a part of?

* How do you feel about the turnout of the election?

For more detailed information concerning the election, you can visit:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/02/election-results-2010-live_n_777429.html

Dirty Campaigning: Can't We All Just Get Along?

What is Dirty Campaining?

 "Trying to win an advantage by referring to negative aspects of an opponent or of a policy rather than emphasizing one's own positive attributes or preferred policies." -Wikipedia

Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_campaigning

You may be seeing dirty campaigning more than you realize. Have you ever seen something like this?

What Now?
The only pondering thought lurking now, is whether or not dirty campaigning is truly effective.

 

I think that dirty campaigning is something that our candidates tend to use in order to make voters lean in their favor. Especially in the current campaign ads for the November 2nd, 2010 election, we can really see that political ads have become nothing but dirty commercials attempting to attack an opponent in an ignorant and incompetent way.

What Do I Think?

I, myself personally think that dirty campaigning shows complete unprofessionalism. Why would our citizens want to vote for someone that would do anything they could to demoralize someone else. I think the word I may be looking for is SELFISH.  I personally would not want to vote for someone who would put others down to get what they want. How can we sure that the person will not do something to debase us in the future? With a person like that, you can never be sure. So I ask you, would you rather vote for a politcal candidate who uses political ad campaigning to his/her own advantage in a positive way, or someone who uses their ads to anothers disadvantage in an amatuer-like way?
Want to Know More?

http://thepostsd.com/2010/10/27/will-dirty-campaigning-change-your-vote/