Noted statistician and detail-man, Rush Limbaugh, proudly points to his research into the 2000 presidential elections. Not only that, but there's a picture of him standing next to a map!

And what does he proclaim? That the number of square miles "won" by Bush was much more than that by Gore:

Square miles of the country won: Bush 2,427,000, Algore 580,000

But wait! Haven't we forgotten something? If you are going to count all that taiga and tundra in Alaska, why not also include the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of our Pacific territories? After all, they voted in the presidential election too. From the NOAA:

... the EEZ around American Samoa, Guam, Hawaii, the Northern Mariana Islands and other US possessions in the Pacific, [is] an area of nearly 1.5 million square miles.

Now, we're not sure how to allocate those 1.5 million square miles to Bush and Gore. We can't find the numbers (so far) - but we do know that Gore won Hawaii. As to the rest, the Northern Marianas Islands tilts Republican, but American Samoa is probably Democratic.

Did Bush "decisively" win in terms of area? If Gore did well with the outrigger demographic - which seems likely - then he bags 1.5 million square miles, which would put the totals at 2.4 million for Bush vs. 2.0 million for Gore. And there'd be much more plankton in Gore's territory. So there!

Here at uggabugga, we plan to see if there are other meaningful results from the 2000 election. We suspect that Bush comes out on top in the alligators-per-precinct category, and that you're more likely to find a copy of the Utne Reader in counties that Gore won. But much more work needs to be done in this critical area.

Whoops!

We just checked Rush's numbers again, and it appears that he's talking about the United States circa 1950 - that is, without Alaska and Hawaii. (But then, he's living in the past, so it's no surprise.) We should have paid attention when we read Limbaugh's "fact" that Bush won 29 states, and Gore won 19 (for a total of 48). Back then, the total area of the United States was about 3 million square miles. So correcting the numbers requires adding Alaska's 586,000 square miles to Bush's column, and assigning Hawaii's paltry 6,000 to Gore. The totals, for the 48 states, plus Alaska and Hawaii, and including the EEZ, are 3.0 million square miles for Bush, and 2.0 million for Gore.
posted by Quiddity at 8/14/2002 10:40:00 PM