Swing states: Missouri

Show me a showdown

Who can win the state whose capture traditionally leads to the White House?

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Readers' comments




McCaint will win Missouri.Missouri is not a swing-state anymore. It was, in the past, but not anymore.Liberals win in a place like St. Louis, but the rest of the state is conservative.Missouri will go for McCain. The St. Louis area goes for McCain, but the rest of the state won't.Obama lost Missouri years ago.Ben

Will M

Heimdall - a smart reader would presumably recognise the information shown on the scale and mentioned in the text: that McCain only has a 7% lead. Moreover, the Economist has used this style for all kinds of bar charts for over a decade.

legal economist

to dihydrogenoxide,I agree with you, if the outcome is decided by less votes than in 2000, i fear for the greatest nation on earth.


Two points:1) Once again crisp language -- even if it's nonsensical -- is tactically useful. McCain will "defeat evil", will he? How, praytell? Answer: doesn't matter. By saying he will, he's changing minds (or at least opinions: who in their right mind thinks that Evil can actually be defeated?) This is a lesson Obama needs to learn and implement. Use crisp, snappy language and avoid (at all costs) lengthy nuanced high falutin' speechifyin'.2) Economist bar graphs are frequently misleading, generally in McCain's favor. In this case it looks like McCain has seven times the support of Obama. Please *graph all of the data* and not just a subset that reinforces editorial bias. Trust that your readers are smart enough to read a full-data graph and make up their own mind.


25/26....ok but the political mix in this election is vastly different from all of the past events. Whichever party wins will make an historical first. I wonder though, how more electorally polarized the US will become if this outcome is decided by significantly less votes than in 2000.


Will M,Oh, the Economist isn't the only publication that uses misleading charts. For long periods of time. And yes, the information is in the text. But...Something like 50% of the human neocortex is devoted to visual information acquisition. It is much more powerful that our ability to acquire textual information. It's not a matter of "smart", it's a matter of a hardwired brain.Is it so difficult to graph *all of the data* and let readers then make fine discriminations textually? It would be a much less misleading way to present information.Of course, that presumes an intent to minimize misleading information...



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