Big News In 2007

I was a little surprised at the results of the reader poll about the biggest event in 2007. The vote split a lot of ways. Two votes for “Race for the White House.” Two votes for “Virginia Tech Massacre.” Two votes for “Anna Nicole Dies.” Two votes for “Real Estate Market Tanks.” Three votes for “Petraeus Takes Over In Iraq” and three votes for “Something else.” No votes for, among other candidates, Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize.

I’m curious, what was the “something else?” I had intended Petraeus’ command in Iraq to represent the war there; perhaps that was not well understood. If you thought the biggest story was “The War,” maybe you didn’t see that choice in my selection of a particular event within the war. Or maybe you thought there was an event in the war that was more important that Petraeus taking charge of the theater of operations.

It could also be that the question itself is subject to multiple interpretations — does this mean the event that affects the most people? The event that earned the most attention by the media? When I wrote the question, I meant by it, “What event will we collectively look back on 2007 and remember?” You know, like 1969 was the moon landing, 1974 was the year Nixon resigned, 1975 was the year Elvis died (yes he did), 1980 was the year Reagan got elected, 1989 was the year the Berlin Wall fell. But just because that’s what I was thinking doesn’t mean that’s how you read it.

Either way, if you were one of the people who voted for “something else,” leave a note in the comments, please, and let us know what you thought I missed in framing the poll.

While I’m on the subject, I notice that votes have only been trickling in on the predictive poll for 2008. I think it’s entirely likely that Britney will “find Jesus” and become born again in a very public way, but so far there are three votes for nuclear power plants being approved and one vote for Favre’s retirement. So be it — these are your votes, not mine (I don’t vote in my own polls). It will be interesting this time next year to see if you all are any better at predicting things than me.

Finally, a blog note: I’ve upgraded (a little bit) my delegate tracker. A reminder — the totals include not only the anticipated pledged delegates resulting from elections, but also unelected but pledged delegates. That’s why the totals are different than the results of the Iowa caucuses and the Wyoming conventions. Note also that the delegates who were pledged to Joe Biden and Chris Dodd have been released and are now uncommitted. I’ll be removing their lines after the New Hampshire primary tomorrow night, unless there’s some good reason to keep them listed. I’m still figuring out how to set up the table in HTML, and I will tinker with it some more to make it look the way I want it to later tonight.