Electoral Vote Predictor 2004

[Smoker29]

Somebody mentioned this in a thread a while back and I've been watching it ever since.

http://www.electoral-vote.com/

This thing is all over the place, but as of today:

Kerry 247 Bush 285

[akip]

Originally posted by Smoker29
This thing is all over the place, but as of today:

Kerry 247 Bush 285

yeah, yesterday kerry was winning.

but you're right--it's fun to watch.

[Homsar]

Whoa, DC is 78% Kerry and 6% Nader? Seem weird?

[dcXhc]

Originally posted by Homsar
Whoa, DC is 78% Kerry and 6% Nader? Seem weird?

The only weird thing is that Bush might actually get 10% of the vote in DC.

[AngelV]

Originally posted by Homsar
Whoa, DC is 78% Kerry and 6% Nader? Seem weird?

I take it you've never been to DC. Those numbers seem fairly accurate. DC is a solidly Dem city with the Green Party a distant second.

Though this morning I did see a Bush-Cheney '04 sign in front of a house in (the People's Republic of) Takoma Park.

[keyst2891]

Originally posted by Homsar
Whoa, DC is 78% Kerry and 6% Nader? Seem weird?

nope... How many of the stuffy Republicans in DC are actually registered to vote in DC??? I can't imagine too many. They are registered in the local areas they are from.

[noonan]

Originally posted by Smoker29
Somebody mentioned this in a thread a while back and I've been watching it ever since.

http://www.electoral-vote.com/

This thing is all over the place, but as of today:

Kerry 247 Bush 285

It is fun to watch and "what if?" but keep in mind that 90+% of the fluctuations you're seeing are sampling error and the remainder is poll bias. The forecasting he does based on how undecideds might break is interesting.

[keyst2891]

It would be interesting to show the electoral voting map at each extreme of the margin of error.

Taking the error to the extreme for Kerry, then to the extreme for Bush. I wonder how different the maps would be.

[dcXhc]

Originally posted by noonan
It is fun to watch and "what if?" but keep in mind that 90+% of the fluctuations you're seeing are sampling error and the remainder is poll bias. The forecasting he does based on how undecideds might break is interesting.

You can throw away most of the polls from Rasmussen and Survey USA, as they are automated (i.e., "Press 1 if you are voting for George Bush. Press 2 for John Kerry.....), so they have no idea whether they are polling a six-year old or a real live registered voter. The results of both those pollsters tend to favor Bush.

[Homsar]

I have been to DC, but I just thought it was weird to see all those Kerry supporters clustered in DC while the states immediately around it were either way.

[the happy prole]

Originally posted by dcXhc


You can throw away most of the polls from Rasmussen and Survey USA, as they are automated (i.e., "Press 1 if you are voting for George Bush. Press 2 for John Kerry.....), so they have no idea whether they are polling a six-year old or a real live registered voter. The results of both those pollsters tend to favor Bush.

So you're saying six year-olds and other people who don't know what the hell they're doing tend to vote for Bush? I agree. :p

[Marlowe]

Here (http://geekmedia.org/tradesports/) is another really good resource. Some of you may have heard of Tradesports, which is a futures market where you can speculate on politics, sports, etc. The website linked here takes the individual state-by-state futures markets traded on Tradesport and compiles an electoral map out of it. The bad things about polls are that they're backward looking (ie, reporting slice-in-time data from one or more than one day ago), whereas this is forward-looking since the spot-prices are constantly changing as events take place.

[dcXhc]

For even more family fun, check out the interactive electoral college map from the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/politics/2004_ELECTIONGUIDE_GRAPHIC/).

It even lets you split the electoral college votes in Maine, Nebraska, and Colorado.

Registration required.