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.

Comments

Almost.

[A beautiful mind]

Remember, your vote counts.

Remember, the one who counts your vote counts.

Re:Almost.

[Somatic]

Remember, your vote counts.

Sure. Out of the entire country, I get to choose between TWO people, neither of whom represent me. Then this idiot will be in charge for the remainder of his term, and every time he does something I don't like (all the time), I'll be told it's my fault because "it's a democracy".

Then, I'll have to hope the election doesn't get hijacked.

A party system isn't democracy, it's crap. Washington was the only one who had it right: "It serves to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration....agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one....against another..."

Re:Almost.

[cheezedawg]

Here are some (admittedly biased) differences that I can think of. Of course, this is all speculation:

• The Iraq war: I agree that it is unlikely that Al Gore would have invaded Iraq. As a result, Saddam Hussein would still be in power supporting over a dozen terrorist organizations and trying to direct terrorist attacks against the US. He would still be developing illegal WMD in contravention of his UN obligations, likely without any UN inspectors in the country (we found over a dozen illegal weapons programs that the UN did not now about, and the only reason he let the inspectors back into Iraq in late 2002 was because we parked 150,000 troops at his doorstep), he would have been able to finance these weapons through the continuing corruption of the Oil-for-Food program. The citizens of Iraq would have no say in their destiny, and instead they would still be living under a brutal dictatorship, and Saddam would probably have killed another 100,000-200,000 of them (based on his 20 year history of killing almost 2 million people). On the brighter side, we wouldn't have lost almost 3,000 of our own soldiers fighting over there, we would have saved some money, and the country would be more stable than it appears right now.
  
• Libya wouldn't have voluntarily given up its hidden WMD programs.
  
• The seed of democracy wouldn't have spread into Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt leading to the most democratic elections these nations have ever seen.
  
• North Korea would have still been pretending to abide by the NPT and accepting international aid and support while secretly working on nuclear weapons and long range missiles. I can't imagine Al Gore confronting North Korea about this, let alone successfully organizing 5-party talks with North Korea like President Bush did.
  
• Iran might not have felt as much motivation to pursue a nuclear program, but its hard to say.
  
• It is very unlikely that Al Gore would have pushed through tax cuts in the face of the economic slowdown that started Q3 2000 and was exasperated by the Sept 11th terrorist attacks. These tax cuts have been responsible for one of the longest periods of economic expansion in decades. Instead, I imagine Gore would have kept the stifling tax rates of Bill Clintons presidency, trying to funnel money into his Social Security "lock box" and compounding our economic problems.
  
• Based on his stance on the environment, I bet Al Gore would have tried to implement the greenhouse gas targets found in the Kyoto protocol even though the US Senate defeated Kyoto by a vote of 95-0 during Bill Clinton's presidency. This would have caused us to have even higher energy prices and would have further restricted our economy.
  
• Many Europeans would probably like us more now, for whatever that is worth.

Slashdotted

[OmegaBlac]

Well, that was quick.

The site is back for the 2006 Congressional elections.

Well, lets hope that it returns by Nov 7th as it's down right now.

Re:In 2004

[Pink Tinkletini]

Didn't the author claim microkernels would prevail?

Success?

[Keebler71]

The map, updated daily, was a phenomenal success.

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.

Andrew S Tanenbaum

[Psionicist]

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."

Re:Andrew S Tanenbaum

[TheoMurpse]

From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in electoral-vote.com?
Summary: small poll for my new poll-tracking system
Message-ID:
Date: 7 Sep 06 20:57:08 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

Hello everybody out there using electoral-vote.com -

I'm doing a (free) poll-tracking system (just a hobby, won't be big and
professional like Gallop) for the US. This has been brewing since april,
and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people
like/dislike in electoral-vote.com, as my website resembles it somewhat
(same physical layout of the map (due to practical reasons) among other
things).

I've currently ported the poll-grepping code, and things seem to work.
This implies that I'll get something practical within a few days, and
I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions
are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)

                              Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)

PS. Yes - it's free of any electoral-vote.com code, and it has a multi-
threaded fs. It is NOT protable (uses Firefox XUL etc), and it probably
never will support anything other than Firefox, as that's all I have :-(.

Re:Think Happy Thoughts, Ignore Reality

[A beautiful mind]

Stigmatize treating Democracy as some kind of spectator sport

My favorite way to do that is to call those idiots and then explain what the original greek root of it, idiotes, meant for the greeks:

"Idiot" was originally used in ancient Greek city-states to refer to people who were overly concerned with their own self-interest and ignored the needs of the community. Declining to take part in public life, such as (semi-)democratic government of the polis (city state), such as the Athenian democracy, was considered dishonorable. "Idiots" were seen as having bad judgment in public and political matters.

Wrong

[MarkusQ]

It's tempting to think that all Democrats will vote how their Democrat masters tell them to, but Connecticut voters are more mature than that. I suspect at least a third of them will vote for Leiberman.

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.

Single issue candidates always do better in primaries than in general elections. Which is why Lamont will probably lose. Leiberman is more solidly liberal than Lamont, and Connecticut is a liberal state. Do the math.

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

Re:In 2004

[MojoRilla]

You can speculate all you want, or you can read the 77 page report from the company who did the exit polls.