Electoral Vote Predictor 2004.

[Vyce 0]

This just in...

 

BUSH IS LEADING IN PA!!!!

 

My source? Well, I polled three of my neighbors and two were voting for W. -- that's a 33 POINT LEAD!!!!!...

Hell, that's as good as the shit Tyler's been posting here.

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

Kerry's numbers were in a steady decline heading into the RNC. That really isn't even a debatable point at this time. Quite frankly, them getting progressively lower is more likely than them getting considerably better.

 

Agreed. Kerry had been declining for a while. However, he was STILL only EVEN as of the RNC; he was previously up ~6-10 before the slide (which, as Chris Bowers of MyDD points out, could very well be because of his inaccesssability to the media).

 

I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that Kerry benefitted from a negative press week for Bush (AWOL forgery stories weren't as promient than the actual AWOL notes stories) and pulled even in the useless 5-weeks-until-the-election polls. I doubt it's as much a sampling problem as it is just the tides of the election rising and falling for both candidates. None of us is delusional enough to think this election is going to be anything but razor's edge close, and these polls and their rhythmic back-and-forth trends just prove that.

[Guest MikeSC]

If it wasn't that no other poll seems to be close to SUSA's, I might agree.

-=Mike

[Guest TheLastBoyscout]

We won't really know how the election will go till the debates.

[Vern Gagne 0]

To an extent. However, i think enough undecided voters won't have their minds made up after the debates and go to the polls and vote based on what their feeling is that day.

[Kahran Ramsus 0]

Kerry 238, Bush 291

 

News from the Votemaster

 

Good news for George Bush, Ralph Nader, you, and me but no good news for John Kerry today. The good news for Bush is that he is now ahead by 1% in Florida , 48% to 47% and 1% in Pennsylvania , neither of which is statistically significant, of course. But this tiny shift in two key states puts him ahead in the electoral college again.

 

More good news for Bush is the Strategic Vision ® poll in Ohio. They have Bush ahead 52% to 40%. However, the Rasmussen 7-day tracking poll has Ohio as an exact tie at 47% each. To paraphrase Shakespeare: Something is rotten in the state of Ohio. Given the MoE of 3% these two results are not compatible. The Strategic Vision poll was taken Sept. 10-12 and the Rasmussen poll was taken Sept. 6-12, so the Strategic Vision poll is more recent, but such a large change in such a short time is unlikely. Nevertheless, since Strategic Vision is more recent, it goes into the map and the spreadsheet.

 

The good news for Nader is that the Florida Divisions of Elections is putting him on the ballot despite a court order not to do so. In the old days, when Mayor Daley stole elections for the Democrats, at least he did it by getting dead people to vote in the dark of night. The Republicans are a lot more brazen. I suspect we haven't heard the last of this story.

 

The good news for you is the site has a new feature today. Many people have asked me for cartograms. Well, not quite. Actually, nobody has asked me for cartograms. But many people have ask for warped and distorted maps of the U.S. showing the states in proportion to their electoral votes. But I knew what they meant. These things are called cartograms and are widely used to show how different states, countries, or regions differ on some variable, such as population, beef production, or CDs purchased. The problem was finding a blank cartogram and writing the software. Mike at www.kerryedwardslinks.com made me a blank cartogram. Then Eric Paulson of Viking Web Development. wrote the software to color in the cartogram. Thanks to both of you. If you like this feature, you might want to check out their respective websites. Today's cartogram is here and will be updated daily. The old ones will be archived just as the maps are. The EVs are not listed in the cartogram. For once, Montana is too small to put any useful information in it. Your homework assignment for tomorrow is to memorize all the EVs.

 

For me, the good news is a new poll in Oklahoma so the projected final results does not show Kerry winning there, an exceedingly unlikely occurence.

 

Thanks to your generous donations, I am running ads for the site again. The current ones are listed at the bottom of the Donations page. I am also now looking at college newspaper websites as a place to run more ads. I'll keep you informed and again, thank you very much!

[Justice 0]

The good news for Nader is that the Florida Divisions of Elections is putting him on the ballot despite a court order not to do so. In the old days, when Mayor Daley stole elections for the Democrats, at least he did it by getting dead people to vote in the dark of night. The Republicans are a lot more brazen. I suspect we haven't heard the last of this story.

 

No, this guy isn't biased...

 

I like how he STILL doesn't note the 10 point gain in NM but notes Ohio's huge gain. Plus he didn't note that WISCONSIN went to Bush today (Just outside the margin of error, too). That's something HUGE that he didn't comment on. If Kerry can't win there, he's gonna be hard-pressed to make up the votes somewhere else...

[Guest MikeSC]

Hey, if you call that site less than impartial, you're just a wingnut.

 

For BETTER --- and more --- polls, stick with realclearpolitics.com.

-=Mike

[Kahran Ramsus 0]

Kerry 238, Bush 296

 

News from the Votemaster

 

We had a quarter of a million visitors yesterday. Now that Bush is ahead, maybe the Republicans are showing up in droves to hear the good news :-) .

 

And the good news is continuing for Bush. A new poll from Survey USA in Nevada breaks the tie and he goes ahead 51% to 47% there. Nationally he picks up five more votes in the electoral college to bring his total to 296, 26 more than needed to win.

 

Rasmussen is now polling several of the battleground states every day and computing a rolling average over the previous 7 days or 14 days. I will include these in the spreadsheet when they are newer than what is already there. The rule for newer is the middle date of the the poll. For example, Strategic Vision ® did a poll of Ohio Sept. 10-12, a standard 3-day poll. The middle day was Sept. 11. When the middle day of the Rasmussen 7-day poll becomes Sept. 12, it will replace the Strategic Vision poll. In theory it should be averaged with the existing poll one day earlier, but that has a small practical objection. The state graphs have a symbol for Strategic Vision and a symbol for Rasmussen but no symbol for the average of the two, so rather then marking one day as "other" I will wait until the tracking poll is actually newer before putting it in. This decision has the effect of counting the standard 3-day polls half a day longer.

 

Senate news: A new poll by the Global Strategy group (D) in South Carolina shows the race for the Senate tightening there. Inez Tenenbaum now trails by only 3%, 44% to 41%. Although this is an open seat to replace retiring Democrat Fritz Hollings, South Carolina has become one of the most Republican states so she is facing an uphill struggle. On the other coast another woman is doing much better. Patty Murray has opened a 12% lead in her Senate race with George Nethercutt. She's the incumbent and will probably glide to an easy victory.

 

You can view the site statistics at www.electoral-vote.com/stats but you have to mentally add about 50% to the number of visits to compensate for caching. When someone fetches a page from the server, his or her Internet provider keeps a copy on its disk. If another user asks for the same page, it is served from the Internet provider's disk and no request is made to the server. As a consequence, the Webalizer stats (which are based on the logs written by the Apache server) miss many hits. I have other ways of measuring the actual traffic, but to a first approximation, adding 50% to the Webalizer numbers is pretty close.

 

With a quarter million readers a day, you can imagine what my mailbox looks like. It glows fiery red all day long. PLEASE, dear reader, could you pay attention to one DO and one DON'T. DO check to see if I have already answered your question before asking it. Read the Welcome message and the FAQ. Many questions are answered there. I don't know how many times I have explained what happens if the electoral college is tied. It is all explained there. Also, you can search the site using the Google box at the bottom of the page. Try 'referendum' (as in Colorado's) to see what has already been covered.

 

Second, the "news cycle" for this site is that of a morning newspaper. It is updated once a day, usually by 7 a.m. EDT. If new polls come out during the course of the day, I note them, but don't post them. Please DON'T tell me about them. I have MANY news sources and rarely miss one. If I do miss one the next day, please check the map or spreadsheet to make sure the polling date (not the release date) is newer than what I already have. Only if I genuinely missed a new poll, which I think is fairly rare, then send me a link to it. I do read all the mail, but due to the immense popularity of this site, I can't answer it all personally any more. It was taking 4-5 hours a day. Thank you for your understanding.

 

The big issue today is that we have new polls in FL, PA & WI that confirm a Bush lead in all three states. Nevada going to push isn't nearly as big a problem for Kerry as losing those three states.

[cabbageboy 0]

Well, this website is officially into fantasy land in my opinion. I could accept Bush with a small lead in FL or WI...but when they start having him winning NJ it's becoming insane. He may win Wisconsin, he may not (he barely lost the state in 2000). But NJ? He lost that state by 16% in 2000. Is this some sort of backlash against Kerry due to the queer gov. resigning?

 

Bear in mind this site has Bush up 12% in Ohio, when any reputable poll has it either tied or 3 points in either direction. Incidentally, it's looking like Kerry is going to have to take both PA and OH at this point to win. It's a given he'll be screwed in FL, so it's PA and OH or bust.

[Guest MikeSC]

Well, this website is officially into fantasy land in my opinion. I could accept Bush with a small lead in FL or WI...but when they start having him winning NJ it's becoming insane.

Those are the polls. The avg. for NJ is Kerry up by 1 --- which is just sad.

He may win Wisconsin, he may not (he barely lost the state in 2000).  But NJ?  He lost that state by 16% in 2000.  Is this some sort of backlash against Kerry due to the queer gov. resigning?

Has he resigned? And, this is a backlash against a rather inept and weak candidate.

Bear in mind this site has Bush up 12% in Ohio, when any reputable poll has it either tied or 3 points in either direction. 

Is Gallup "reputable"? Because they have the lead at 9.

Incidentally, it's looking like Kerry is going to have to take both PA and OH at this point to win.  It's a given he'll be screwed in FL, so it's PA and OH or bust.

Are you still holding onto the "Bush stole FL" bullshit?

 

And, yeah, Kerry is presently royally fucked --- since he's trailing in PA, too.

-=Mike

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Gallup leans conservative. I wouldn't be suprised up by 3 or even 5, but nothing over 7.

[Justice 0]

Gallup leans conservative. I wouldn't be suprised up by 3 or even 5, but nothing over 7.

And Zogby leans Liberal, but I don't see anyone complaining about outlier-ish low numbers Bush tends to get with them...

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

Zogby's outlier Bush numbers are primarily due to odd methodology. For example, anything other than "very good/good" is considered negative job numbers.

[Justice 0]

Zogby's outlier Bush numbers are primarily due to odd methodology. For example, anything other than "very good/good" is considered negative job numbers.

Yeah, I know. I guess I'm just sorta bitchy because I'm in all out attack mode after that whole 9/11 thread crap. :\

[teke184 0]

Bush is now up by 2% in Minnesota, 48% to 46%, with 6% undecided.

 

This is a Gallup poll and is based on likely voters.

[Kahran Ramsus 0]

Well, this website is officially into fantasy land in my opinion. I could accept Bush with a small lead in FL or WI...but when they start having him winning NJ it's becoming insane. He may win Wisconsin, he may not (he barely lost the state in 2000). But NJ? He lost that state by 16% in 2000. Is this some sort of backlash against Kerry due to the queer gov. resigning?

 

The site doesn't do the polls, it just collects them.

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

Zogby explains why Gallup's polls are such horrible outliers --- and probably will be for the rest of this election.

 

Two new polls came out immediately after mine (as of this writing) by the nation's leading weekly news magazines. Both Time's 52% to 41% lead among likely voters and Newsweek's 54% to 43% lead among registered voters give the President a healthy 11 point lead. I have not yet been able to get the details of Time's methodology but I have checked out Newsweek's poll. Their sample of registered voters includes 38% Republican, 31% Democrat and 31% Independent voters. If we look at the three last Presidential elections, the spread was 34% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 33% Independents (in 1992 with Ross Perot in the race); 39% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 27% Independents in 1996; and 39% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 26% Independents in 2000. While party identification can indeed change within the electorate, there is no evidence anywhere to suggest that Democrats will only represent 31% of the total vote this year. In fact, other competitors have gone in the opposite direction. The Los Angeles Times released a poll in June of this year with 38% Democrats and only 25% Republicans. And Gallup's party identification figures have been all over the place.

 

This is no small consideration. Given the fact that each candidate receives anywhere between eight in ten and nine in ten support from voters in his own party, any change in party identification trades point for point in the candidate's total support. My polls use a party weight of 39% Democrat, 35% Republican and 26% Independent. Thus in examining the Newsweek poll, add three points for Mr. Bush because of the percentage of Republicans in their poll, then add another 8% for Mr. Bush for the reduction in Democrats. It is not hard to see how we move from my two-point lead to their eleven-point lead for the President.

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

Rasmussen confirmed what SUSA found in Ohio; state is tied at 46 apiece.

[Gert T 0]

Ohio is going to Bush, just a lot closer than in 2000.

[Justice 0]

Rasmussen confirmed what SUSA found in Ohio; state is tied at 46 apiece.

Rasmussen has Bush up 3, actually, judging from the site.

[Guest MikeSC]

Rasmussen confirmed what SUSA found in Ohio; state is tied at 46 apiece.

Rasmussen has Bush up 3, actually, judging from the site.

That poll is rigged.

 

The ones showing it tied aren't.

 

Isn't that obvious yet?

-=Mike

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

Result was one day of polling, not the "tracking" result, in effect. However, even 3 is much closer than your Gallup outliers.

[Guest MikeSC]

Result was one day of polling, not the "tracking" result, in effect. However, even 3 is much closer than your Gallup outliers.

The avg margin is about 6.

-=Mike

[SuperJerk 0]

This reminds me of how they tell you not to weigh yourself every day if you're on a diet.

[BX 0]

You'll just make yourself crazy.

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

It helps the average when Gallup's polls are so much in favor of Bush.

[Vern Gagne 0]

Of course Zogby has no political bias in their polls.

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

...he just showed you why Gallup's numbers are bad. Read the article.

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America 0]

ARG POLLS AMERICA!~

 

Interesting notes from a Democratic perspective:

 

-- Kerry leads in the electoral college (270-253), but Bush leads in the popular vote (47%-46%)

 

-- Kerry leads Florida, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Minnesota.

 

-- The following states are within 2 points: CO, FL, IA, MN, NV, NH, OH, OR, PA, WV, WI