Presidential Election 2004
Bush vs. Kerry
There is no question that the Presidential Election in 2004 will be a major event in the history of Presidential Elections for the US. Since the last Presidential Election has taken place in 2000, the US has been impacted by several earth shattering events that have heightened the importance of a stable political system.
In March of 2000, the economy was moving at lightning speed. So fast the Stock Markets were trading at an all time high (Nasdaq > 5000 and the Dow Jones > 10,000). There seem to be no end in sight for the all-mighty economy and the activity that was spawned by such successful equity markets. By the end of 2000, the inevitable was happening, the good times and steadfastness of the economy came to an abrupt end. The Nasdaq and the Dow Jones had fallen to record lows. The so called “bubble” had burst and the economy was in a tailspin.
On September 11th, 2001, with the economy in a quandary and the US struggling to maintain cohesiveness, the US was impacted by a dreadful event. One of the World’s deadliest Terrorist groups launched an attack on the US and successfully flew 4 different Air Line Flights into various US targets. The net loss was an unbelievable 3,000+ lives and billions from an economic point of view. This event alone would end up being a defining moment for the American people and George W Bush, current US President.
The Bush administration had to react quickly and decisively in order to uncover the nature of the attack and the attackers. The Bush administration became the focal point of all civilized countries as it made its mission clear for the duration of it’s time in office. During the first State of the Union address post September 11th, George W. Bush made it very clear that the US was launching a “War on Terror” and would work to seek and destroy any and all evil as it relates to Worldwide Terrorism. The Bush Administration along with various intelligence groups identified several key Terrorist groups (one of them was the Al Qaida Terrorist Group) that were identified in the September 11th attacks and set the precedence that any and all countries that harbored terrorism would be punished and dealt with by the US.
In February of 2002, The Bush Administration launched an organized military attack on the country of Afghanistan after it determined that Afghanistan was linked to the Al –Qaida Terrorist group. Major military efforts have been ceased at this point, however, the US launches various military events as necessary in Afghanistan in order to continue managing Terrorist activity.
In March of 2003, The Bush Administration launched its second military exercise and its largest to date by moving into the country of Iraq and successfully capturing the capital of Iraq, Baghdad, with minimal loss of life. However, although the US was successful in its initial attack on Iraq and successful in capturing Saddam Hussein, the post Saddam era has been anything but easy for The Bush Administration. It seems that there exists strong bands of insurgent militants that do not favor the American occupation of Iraq and have been fortifying various strongholds against the US. These insurgents’ militants have been responsible for hundreds of casualties of US Military personnel thus far in this post Saddam battle. At this point in time, The Bush Administration is under tremendous scrutiny and pressure for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. This event alone could wind up shaping the battleground for the Presidential Election.
As it stands at this point in time, the Presidential race is in motion and the “heat is on”. The Presidential Elections are only 7 months away and the amount of press that this race is receiving is vast and comprehensive. George W. Bush is under tremendous pressure on all fronts and needs to maintain his cohesiveness and steadfastness in order to maintain positive inroads for the next Presidential election.
Currently, The Bush Administration has had to face on primary competitor for the Whitehouse in 2004, John Kerry. John Kerry is a democrat from Massachusetts
The goal of the project is to predict the possible winner of the presidential election in the US November of 2004. In order to be as accurate as possible, Raj and I have uncovered as much about the election as possible. Examples of the information needed is: who will be participating in the election, what factors could affect the result, and how to place judgement on these factors.
The landscape for the upcoming Presidential Election is as follows:
Republican Candidate:
George W. Bush (incumbent)
Democratic Candidates:
John Kerry (Democratic Primary Winner)
Other Democratic Candidates:
Howard Dean
Dick Gephardt
Bob Graham
Al Shapton
Joe Liberman
Dennis Kucinich
John Edwards
Lynnon LaRouche, Jr.
Barring any unforeseen events (entrance into race by Hillary Clinton, etc), the stage has been set for a showdown between President Bush and the Democratic Primary Winner, John Kerry in November 2004.
To determine what factors could affect the election, we categorized the significant events that the candidates and the Press were discussing. Additionally, the categories that Raj and I selected are common themes for most major newspapers and/or radio station discussions. The categories are as follows: Economy, Social, Foreign Policy and War on Terror. By all means, one could have added more categories; however, Raj and I felt that the categories that we choose were representative of the main concerns of most poll watching Americans.
Judging the importance of each factor is a crucial and difficult task that will directly affect our result. The election in 2004 is looking like it may be as close in actual results as the Presidential Race in 2000 proved to be. In 2000, the incumbent political party was the Democrats and the Democratic Presidential candidate was Al Gore (Vice President of Bill Clinton, President of the US from 1992 – 2000)). The Republican Party was represented by none other than George W. Bush, Republican Primary winner from Texas.
Historical data for comparison is unavailable, as this election is the first of its kind in Taiwan. However, we tried to judge each factor and element with the use of the five supporter groups and averaged every judgement made in order to increase our accuracy. The five individuals in the support groups are currently America, and they may not fully understand what the affects of the disasters in Taiwan have had on the current election. To eliminate this factor as much as possible each member considered all available news and information so all critical issues in Taiwan were incorporated.
To eliminate possible errors and assist us with our judgements, we used a 0.1 consistency ratio. If the ratio was above 0.1, the five-supporter groups were asked to reconsider each judgement and correct it until the ratio was equal to or less than 0.1.
There are currently two candidates participating in the 2004 Presidential Election. Each of them harbors the talent of becoming the next president of The United Sates. The candidates are George W. Bush and John Kerry, respectively. A brief description of each candidate is as follows.
Lain is the current President of the US and is a resident of the state of Texas. He is a member of the Republican Party.
He is the current Governor of Massachusetts. When he was the president of Taiwan province, he concentrated on the living issues of the people of Taiwan and in return won the respect of a majority of people. Since Song has decided to participate in the election by himself and has violated the decision of the KMT, he was ousted by the KMT and the party split.
This model applies ANP to predicting the possible winner of the 2004 presidential election. The election is currently very competitive in nature due to the various dynamic criteria being used in the analysis.
In the model, we used 5 different clusters to predict the winner of the election. Under each of the cluster, several sub-criteria have been used to evaluate the relative importance of them with each other.
Economy is playing a major role in the upcoming presidential election. With the record low interest rate and huge outsourcing of jobs to other countries, the job category has taken a high priority in this election. The economy criteria are sub-divided further in to Job, interest rate, outsourcing, productivity and taxes. Each of the alternatives is evaluated with the population cluster and as well as with the alternatives cluster under each of BOCR merits. Necessary feedback mechanisms have been put in place to get an accurate estimate. (See figure #1)
Figure #1
Social issues play major roles in the US Presidential elections, especially with growing number of older people in US. Medicare, Healthcare and Social Security are becoming more and more important to both the population and as well as the presidential candidates. In the model, this importance has been reflected with feedback mechanisms between the clusters for maximum accuracy. (See figure #2)
Figure #2
Foreign Policy is turning out to be a very critical portion of the election. From public opinion point of view, the current administration has not performed as well in this category. There is an opportunity for a competitor to take advantage of this scenario from The Bush Administration. Items for consideration include Financial Aid, Foreign Trade, Middle East Policy and the United Nations. These sub-criteria were judged as to their relative value according to each of the Alternative candidates as well as various members of the population (Farmers, Rural and Urban) (see figure #3)
Figure #4
The structure of the model is described by its clusters and elements, and by the connection between them. These connections indicate the flow of influence between the elements. In the case, every element in one cluster is connected with another element in another cluster with the same direction as the clusters connect.
The structure of the clusters is shown as Figure 5 (See Figure 5).
Figure #5
In making paired comparisons of the clusters and homogeneous elements, numbers are assigned by using the questionnaire scale built in the ANP. This compares the two alternatives with respect to an attribute. The numbers determine the degree that the alternative contributes to the attribute. (See Figure 6).
Figure #6
After entering all the judgements, we run the Unweighted Super Matrix (See figure 7), Weighted Super Matrix (See Figure 8), and Limit Matrix (See Figure 9), and get Priority(figure 6).
Figure #7
Figure #8
Figure #9
Discussion
As we can see from the results, George W. Bush is predicted to be the overall winner (51.4628% vs. 48.5372%). At this time, the poll that Raj and I sampled has the following results:
Bush: 44 %
Kerry 47
%
(Taken
from the CNN web site: Rasmussen Report, April 6, 2004)
However, there is a difference between the poll and our results. Not only are the percentages far different. We have in fact picked a different winner.
First, the error may have come from our methodology. Raj and I built the model with the thought that we captured all of the relevant high level topics involved in the Election for 2004. Due to the fact that we are living in unprecedented times, we are convinced that the nature of the polls will be inconsistent and the corresponding data produced by the polls inconsistent.
Additionally, the population sample that we placed value upon was the Urban, Farmer and Rural population. Typically, political polls take a sampling of these members of the population, but it is uncertain whether or not the data is consistent across the population.
Lastly, the poll may or may not be accurate. In fact, there are so many polls available in the US and each has different result.
In the end, Raj and I very much enjoyed the class and found the ANP process of making decisions to be valuable and applicable to most any important business decision. We look forward to reading more about Tom’s work in this area and are eager to utilize the decision-making skills we acquired from the class.
Thank you Tom and Rozann!
Regards,
Dan Bolena and Raj Ramamurthy
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