Daily Electoral Predictions

Robin Berjon writes " If you are both a political junkie and a statistics addict, I highly recommend Electoral Vote Predictor 2004, a site that gathers a collates polls taken in individual US states according to a well-documented method and uses that to generate a daily map and victory prediction, alongside a short and insightful analysis of the current trend. The site also includes a wealth of information for past maps, detailed tables, tools, links, the Senate elections, and much more. It also has a convenient RSS feed so you can get your daily fix."

Comments

We need popular votes to count!

[CompSurfer]

How I wish the US presidency was determined by popular vote and not some archaic electoral system.

Re:We need popular votes to count!

[Anonymous Coward]

You must live in a highly populated state. Those of us in less populous areas appreciate the two baseline electoral votes we get -- just like the big states!

Re:We need popular votes to count!

[Picass0]

If we went with a straight popular vote the President would be selected by 7 major metropolitan areas. The EC forces the President to be accountable to all 50 states.

As somebody in flyover country, I would rather not be forgotten.

Re:We need popular votes to count!

[Fortress]

> If we went with a straight popular vote the President would be
> selected by 7 major metropolitan areas.

Only if all 7 metro areas agreed, which is by no means a given. The alternative is that your "rural" vote counts more than one from a New Yorker. Is that democratic? One vote per person, no one "more equal" than anyone else, if you ask me.

Re:We need popular votes to count!

[swillden]

Well this is how the union was originaly intended.

Yep.

It was changed by supreme court judges writing law!

Nope. That's why I referred to the 16th and 17th amendments, which are the basic source of the massive expansion of the Federal government we've seen in the last hundred years.

The 16th amendment gave the Federal government the right to levy income taxes. Prior to that, it had to get most of its money from the states. Remember the old saw about the Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rule. Before the 16th amendment, the states had the gold.

The 17th amendment made the US Senate popularly elected. Originally, the senators were appointed by the states, under a process devised by the state legislatures. This means that the senators' direct masters were the state legislatures.

Prior to those two changes, the Federal government had to get most of its money from the states. That process worked like this: The US House and Senate would determine how much money they needed and pass a law requiring the states to pay it. The state legislatures then had to figure out how to come up with the money, i.e. raise state taxes. Politically painful. BUT, the US senators were beholden to the state legislatures and, of course, you can't make Federal law without the approval of the Senate.

See how beatifully the framers of the constitution arranged for the Federal government to be weak? No money == no power. Now, the states are dictated to by the Federal government, because that's where all of the money is.

We need to go back to states rights or we will meet our demise eventually.

Don't blame my ancestors... Utah was the only state that rejected both amendments (Connecticutt, Rhode Island and New Hampshire also rejected the 16th, but New Hampshire later recanted, Utah stood alone on the 17th).

Great site

[Oxy the moron]

I have been to this site several times before. And while I certainly think it is great from the standpoint that the information presented is (as far as I can tell) totally void of bias, the source of the information isn't quite so grand.

While polls certainly give a reasonable idea of how votes would fall, it's well-known that poll numbers can be fairly easily slanted.

All things considered, I enjoy reading it every morning.

Re:What about...

[Anonymous Coward]

NOTE: The only exception to the above statement is when your idiotic poltical candidate argues for selective recounts in the counties that he had the most support in.

Which happen to be the counties where the voting equipement is by far the most defective, which is odd, until you realize that the brother of the other candidate is governor - not to mention Black voters illegally and unjustly barred to vote "by mistake".

hen again, those selective recounts would not have gotten him enough votes to win anyways, so it is still a moot point.

but total recount would, but was infeasible, so the candidate with the most votes actually lost the elections. Which is a prime example of excellent democracy for the world. Not.

EC == vote fraud firewalls

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, EC has several effects, and one of them is the firewall effect that you mention. A corrupt machine (Chicago 1960 as you mention) can tilt just one state.

More than that, though. Consider a swing state that is very evenly contested. That's the kind of state where vote fraud is most valuable. But that's also a state where both parties have plenty of resources to bring out pollwatchers, media coverage, lawyers and judges.

In a state where Party X has all the resources and Party Y has few resources, Party X is gonna get the electoral votes from that state anyways, even in an honest election.
Imagine how much corruption there would be in areas like New York City which are dominated by one party, if the corruption in NYC could swing a national election.
All this doesn't apply as strongly to states like Illinois with a large urban machine that votes differently from the surrounding rural areas ... Daley's machine in Chicago could offset votes from downstate. I've lived in both downstate Illinois and in a Chicago suburb (a long time after 1960 though!) and they might as well be different states.