dKos Poll: Second Choice

Okay - we get very little movement on the front runners every month, but I am curious after reading some of the comments in the FP diary this morning, who is your all second choice.  Say your first bows out tomorrow for what ever reason or Gore never gets in the race, who would you support?

Personally I would love to see our election done with instant runoff voting, as i think that would change the dynamic of the country greatly (not as much as publicly financed elections, but still would have a nice impact).

So take the poll and then make your case in the comments for your second choice candidate.  Please keep the comments positive, as we get enough sniping in the other diaries.

•  Although my real choice isn't on either poll

  Run, Al, Run!

  The Music Room.

  by madhaus on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:33:05 PM PDT

  •  Si. Gore first, Edwards, second. n/t

    by CJB on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 02:20:26 PM PDT

•  Has to be Edwards...

  though I wouldn't object to Obama.

  Edwards is just progressive..and truly seems to care and engage.

  by Morgan Sandlin on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:33:46 PM PDT

  •  Edwards is your second choice?

    or first?

    by zenbowl on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:34:44 PM PDT

    •  Second..I answered honestly.

      I'm a Richardson supporter.

      Seriously though, I could support Edwards or Obama with enthusiasm..easily.

      by Morgan Sandlin on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:36:41 PM PDT

      •  What is it that makes you support Richardson?

        This isn't a sarcastic or snarky question, I really want to know.

        Does he have a health care policy yet?  I like his positions on Iraq and energy...

        by GTPinNJ on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:40:29 PM PDT

        •  Yes he does..it' on his campaign site..

          Richardson website

          Richardson will take risks (medical marijuana) and has the diplomacy skills needed right now.

          by Morgan Sandlin on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:52:54 PM PDT

          •  Good answers

            We really do have an abundance of great candidates.

            by JeremiahFP on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:59:38 PM PDT

•  NFC for me

  Obama is my #1.  I'm OK with Dodd or Hillary for my #2.  No clear favorite.

  by zenbowl on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:35:26 PM PDT

  •  Other way around for me. NFC #1, Obama 2.

    by Tracker on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 01:02:37 PM PDT

•  In many ways I am still NFC

  but right now, gun to head, I am Dodd and Edwards #2.

  by ETinKC on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:35:33 PM PDT

•  This is an interesting poll,

  but ultimately, it won't give us a whole lot of info without knowing who are both the first and second choices of everyone.  

  If there is a way to do instant runoff polling here, I think that would be good.  I'd like to see who would be the first to get a majority.

  Obviously, I suspect it would be Edwards, but Kossacks could surprise.

  by GTPinNJ on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:38:03 PM PDT

  •  Most of the Edwards supporters here...

    Prefer Edwards in the #2 spot.  

    Also as Secretary of State.

    by snout on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:39:22 PM PDT

    •  By that,

      I assume that you mean that Al Gore is the first choice of most of the Edwards supporters?

      Perhaps...but I have seen a lot of commenters indicate that they have now committed to sticking with Edwards even if Gore jumps into the race.  

      by GTPinNJ on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:43:00 PM PDT

      •  No, Edwards is their #1 support. Their

        ideal ticket is John Edwards for president with John Edwards as vice president to balance the ticket.

        by DemocraticLuntz on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:52:29 PM PDT

        •  Ah. I get it.

          My snark detector is not working properly today...

          by GTPinNJ on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 01:11:04 PM PDT

    •  I'm an Edwards supporter and my

      2nd choice is Dodd

      by 123Mary123 on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 01:00:53 PM PDT

      •  Me too. n/t

        by GTPinNJ on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 01:10:39 PM PDT

        •  Ditto n/t

          by SecondComing on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 01:21:00 PM PDT

  •  I think there are some places you can set one up,

    but I was curious the resuts here

    by ETinKC on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:43:03 PM PDT

•  Obama #1, Edwards #2. n/t

  by snout on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:38:10 PM PDT

  •  I reverse it

    But either one would be great for the country.

    by JeremiahFP on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:59:05 PM PDT

  •  Edwards #1 Obama #2

    John Edwards #1 - His experience as one of the best trial lawyers in the country [I'm a retired headhunter for lawyers, don't argue with me on this one] is preparation for negotiating some very tough stuff coming up.

    Barack Obama #2 - His leadership and inspirational talents, if devoted to instilling a sense of purpose and pride as we recover from the hijacking we have endured, will lay the groundwork for a Presidency for which he will be unquestionable be prepared.

    This was a really tough call.  I'm from Illinois and Barack is a favorite son - more so than any politician I've encountered going back to Everett McKinley Dirksen and Adlai E. Stevenson.

    Experience + Hope = Change and Recovery  

    by llbear on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 01:02:12 PM PDT

•  Currently it's Obama.

  Tomorrow he might be my first choice and my second may be Clinton.

  Richardson used to be one of my favorites, but I've cooled on him lately.

  by brownsox on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:39:00 PM PDT

•  Nah

  Okay - we get very little movement on the front runners every month

  I wouldn't say that.

  September was one of Edwards' best months in the history of the straw poll.  With an 18 point lead over the second place finisher, it matched his largest lead in the history of the poll.

  That's some upward movement.

  by flubber on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 12:54:27 PM PDT

  •  But thaat could be because of shutting off the

    results early.  I know this sampling is much smaller, but look at Dodd in second place right now.

    by ETinKC on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 01:05:40 PM PDT

    •  Yeah, I was waiting to vote for Dodd

      But didn't know the straw poll would be today, and didn't find out about it until it was too late. Serves me right for actually trying to do my job at work. :-)

      by dconrad on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 02:28:06 PM PDT

•  1st choice is Edwards

  Bill Richardson is another candidate who won't take corporate money, unlike Clinton and Obama.I do however think Clinton would make an excellent Sec. of State.

  by holley6705 on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 01:09:41 PM PDT

•  Nice idea...

  Maybe some of the site tech people could put together an Instant Runoff Voting type of poll, where you vote for the candidates in order of preference.  That way people can truly vote their conscience rather than taking into account 'electability'.

  Dailykos could lead the way on IRV. Anyone know if this is doable?  

  by cometman on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 01:21:23 PM PDT

•  You need an "anyone but Hilliary" choice

  to get a real understanding of the sentiment

  by tiponeill on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 01:26:59 PM PDT

•  Edwards. Kucinich #1. nt

  by lettuce kucinich on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 01:51:16 PM PDT

•  Used to be Obama

  but his appeal to me has sunk like a rock in the last month or two.

  Biden, Edwards and Richardson aren't acceptable.

  I guess that leaves Dodd, who's a pretty decent senator.

  by jxg on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 01:59:10 PM PDT

•  Edwards for President

  Obama for VP.  My second choice for VP was Richardson but not after that HRC/LOGO debate performance.  Clueless. And Hillary scares me, bigtime...  For those who want to know how America could have gone so low so quickly...Bill Clinton set the stage for it.  As Alan Greenspan says:  Bill Clinton is the best Republican we have.  Wake up Democrats... Hillary is not the best candidate for President no matter how often she tells you so.  Even Bush wants the Democrats to choose Hillary, so she will lose to Giuliani and the corporate pillaging can continue unabated.

  by visible on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 02:18:11 PM PDT

•  Range Voting = simpler and better than IRV

  Instant Runoff Voting survives on persistent public myth and misinformation. The truth is that better and simpler methods than IRV exist - and IRV is lethal to third parties, because voting for a non-major-party candidate is statistically more likely to hurt you than help you. The world needs Range Voting or its simplified form of Approval Voting. Here's why.

  Consider this hypothetical election using IRV.

  #voters - their vote
  10   G > C > P > M
  3     C > G > P > M
  5     C > P > M > G
  6     M > P > C > G
  4     P > M > C > G

  C is the clear Condorcet (condor-SAY) winner, meaning he is preferred by a landslide majority over all his individual rivals. C is preferred over G, P, and M all by an 18-10 margin.

  But... M wins, even though he also has fewer first-place votes (6 voters) than C with 8.

  Also:

   1. P is preferred to M by 22 of the 28 voters, yet he's the first candidate eliminated.
   2. G also has more first-place votes (10) than M's 6.
   3. So M either loses pairwise to, or has fewer first-place votes than (or both) every rival, but still IRV elects M.

  The example above was intended to be "realistic," perhaps somewhat resembling the situation in the (now evolving) 2008 US presidential race with G="Green", M=McCain, C=Edwards, and P=Paul. But if you are willing to drop realism and construct artificial election scenarios, then this demonstrates how to construct arbitrarily-severe election examples of this kind: http://rangevoting.org/...

  IRV sounds initially appealing, because people picture a weak third party candidate who loses in the first round. The myth is that this takes away the fear of voting for your sincere favorite candidate, and gives third parties a fair chance to grow; but if that candidate or his party ever grows to be a contender, he is statistically more likely to hurt the party closest to his own than to win. It doesn't matter how unlikely you imagine the above scenario to be - it's still more likely than the odds "Green" will win. And so third party voters will learn to strategically vote for their favorite major-party candidate, because it will more often be a good strategy than a bad one. You don't have to buy my math; you can look at decades of IRV usage in Australia's house, and Ireland's presidency. Both use IRV, and have been two-party dominated. So much for the myths that IRV allows you to "vote your hopes, not your fears", and eliminates spoilers. Now you can see why the Libertarian Reform Caucus calls IRV a "bullet in the foot" for third parties, and why Australian political analysts at AustralianPolitics.com say that IRV "promotes a two-party system to the detriment of minor parties and independents."  Ironically, most of the many countries in the world who use a genuine delayed runoff have broken free of duopoly.  Yet third parties just worked to help replace that system with IRV in Oakland, CA.  This can be chalked up to a result of massive public ignorance, largely perpetuated by groups such as FairVote and the League of Women Voters (http://RangeVoting.org/Irvtalk.html).

  Electoral reform advocates (especially third parties!) should be demanding Range Voting - score all the candidates and elect the one with the highest average. Its simplified form, Approval Voting, is probably the most feasible to implement. It simply uses ordinary ballots, but allows us to vote for as many candidates as we like. Consider the benefits:

  • More resistant to strategy: As we see above, IRV strategically "forces" voters not to top-rank their sincere favorite; the general strategy with IRV is to top-rank your favorite of the front-runners (typically the major party candidates). But with Range Voting and Approval Voting, this never happens. The worst a voter may do is exaggerate his sincere scores to the max and min scores allowed. But with Range Voting, a vote for your favorite candidate can never hurt you, or the candidate, whereas with IRV it can hurt both. -- http://RangeVoting.org/...
  • The previous fact helps to explain why IRV results in two-party duopoly, just like plurality voting. -- http://RangeVoting.org/...
  • Spoiler free: Whereas IRV merely reduces spoilers. -- http://rangevoting.org/...
  • Decreases spoiled ballots: Since voting for more than one candidate is permissible, the number of invalid ballots experimentally goes down with Range and Approval Voting. But IRV typically results in a seven fold increase in spoiled ballots when we started using IRV. -- http://rangevoting.org/...
  • Simpler to use: In 2006, the Center for Range Voting conducted an exit poll experiment in Beaumont, TX.  There were 5 gubernatorial candidates, and voters were allowed to rate them 0-10 (or "abstain"). They all seemed to find the process as simple and intuitive. There were no complaints of complexity, or any questions for clarification. And the fact that spoilage rates go down with Range Voting, but up with IRV, shows that there is some objective sense in which RV is simpler. Voters literally make fewer mistakes.
  • Simpler to implement/tabulate: A simple one-round summation tells us the results, whereas IRV's potential for multiple rounds can cause long delays before the final results are determined. A positive side-effect of Range Voting's simplicity is that it makes the necessary transition to manual counting, and away from voting machines, more feasible. And Range Voting can be conducted on all standard voting machines in the interim. Whereas IRV's complexity leads most communities implementing it to purchase expensive and fraud-conducive (electronic!) voting machines, the fraudster's best friend. -- http://RangeVoting.org/...
  • Greater voter satisfaction: Using extensive computer modeling of elections, a Princeton math Ph.D. named Warren D. Smith has shown that these methods lead to better average satisfaction with election results, surpassing the alternatives by a good margin. But IRV turns out to be the second worst of the commonly proposed alternatives. This mean that all voters will benefit from the adoption of either of these superior voting methods, regardless of political stripe. -- http://RangeVoting.org/...
  • Reduces the probability of ties: While they are not extremely common, they do happen. IRV statistically increases them, but Range Voting decreases them. -- http://RangeVoting.org/...
  • In case you're going to say, "But IRV has more momentum than Range Voting", you should consider this. --  http://RangeVoting.org/...
  • In case you wonder why groups like FairVote and the League of Women Voters support IRV, maybe you should consider all the misleading and even patently false claims they've made about it. -- http://RangeVoting.org/...

  Get the facts at RangeVoting.org and ApprovalVoting.org

  And if you're in the market for a better system of proportional representation (http://RangeVoting.org/PropRep.html) than the antiquated STV system, check out Reweighted Range Voting and Asset Voting.

  http://RangeVoting.org/...
  http://RangeVoting.org/...

  Clay Shentrup
  San Francisco, CA
  415.240.1973
  [e-mail]

  by weltschmerz on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 03:27:01 PM PDT

•  My choices are, in order...

  Hillary, Hillary, Hillary, Hillary... etc. I haven't even thought about who I would vote for, if Hillary weren't in the race. None of the other candidates really appeal to me. I like Clark... but he isn't running. Maybe Dodd or Obama. However, my support for any other candidate would be very shallow. No clue, really.

  by Hairy Legs on Mon Sep 24, 2007 at 04:12:03 PM PDT