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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."
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.
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
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!
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.
> 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.
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).
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