SeanAhern's Journal: Electoral Vote

For those of you who don't read pudge's journal, I recommend that you check out his latest entry. He has a fascinating link that I'd like you to know about.

In a nutshell, there is a site called the Electoral Vote Predictor which takes statewide polls and aggregates them into an overall assessment of where Bush and Kerry both sit in terms of the overall electoral vote.

The guy is an out-and-out Bush hater, but it doesn't appear to bias his analysis, which is fairly mathematical.

Some of the goodies on the page that make it interesting are an excellent summary map, an RSS feed, his raw data in excel format, and a graph of his electoral vote prediction history since late May, annotated with some important U.S. events.

Enjoy! (And give pudge a visit - one of the best reads on /.)

Missouri is a enigma

[SiliconJesus]

You'd think with them just passing the constitional amendment to thier state banning gay marriage, they'd be more pro-Bush with his 'Family Values' doctorine, but its on his site as pro-Kerry.

Synopsis. Kerry 307, Bush 231. Bush is carry the majority of states, but Kerry's grabbing most of the 20+ Electoral votes states (California - 55, New York - 31, Florida - 27, Illinois - 21, Pennsylvania - 21) vs Bush pulling only a one (Texas - 34).

Re:Missouri is a enigma

[stoolpigeon]

The same thing is going on with Arizona-- and that's why I think the site is interesting but not useful. Local papers here say Bush has an edge in AZ, the site shows AZ going to Kerry. Which is nuts. Not only does it not reflect polls but it completely ignores some well known facts about this state and its voting history.

I found the colors to be interesting but once I know one piece of information is way off, I don't trust the rest.

Error margins

[SeanAhern]

I think it's fair to say that the error margins of the various polls make a big difference to the effectiveness of any electoral vote prediction.

In the case of AZ, the site says that the state is currently leaning slightly toward Bush. You say the same thing, "an edge". The site previously said that it was going slightly toward Kerry, presumably. I believe all of these analyses are within the ~3-5 points of error margin for the polls. Which all basically says the same thing -- that AZ is a state which

Re:Error margins

[stoolpigeon]

When I looked at it yesterday it was AZ for Kerry- but the thing is, I don't care what a poll says- he's a long shot for this state. The voting history of the state should be factored in. The local politics type show on PBS here has the dems arguing he 'might' have a chance to take AZ but even they can't claim more-- because the situation has been so lopsided here. I'm not saying it's impossible but it is highly unlikely.

I find the whole poll thing to be questionable, especially after the last election