As if you needed an additional reason beyond health, longevity,
sex, etc, I set out to prove below that if you, yes
YOU as a liberal democrat, were to quit smoking, we would pick up as much as 1.32% of any election absolutely free.
Let's say there's 121 million regular voters in the US, and for sake of argument, let's split them into Republicans and Democrats based on the
2004 Presidential election "results."
Percentage wise this equals 51.24% vs. 48.76% Dems.
Now let's say every Dkos reader and every Dem takes my advice and quits smoking, while the Republicans maintain their 22.1% smoking rate.
Now let's also say smokers die 7 years younger (and I'm being generous here). So the average life expectancy of a non-smoker is 77 (59 voting years) and that of a smoker is 70 (52 voting years).
Now, if EVERY Dem stopped smoking we would have 59 million non-smoking voters but the Thugs would have 48.3 million non-smoking voters and 13.7 million smoking voters.
Dems: (59 million Dems * 59 voter years) = 3481 million Dem voter years.
(48.3 million Reps * 59 voter years) + (13.7 million smoking Reps * 52 voter years) = 3562 million Rep voter years.
In a statistical sense, once all Dems quit smoking and an equilibrium was reached:
Dems = 3481/7043 = 49.42% (compared to 48.76% before)
Reps = 3562/7043 = 50.58% (compared to 51.24% before)
or Dems pick up 1.32% of any race simply by not smoking, absolutley free.
Now let's see this play out in a real world scenario. Let's apply that percent difference to the 2000 FL election numbers, with 5.8 million votes cast, and Gore crushes Bush by 38,200 votes, butterfly ballots and Nader be damned.
In Ohio in 2004 it would've slimmed Bush's "official" vote tally margin from 119,000 to 44,000, possibly enough for Kerry to actual pursue a recount, exposing obvious fraud.
And here in Washington, where the Dem won the gubernatorial race only after a third, by hand recount, it wouldn't have been so close: try 36,000 votes instead of 129.
So there you have it smokers. Now is the time to pull the trigger. Best of luck and think of the children ... er ... Dems!