Republicans Strategically Voting for Clinton

Life as a repubilcan has become exceedingly boring since the nomination of John McCain. Until democrats can choose between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, repubicans will just have to bid their time, or will they?

Since McCain's nomination there has been an increasing number of "strategic voters" on the part of republicans hoping to give Hillary Clinton an edge. Strategic because Senator Clinton is the last person a typical republican would vote for in a general election. Take this exert from a strategic voter on http://www.mymanmitt.com/, a blog recently renovated from supporting Mitt Romney to supporting the republican party;

"If I were in a state that had an open democratic primary, I would cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton. Let me tell you why.Between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama, I believe McCain is much more likely to beat Clinton. One of the main reasons is because the most effective attack available to the Democrats, in my opinion, is going to be to paint McCain as a warmonger. Clinton's ability to do this will be severely undercut by her vote to authorize the war in Iraq..."

More evidence that Hillary Clinton is gathering illigitamate strategic votes from Republicans can be found in the political futures market. Futures markets like intrade.com allow people bet on who they think will win the democratic nomination or the general election buy buying futures. My research published on http://strategicvoting.blogspot.com/ finds that the price of McCian's futures correlates positively with Clinton futures. A simple linear model shows that when Clinton's odds of winning the nomination go up, McCain's odds of winning the general election go up as well. The opposite is found to be true for Obama. The average poll on pollster.com shows little evidence to this conjecture, likely because polls or being manipulated by strategic voting.

All this evidance points to one obvious conclusion for the democratic party. If you want to beat McCain in November, don't let republican strategic voting trick you into nominating Hillary Clinton. If, however, you are not entirely convinced that a substancial number of Hillary votes are coming from strategic voters try this Google test at home. Google, strategic voting "vote for Clinton", and then Google, strategic voting "Vote for Obama". Compare the number of hits and draw your own conclusion. This google test is robust to a number of different permutations in search words.

Joseph Eugene McPhail