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Electoral-Vote.com Returns for 2006 Elections
Klaus writes "In the 2004 Presidential race, the website electoral-vote.com tracked individual state polls, providing a map of the changing political scene. The map, updated daily, was a phenomenal success. The site is back for the 2006 Congressional elections. It is providing descriptions of the top 40 House races, and all 33 Senate races, as well as valuable information for prospective voters." Remember, your vote counts. Make it out there on November 7th.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Well, lets hope that it returns by Nov 7th as it's down right now.
Didn't the author claim microkernels would prevail?
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
Why does it have Connecticut as "Strong Dem" if it shows Lieberman leading as an Independent, 49-41?
No, but generalized apathy helps no one.
What we really need to do is:
Hate W? Great, get out there and vote against his party!
Please, let's have sufficient turnout that, irrespective of the outcome, we don't have one side whining on, at great taxpayer expense, about how the other thugged the election.
Not that facts would dissuade anyone from exercising their First Ammendment right to complain, but facts make a great sound buffer.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
What exactly does this quote from the summary mean? What does one mean when one says that a election polling site "was a pehnomenal success"? I think that this an excellent site and visiting it many times each day during the 2004 election. In the end, the final prediction turned out wrong (no fault of the site, as it is an aggregate of all the polls which themselves were wrong). But this does raise the following question... what is the point of tracking polls and why do we political junkies savor them so? I'd be curious to see a survey on the the historical accuracy of polling, as it seems to me that Republicans consistently outperform (or alternately Dems underperform) their polled-predicted performance. The reasons for this could range anywhere from Republicans "stealing the vote" or emocrats just not being as motivated as they say there are, or even a biased polling system.
Heck, I'd even suggest that this obsession with tracking polls hurts the country, in the sense that it conditions the population toward and expected outcome, and when that outcome does not come (e.g. 2004) the losing side's rage is amplified and it forments conspiracy theories where there may be none. None of this helps us as a society. So I ask again - what does "success" mean in terms of polling?
There is only one poll that matters - and it occurs at the ballot box.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
It was impossible to predict the disaster that was Katherine Harris in Florida.
Yes, she's just a terrible person, forcing people to vote the way they did, not for Kerry. Or are you confusing 2004 with 2000, when she also didn't force anybody to vote in any particular way? I see.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
In case you don't know, the guy behind this website is Andy Tanenbaum, the Minix guy, the Linus Torvalds flameware guy, the Modern Operating System guy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Tanenbaum
"In 2004 Tanenbaum created electoral-vote.com, a popular web site analyzing opinion polls for the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, using them to project the outcome in the Electoral College."
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
They reported the exit polls that showed Kerry would win.
If you Google("exit polls" ukraine) you will see that there was a similar disparity between the exit polls and the official results in a Ukrainian election held around that same time.
There was almost universal agreement in the West that in the Ukrainian election the exit polls were correct and the official results were rigged. AFAIK, the last two national elections that Bush purportedly won (and now the recent election in Mexico) are the only ones where the exit poll results differed from the official results by statistically significant amounts and yet the official result was still accepted by our media almost without question.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Just more some interesting (and sometimes scary) information. Not actually that site, but found it on a link from that site is interesting site about senators approval ratings. One of those scary things is the infamous Ted "bridge to nowhere" "internet is series of tubes" Stevens has the 28th highest approval rating of the 100 senators :-(
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
Part of the compromise inherent in our representative democracy is that you're guaranteed some bathwater with your baby.
We end up voting not to maximize the baby, but minimzed the current and projected bathwater.
Perhaps the internet can eventually provide better feedback, as http://porkbusters.org/ would seem to indicate.
One hopes.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
For good or for ill - mostly for ill - the rules of the Congress are set up so that the majority party has a great deal of power.
Sadly, so long as the current leadership of Republican party remains in place, a vote for any Republican candidate for Congress is a vote for empowering neoconservatives and theocrats, even if the individual candidate is a reasonable human being.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I don't know, to me, anything not Constitutionally mandated is a bigger problem than pork. I think returning the national government to Constitutional legitimacy would mostly take care of the pork issue.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Yes, poll disparity does in fact indicate tampering. In fact, I know people personally who were prevented from voting by republican poll challengers. Considering that I live in a "blue state", I would have to say that it was very wide spread.
= org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial_s&hl=en&q=poll+disp arity+indicates+tampering&btnG=Google+Search
e =off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aof ficial_s&q=democrats+will+try+to+steal+the+electio n&btnG=Search
Google provides some good info on its first search page: http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls
I seem to recall seeing something on some conservative websites, where they were spreading a belief that the democrats were going to try and steal the election in 2004. Thus I believe that many poll challengers believed that they were combating fraud, while in fact they were contributing to it.
Google doesn't do so good on this one:
http://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&lr=&saf
The media was well aware that the election was being stolen. They had to be. There were in fact some stories posted on CNN's web site for a short period of time in regards to election problems... but does anyone ever remember seeing anything appear on any of their TV networks?
Also, despite electoral-vote.com's popularity and dozen or so mirror sites. They were ALL ddosed into oblivion on the night of the election. Or doesn't anyone recall that? What other reason would someone ddos a site containing nothing but collected poll information if not to suppress it.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
Not at all. First, budgets (including "handouts") are renewed, revised, and renegotiated every year (or perhaps in some states every n years?); the criminal code is not. Second, if what you suggest were the case, laws against cocksucking would have been stricken long ago, while economic policies would endure; in fact, anti-cocksucking laws remain on the books in many states, while economic policies come and go.
Third, anti-cocksucking laws mean that people get locked into cages and that police pry into people's personal affairs; economic policies mean that money gets shifted around. If offered a choice between a 10% paycut due to some economic policy, and the possibility of the police staking out my bedroom to arrest my girlfriend and I for unsanctioned sexual activity, I'll take the pay cut, thanks.
Simply removing a law is not a guarantee that liberty is increased. Were the Fifth Amendment to be repealed, for example, that would be "removing a law", and certainly removing that guff about "due process" would streamline the government.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
you can use the mirror sites www.electoral-vote2.com and www.electoral-vote3.com. He had problems in 2004 with people coordinating dos attacks against the site.
"The bass, the rock, the mic, the treble. I like my coffee black, just like my metal" - Mindless Self Indulgence
I'll assume that you weren't following the campaign closely, and aren't just trolling, but that is pretty much exactly wrong. The party bosses opposed Lamont from the start, not wanting to spend resources on Lieberman's "safe" seat. It was the grass roots that kept pushing for a candidate that represented the views of the people. The party only got behind him (to the extent that they have) reluctantly and well after he won the supposedly unwinable primary.
Again, I'll assume that you aren't just trolling, but this is plain nuts. First, it isn't a single issue race (which issue were you thinking, anyway? Reproductive rights? The war? Big pharma vs. the consumer? Lobbyist reform? Immigration? Ethics?). But regardless of which issue you pick, if you look at Lieberman's actions (and ignore is posturing) he's hardly a liberal, and not at all in step with the bulk of the voters (of all flavors) that he supposedly represents. Finally, is big problem is really that he long ago stopped having anything to do with his district, and became a "national politician" who only wanted them as a backdrop for his leap to higher office (which he has repeatedly failed to grasp).
They are, to put it bluntly, fed up with being used.
--MarkusQ
You can speculate all you want, or you can read the 77 page report from the company who did the exit polls.
Don't mind beng modded down - must be a Right-Winger or an extermely uninformed Mod who modded up the parent as Insightful. So all the reports of widespread voting irregularites and voter suppression in a state governed by the GW's brother were all just a teensy-weeensy co-ink-a-dince?
The election was stolen - the Diebold machines are a plot to steal yet another election.
The 2004 Ohio election results have recently been ordered to be held and not destroyed, since they might record yet another reversal of GW's fortunes.
Wiki has a nice summary of what passed for Democracy in "Kent State Ohio".
"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair" - George Washington
He has an interesting page at: http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2006/Info/senator -ratings.html
discussing that there really aren't any senators in the middle anymore.
From my analysis of his table "mean" column...
What I found interesting from the table is that the 55 Republicans are more beholden to their side (on avg, 10.47 away from 100% on all issues) than the 44 Democrats are to their side (on avg, 13.56 away from 100% on all issues).
Since that data is taken from all the same bills/amendments/etc, it is a meaningful difference.
Of course, as a registered Green, I knew this already: the Democratic party became "Republicans lite" and left me a long time ago...
You do get to choose between more than two people. The current problem is that if you choose anyone other than the top two candidates, you effectively remove a vote from the candidate you prefer of the top two.
The solution is a mechanism in which you can express your preference for the candidates you believe in and still express your preference for the guy who has a chance but isn't your favorite over the one other guy who has a chance who you really can't stand.
This mechanism is called Preferential Voting, Ranked Voting, or Instant-Runoff Voting (IRV). Where we to have had it in the 2000 presidential election, Nader supporters wouldn't have put Bush in office. If your politics are on the other pole, consider that if this were in place in 1992, Perot supporters wouldn't have put Clinton in office.
It's a no-brainer. Get involved.
No, the post is refering to the maintainer of electoral-vote.com, Dr. Andrew Tanenbaum, who in 1992 instigated a heated debate with Linus Torvlads on the comp.os.minix newsgroup about the relative merits of microkernels vs. monolithic kernels. Tanenbaum maintained that "LINUX is obsolete" and suggested that "people who want a **MODERN** "free" OS look around for a microkernel-based, portable OS, like maybe GNU or something like that." Of course, history tells us that millions of businesses and individuals disagree with his position.
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O'Reilly has a transcript:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/a
Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
This is rather idealistic and misses reality. In the United States, if a party has a President in office that President is regarded not just the leader of the country but also the political leader of the party. Given the President's power of the Bully pulpit, the influence on policy direction is extreme.
I'm not aware of any Republicans who believe in fiscal conservatism or free-market capitalism.
You can use polling data to allocate your limited resources strategically.
Sometimes this works too well and the winner will have spent just enough effort and money to get fifty percent of the vote plus epsilon, which since epsilon is within the margin of error will create bitter fights over the results.
Washington State originally excluded idiots from voting. The exact language was
"All idiots, insane persons, and persons convicted of infamous crime unless restored to their civil rights are excluded from the elective franchise."
This was amended in 1988 to refer to people declared legally incompetent instead of "idiots and insane persons".
Some people opposed the amendment because they like having a constitution that said idiots weren't allowed to vote.