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Try electoral-vote.com. The maintainer does a great job following current polls state-by-state with electoral vote totals and has promised to keep the site current tomorrow as results come in. Sometimes the site has been flaky under heavy loads, in which case you should try electoral-vote3.com, electoral-vote4.com as well.

as mentioned in an earlier /. article today: electoral-vote.com

In today's news he says he is going to be updating the site in realtime tomorrow. (If the link is down, add a 2, 3, 4, etc to the end of the domain name for mirrors)

air america radio will have special coverage and with their 30-something stations and the live stream, you should be able to get some good out of them.

also, http://www.electoral-vote.com/ is going to have ongoing coverage all night also.

of course all the usual suspects like cnn and the other general papers and new sources should have pretty up to date info as well.

Dammit slashdot!! You killed everyone's favorite election predictor site! Oh well, http://www.slate.com/ has a good map, similar to http://www.electoral-vote.com/. Let's see if MSN's servers are any better.

You might want to follow these tips outlined by electoral-vote:

Find out today where your polling place is by calling your county clerk or checking mypollingplace.com

Alternatively, call 1-866-MYVOTE1 to find your polling place.

Check the hours the polls are open with your city or county clerk.

Print the League of Women Voters' card in English or Spanish and put it in your wallet or purse.

Bring a government-issued picture ID like a driver's license or passport when you vote. Some states require it but if there are problems, you will certainly need it. If you have a cell phone, take it to call for help if need be.

As you enter the polls, note if there is an Election Protection person outside the polling place.

If you are not listed as a registered voter, try to register on the spot. Some states allow that. Otherwise, talk to the Election Protection person if there is one or call 1-866-OUR-VOTE for instructions. If neither of these helps, ask for a provisional ballot, but you will need a picture ID to get one.

According to Democracy Now, voting tricks abound in states like Florida and Ohio, so try to arm yourself (against both sides) if you live in one of these states.

You are assuming he cooked the books, however he has been runing the site for quite some time and has documented his procedures using all the available polls.

Today shows a spike for Kerry because the crucial states are so close and a 1% change (or fluctuation in the margin of error) can cause a HUGE change in the electorial tallies. The latest round of polls went into that standard system and my minisule 1% margins gave Kerry a huge electorial jump.

Maybe it's real, or maybe it's a margin-of-error effect from the polls. It is extremely close and can flip either way on tiny margins.

If you look at the map from the day before yesterday he had Kerry 243 Bush 280. Neither result is a solid predition.

This does several things that helps Kerry.

I don't see how. If anything inflating the Kerry figures would probably tip things in Bush's favor. A ton of Kerry supporters aren't voting for Kerry so much as they are voting against Bush, and they simply wouldn't bother going voting if inflated results indicated they didn't need to.

Go hit realclearpolitics.com
If you look at their map you'll see the only discrepancy is that realclearpolitics has Hawaii for Kerry and electorial-vote has Hawaii for Bush. The difference is that realclearpolitics has left many states white. That keeps their results stable, but it doesn't actually make any effort at predict the outcome. Electorial-vote colors each state based on so much as a 1% result in the polls. That means it sees wild swings in electorial results, swings that can easily be caused by margin of error in the polls.

Because of our dumb-ass electorial college system and "winner-takes-all" system it can easily turn into a landslide for either Kerry or for Bush, all within the margin of error.

this asshat has CA as only 'leaning Kerry' (Obviously to ensure the Pro Kerry forces in CA get frightened to the polls.)

That's a stupid allegation. He's not making up numbers. He has documented all of the polls and his proceedures for handling those polls. If he tried to "make up numbers" it would be trivial for you to prove it.

The Feild poll from Oct 27 shows a 7% lead for Kerry. That is less than 10% thus it is light blue. Light blue (or light red) is very unlikely to flip. It is that states that are merely outlined in light blue or light red - the ones with the white centers - that are under 5% and have high chance of flipping. And those states can still throw it either way.

-

Nope, I'm in Oregon and we need all the Kerry votes we can get. I did, however, vote for a Socialist and a Libertarian for a couple state offices that were sure things for the incumbent Democrat. Voting your hopes is an art, and unless you're in CA, TX, or MA (along with some other out-of-play states), vote Bush the hell out. Anyone who lives in FL, OH, or MI especially, don't live in an idealistic dream land. A vote for a 3rd (or 4th or 5th) party candidate there IS a vote for Bush. Don't screw this up like swing-state Nader voters did in 2000. Go to http://www.electoral-vote.com/. If yr state is not a deep red or blue, VOTE KERRY. If you live in a state marked "Strong Bush" or "Strong Kerry" go ahead and vote for the candidate that you WANT in office, and not necessarily the one that has any shot in actually getting elected.

He has taken in all the polls, selected the ones he likes best

Not true. He was well documented the automated process for what polls get used and how they are used.

Today has shown a sudden spike in the Kerry direction, that that is because there are several big states that have razor-thin margins. When the latest polls in two or three states go from 1% Bush to 1% Kerry it makes a huge swing in the results. Well, todays round of polls show a tiny shift in critical states. Maybe it's a polling anomoly, maybe it's real, but he mechanically used his establised rulles and plugged in the latest polls.

Check the historical graph. It often shows a Bush lead, and it clearly shows just how wild the swings can be on a day to day basis. The Electorial College and "winner takes all" system gives wild swings and incredible sensitivity to polling randomness and the the fine details of the established rules for dealing with multiple conflicting polls.

He has done his best at designing an unbiased system for turning all of the latest polls into taht map. With these tight margins the next round of polls can easily flip it into a Bush or Kerry landslide. I'm personally glad today happens to show a Kerry spike, but I know it's within the margin of error of the polls and may or may not be real.

-

If you would actually read the site you might notice that he's fully explained how he does things. He uses the most recent poll, which lately is often Zogby. He's admitted that this presents a problem and created an averaged map:

http://www.electoral-vote.com/fin/nov01z.html

Also in the current map he is averaging Zogby and Gallup for Ohio and a few other swing states.

Your comments about Zogby dissenting in 2000 are odd. Remember that Gore actually won the popular vote. Zogby was one of only 2 pollsters to predict a Gore popular vote win. If anything this proves that Zogby uses better techniques.

Yes, Tanenbaum has admitted he is partisan, but his site takes every effort to show both sides. At least give him some respect for the effort he's made.

-matt

The site.
The backup site.
The backup backup site.
The backup*3 site.
The backup*4 site.
The backup*5site.
The backup*6 site.
The backup*7 site.

I wonder if Tanenbaum's curriculum covers much data recovery?

My name is Andrew Tanenbaum. I am one of the 7 million U.S. citizens living abroad. I am a professor of computer science at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Excellent selective use of information! You are ready to be a spin doctor!

The links you are pointing to are ones which use a slightly different algorithm that averaged polls over a multi-day period. When the site switched to using that algorithm, he got a lot of complaints from people, and so he switched back. This happened long before today, and if you look through the site history, Bush has been leading more than Kerry with the original algorithm. These choices of algorithms were made well in advance of today's result.

If you go back and look at the Oct. 29 versions of the site, you'll find Kerry losing using the original algorithm and Kerry winning with the averaging algorithm. The original algorithm was what was on the front page. So I guess a couple of days ago he was manipulating things for Bush then? ;-)

Excellent selective use of information! You are ready to be a spin doctor!

The links you are pointing to are ones which use a slightly different algorithm that averaged polls over a multi-day period. When the site switched to using that algorithm, he got a lot of complaints from people, and so he switched back. This happened long before today, and if you look through the site history, Bush has been leading more than Kerry with the original algorithm. These choices of algorithms were made well in advance of today's result.

If you go back and look at the Oct. 29 versions of the site, you'll find Kerry losing using the original algorithm and Kerry winning with the averaging algorithm. The original algorithm was what was on the front page. So I guess a couple of days ago he was manipulating things for Bush then? ;-)

• Federal Review has Bush 296 Kerry 242
• Daily Thoughts has Bush 259 Kerry 238 with 41 tossup electors in 4 states
• Tradesports has Bush 259 Kerry 252 with Ohio and Iowa tossups (and Bush slightly ahead)

I have seen 100 electoral vote swings over the last few months.

Make sure to check out his predicted map using an average of the last few polls in each state:

http://www.electoral-vote.com/fin/nov01z.html

(mirrors:)
http://www.electoral-vote2.com/fin/nov01z.html
http://www.electoral-vote3.com/fin/nov01z.html
http://www.electoral-vote4.com/fin/nov01z.html

Makes a slight difference, going from Kerry 298 to Bush 287, eh?

He used to link to the predicted map, and explain it... he even used to default to the average rather than last poll. Now all plugs are off, the Kool-Aid needs to be doled out in huge portions. Does that smell like desperation?

I haven't had any problem loading it, and check out the: http://www.electoral-vote.com/info/graph.html, that's quite a surge Kerry is showing recently.

Regarding all the polls, in the past days I found this page pretty interesting. These guys collect all the polls that come out and provide a convenient map including different prediction methods for the final result.

The poll map there, of course, is not showing you much more than how close things actually are (this story from yesterday is an interesting read) -- but at least it gives you a good overview of what is going on.

Actually electoral-vote.com now has Kerry ahead 283 to 246 as of 10/31.

HST feed

Electoral Vote feed

weird news

Distilled and actually interesting NPR

News from the world

This guy has the same sort of daily predictions. Funny his prediction for today is the opposite that Stanford predicts. I sent him an excel file demonstrating the use of error estimates and probabilities to get a better prediction, but haven't heard back. Though even with that the prediction would still be in Kerry's favor, so I'm not sure what all Stanford is and isn't taking into account. He apparently gets a lot of crap in his email from opponents.

I've got plenty of criticism for them- problem is most of the things I can think to criticize them on (like their ties to corporate money, their lack of respect for individual rights, their downright bigotry on pregnancy and birth, and large government intruding into our lives), Bush is actually worse on. Which is why if I find time to vote today, My vote will go to Kerry- but I'm not promising that I'll find time to vote today, and it could just as easily flip-flop to either Bush or Kerry winning Oregon by more than 10%- in which case Peroutka will get my vote.

I'm willing to bet a lot of the "left leaning liberals" on slashdot are similar- and will be voting third party for Badnarik or Peroutka if their state isn't a "swing state".

Haha, so true. Considering that it is Maryland which tends to vote democratic, what do you think their OPINION will be?

We've already got one. His name is President Bush...

Nope- fails on both counts. He fails at being a social conservative because he has no self control and spent half his life under the influence of various and sundry illegitimate mind altering drugs. He's failed at true social conservativism by championing an unjust war, being the governor who killed more prisoners than any in the history of the United States, and funding abortions of relatives and past girlfriends. He fails at being a fiscal liberal because like all neos his fiscal policy is not his, it's dicated by the corporations in the back pulling on the puppet strings, and many of those corporations are exactly the type of huge agribusiness that wants to take the family farm away. No, Bush is neither the social conservative he wants you to think he is, nor is he the fiscal liberal many think he is.

and, well, he's probably going to win.

Also nope- mathematically he's doomed at least by the 30 day straight line regression (do not trust link past October 19th- when it will change with the date).

...a Democratic pundit claimed that Bush had no hope of winning New Jersey. ... Paula Zahn did not challenge his assertion.

Polls are guesswork at best; I suspect that the pundit fully believed the statement. The polls all point to a Kerry win. Here's a handy graph of the results. Where exactly is the bias in letting a potentially overoptimistic statement about polling slide. I sure hope there are more interesting things to cover than one pundits opinion on how a state will vote. If a Republican leaning pundit where to opine that Bush has Ohio sewn up, I'd be equally willing to let that slide as it's a reasonable interpretation given trends over the last few months, even if the results are still within the margin of error.

...a Democratic pundit claimed that Bush had no hope of winning New Jersey. ... Paula Zahn did not challenge his assertion.

Polls are guesswork at best; I suspect that the pundit fully believed the statement. The polls all point to a Kerry win. Here's a handy graph of the results. Where exactly is the bias in letting a potentially overoptimistic statement about polling slide. I sure hope there are more interesting things to cover than one pundits opinion on how a state will vote. If a Republican leaning pundit where to opine that Bush has Ohio sewn up, I'd be equally willing to let that slide as it's a reasonable interpretation given trends over the last few months, even if the results are still within the margin of error.

www.electoral-vote.com is showing Kerry with 51% and Bush with 38% in New Jersey. That data is also consistent with the Dem/Rep split the state saw in 2000. Their source is Eagleton-Rutgers from Oct. 17th. To me 13% is a pretty commanding lead. I'd have to say that Bush has no hope of winning New Jersey based on the poll data I'm seeing.

Actually, the original poster is correct, it's the house as well as the senate.

From http://www.electoral-vote.com/info/electoral-colle ge.html The table link has the actual ratio of people per electoral vote. Wyoming has 1 per 165,101, California 1 per 616,924.

Many criticisms have been leveled at this 18th Century system. First, why have electoral votes at all? Why not just elect the president by popular vote? The reason this system has never changed is simple: politics. States with many buffalo and few people, like Wyoming, benefit from it and are not keen on changing it. Since every state gets at least three electors, low-population states have proportionally far more political power than they would have in a direct election system. The number of voters per elector is about four times smaller in the three-elector states than in the most-populous states, as shown in this table http://www.electoral-vote.com/info/states.html. The fact that nearly all the low-population states are heavily Republican adds to the difficulties of changing the system. Direct election of the president would eliminate the current bias in favor of the Republicans.

Actually, the original poster is correct, it's the house as well as the senate.

From http://www.electoral-vote.com/info/electoral-colle ge.html The table link has the actual ratio of people per electoral vote. Wyoming has 1 per 165,101, California 1 per 616,924.

Many criticisms have been leveled at this 18th Century system. First, why have electoral votes at all? Why not just elect the president by popular vote? The reason this system has never changed is simple: politics. States with many buffalo and few people, like Wyoming, benefit from it and are not keen on changing it. Since every state gets at least three electors, low-population states have proportionally far more political power than they would have in a direct election system. The number of voters per elector is about four times smaller in the three-elector states than in the most-populous states, as shown in this table http://www.electoral-vote.com/info/states.html. The fact that nearly all the low-population states are heavily Republican adds to the difficulties of changing the system. Direct election of the president would eliminate the current bias in favor of the Republicans.

The thing is, they're normalizing based on past election turn out

I wish that was always true. In this page they say that Gallup is normalizing for 40% Republican. The problem with using 40% is that in the last three elections, Republicans were 34%, 34%, and 35% of voters.

2) How is one supposed to rise from zero to 15% if one cannot be heard?


It's worse than you think. When I submitted a story to politics.slashdot.org that Badnarik may be the secret spoiler in this election and I base this on information available at a really good website on the 2004 presidential election---electoral-vote.com---the story was rejected. It is not as if politics.slashdot.org gets many political news submissions, but you wonder about the editorial policy when good information is rejected.

I just submitted this story along with this image. Its an high resolution version (independent from salon), much improved using frame interpolation. It shows something smaller then a deck of cards. Why the big wire is another thing though. The radio microphones used on stage have bigger wires then your usual headphone becouse of the wear and tear with the amount of movement they get. Wear and tear doesn`t mix well with... sweat. (ask google about something called a "sweat-out" one day, when you are not at work...)

Also electoral-vote mentions that the group organizing the presidential debate confirmed one of the agreed rules was that bush was not to be filmed from the back.

I only checked electoral-vote.com to see if I screwed up calling this SOAP webservice, I started blaming the reversal in the numbers compared to yesterday on SOAP, I guess it doesn`t suck as much as I think it does.

It's not just the south, it's the midwest as well. I had this ongoing argument with an ex-girlfriend about why the midwest would vote predominantly pro-Bush in 2000, and the death tax was the #1 issue, I thought. Looking at predictions, it would appear to be the same this year.

--trb

To whoever modded me down as troll, you exemplify exactly what the liberal media does - squash all those who disagree with their viewpoint. There are many others who share my views. Just take a look at the electoral vote map. Except for the liberal coasts, the rest of the country and Alaska is voting conservative.

One person one vote is the only system that makes any sense. Any other system is biased due to arbitrary rules such as, early states tended to be smaller (thus more senators per area), some states have very few people and get way more votes for that--beyond reason. I can understand the two senators, but three times the votes for president! That is not democratic.

I think you're right. This is the only system that I can see that stops the candidates from pandering to the wills of a few swing states, and instead focus on what is best for the country.

Unfortunately, this will never happen since it would require a constitutional ammendment. The current system favors republican candidates (they tend to do much better in the less populous states), so they will never vote to change the system. Even if you could get the republicans in congress to approve the change, none of the small states would vote to ratify the change.

If Congress wanted to keep the electoral college but make it fairer, there is a simple (but unlikely) solution: increase the size of the House of Representatives. There is nothing in the constitution mandating a particular size except that each member must represent at least 30,000 people (which puts an upper limit on the House of about 10,000 members). In fact, the House has been expanded repeatedly in the past as the nation grew. The most recent expansion was in 1911, when the U.S. population was about 93 million, so a representative had 212,000 constituents. With the current population of 293 million, a representative has 674,000 constituents. To bring this number back to its 1911 value, the House should be expanded to 1370 members. Since a state's electoral vote is equal to its congressional representation, with 1370 House members, the effect of the 100 senators would be much smaller and the electoral votes would be almost proportional to population. To increase the size of the House, Congress would merely have to pass a law; the states would not be involved at all. (This last paragraph was wantonly plagiarized from Electoral-Vote.com)

What's bemusing to a European eye is that it seems to be the places which are most likely to be devastated by global warming that are most likely to vote for Bush.

What's also interesting is that those least likely to be the victim of a terrorist attack are most likely to vote for Bush. That is, the best predictor of being a victim of a terrorist attack is population density, and this is also the best predictor of voting for Kerry. At the moment, Kerry is leading in Washington, DC at 78-11. That's an impressive 67 point lead. (Nader, at 9%, is only 2 points behind Bush.) Similar numbers for NYC.

It's been pointed out before that states receiving comparatively less and paying more for federal benefits are more likely to be in favor of them.

I don't know, I had just been thinking about this when I came across the above post. Some explanations are simple but I think there's gotta be another variable behind this somewhere.

There is a flip-side to that. The current electoral college gives far too much benefit to the small states. Each 1 million voters in New York count for 1.6 electoral votes, while each 1 million voters in Wyoming counts for 6 electoral votes. That's almost 4x more.

This is having substantial impact on national politics. Take a look at the current electoral poll statistics. The average "solid Kerry" state has about 16 electoral votes and 9.24 million people. The average "solid Bush" state has 8.125 electoral votes and 4.04 million people. If you do the math, that comes out to 2.01 votes per million people for strong Bush states, but only 1.73 electoral votes per million people for strong Kerry states.

We're going to have to come to terms with the fact that we're a polarized country, with only two major political parties. Right now, the electoral college doesn't just protect the rights of small states, but rather allows the small states to push their own agenda at the expense of everyone else. The concerns of smaller areas and rural populations seems to dominate the political debate, while simultaniously creating an atmosphere of anti-intellectualism. Isn't it interesting how, in an election about terrorism, that the people who actually got attacked (those in New York and DC), and those who are most likely to get attacked (major cities like Los Angels), favor a different person than those in rural and suburban America? Isn't it ironic that it is the latter that is having the loudest voice about the matter?

I'm one of those- I'd give Badnarik a 50-50 chance based on recent polls of gaining my vote (I don't want Bush to win, regardless, and I want Badnarik more than Kerry, but I'm in Oregon where things are so polarized that what color the state is depends on what city you polled).

If we elect the President by a simple plurality (or majority) then Presidential candidates will simply spend huge amounts of money in a few population dense markets. Your vote won't count unless you live in the North East, Los Angeles, and a few other places. And as a side effect the views of rural America won't be represented at all, they might as well not even vote. So if disenfranchising 40% or more of the population is your goal, by all means eleminate the Electoral College.

North Dakota looks kinda cool!

I like North Dakota. I drove through it once. :)

You are obviously a biased democrat. I see that you are maligning Katherine Harris, among others.

Katherine Harris's determinations during the 2000 election were the correct interpretation of the law. She did nothing other than apply the law exactly as it was written, saying that a vote is a legal vote only if it occurs via the procedure established by the legislature, to which the US Constitution grants the plenary power for determining the process for selecting the states electors, which need not even be a public vote.

If you recall, her views were upheld by the lower court's democratic judges, and were only overturned by the Florida Supreme Court (whose decisions were vacated by SCOTUS and exposed as nonsensical). When the issue went to the US Supreme Court, three of the justices above were prepared to overrule SCOFL on this point and reinstate her original position, but the per curium opinion resolved the case on the equal protection issue without addressing whether her interpretation of the statute was correct. It's kind of unfortunate that SCOFL tried to completely take over the electoral process with their stupid standardless statewide manual recount, because otherwise, Harris could have been proven correct in her application of the law.

I believe that the Florida Supreme Court's ruling that Harris abused her discretion by following the law as written is one of the worst examples I have ever seen of judicial activism for partisan purposes. There was NO basis in law whatsoever for their actions and what SCOFL did was truly disgusting partisan legislating from the bench to try to steal an election.

Oh, and Bush wins even without Florida. Though I believe the electoral college futures market is the best predictor. They say Bush will win Florida. While Rassmussen has it as a tossup.

This is one of those beliefs that I refer to as "crapthink". It's one of those things that's stated over and over and over again without being examined until people actually believe it, even though it is total crap. If you look at the one of the electoral vote counting sites, say www.electoral-vote.com you can see how electoral votes are distributed throughout the United States. Now, ignoring the whole Red/Blue thing look at states such as Texas, with 34 electoral votes versus states such as Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. So you have eight smaller states that between them have 34 electoral votes, and you have one large state, Texas, which has 34 electoral votes. Let's assume that all of these states are swing states, are you as a candidate going to spend your resources campaigning in eight states to get 34 electoral votes, or are you going to spend your resources in Texas to get 34 electoral votes? If you're a smart candidate you're going to marshall your resources in Texas and not spend your time fucking around in a bunch of flyover states in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Right now the way the system is set up George Bush has no incentive to go to California, why should be, the state's 55 electoral votes are going to go to John Kerry. Similarly John Kerry has no incentive to go to Texas, why should he, when Bush gets all 34 votes? Similarly in states that are strongly for one party, such as Illinois or New York, which historically go Democratic, there is less incentive for candidate of that party to go to the state, why should they if they know that they're going to get all of those votes. There's no incentive for George Bush to spend any time campaigning in the small red states because he knows he's going to win, if you live in Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, North or South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma or Alaska, states which went for Bush by percentages greater than 20 percent in 2000 you're SOL, Bush knows that he can take you for granted, despite the supposed advantages that the electoral college system gives you.

In effect the electoral college encourages candidates to completely ignore many states either because they can take them for granted or because they have no chance of winning any votes there. This is exactly the same criticism that is made of a direct popular vote.

The electoral college was one of the necessary evils like the three-fifths compromise that was necessary to create the Constitution, it's not necessary any more.

Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004
Election Projection - 2004 Edition

Bush will win a second term, but his popularity will decline steadily, due to an increasingly Vietnam-like Iraq and an increasingly bleak economic scene.

His low popularity will limit his ability to enact his conservative agenda, and with a little luck, the Republicans will implode, leading to a Democratic landslide in 2008.

They can't poll cell phones. It's illegal to use any automated dialing system to call a cell phone, or any other phone where the callee will have to pay for the call. (If a telemarketer calls your cell phone, press charges!)

That's not why the Gallup polls are screwed up, though. The Gallup polls are screwed up because they normalize for a population that is 40% Republican and 33% Democrat. Considering that the percentages were the opposite in the last two elections, this seems like a pretty big assumption on Gallup's part.

More detail on both the cell phone issue and Gallup's strange assumptions can be found in the september 18th writeup at electoral-vote.com.

Not all the polls managed to get within the margin of error.

As I have learned since I started paying attention to electoral-vote.com, most polls are BS. For example, two different polls recently conducted in Wisconsin show Kerry getting 50% and 38% of the vote. The polls don't even have overlapping margins of error. Therefore, at least one of them is simply dead wrong. Similar polls have been popping up all over the map, even from "trusted" sources like Gallup. If it's so easy for polls to be so wrong, why should we trust any of them?

Only if you're looking at the incredibly biased Gallup Poll. Electoral-Vote which uses the more scientific Zogby poll mainly, actually shows Kerry in the lead by 16 electoral votes as of September 22. (I checked yesterday- and Bush was ahead by about 20 votes yesterday). However, like I said, WAY more than 20 votes are still up for grabs- this could still be anybody's race.

Oh, and as for foreign policy blunders- it will be hard for Bush to top the blunder that Iraq has turned into. 15,000 dead so far between Iraq and US sides, more than three times the number killed in the 9-11 attack. So in addition to failing on winability and reaction, Iraq now also fails the Just War Theory Tests on Porportionality.

That might be because Kerry decided to run on his Vietnam service and his 15 positions on Iraq..

districts are gerrymandered

In a presidential district the only state that districts matter are ME an NB (total 10 EV).

the vote is amplified by the electoral colleges

As it is intended to be, we are a federal Republic not a direct democracy

and everyone has already accepted the result thanks to biased polls

The same polls had Kerry Winning two months ago? If kerry loses this its because he refused to define himself as anything other than a vietnam vet who would do "everything" "different" in Iraq (note the specifics he has given)..

Personally, I'm a fan of The Poor Man, Sadly, No!, and uggabugga. I hate Atrios, but at least he keeps you abreast of what's going on. For election coverage, there's Andrew S. Tannenbaum's electoral-vote.com and the polling report I have a whole list of `em. I'm not gonna give you all the links, that's what Google's for: World O'Crap, Matthew Yglesias, the All Spin Zone, Hullabaloo, Daily Kos, This Modern World, War Liberal. Democratic Veteran, The Al Franken web site, The Majority Report, Media Matters for America, TBOGG, democratic underground, hoffmania, and a few others...

electoral-vote.com

It's more than just the map, you know!