Rather than clutter up unfutz every time I make a change in my Electoral College Projection, I've been posting them on Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, in the area he provides for user predictions. My latest is here.
Right now I've got DEM 259 / GOP 217 / PLAY 62. The "toss-up" states "in play" at the moment are FL-27, NV-5, OH-20 and WI-10. As a change of policy, I'm assigning toss-up states to whichever candidate is leading in the most recent poll. (This is for toss-ups only -- for other states I continue to assign them based on my evaluation of poll data and other tangible and intangible factors.) Given Bush's current lead in the Badger Poll in Wisconsin, and Kerry's lead in the ARG poll in Florida, that means that currently it projects out to be a 306 to 232 win for Kerry (270 votes in the Electoral College are needed to win).
You can take a look at the comments history to see exactly how things have progressed. I'll continue to post occasional reminders here, but there's also a permanent link in the "featured link" box in the sidebar on the right.
Update:
Here's a roundup of what other people are predicting, in no particular order:
Tradesports Kerry 260 - Bush 273 - Unassigned 5 (as of 6/25)
I've only included predictions where every state is accounted for, which means I dropped a couple which had New Hampshire tied, and quite a few (such as Rasmussen, Charlie Cook, LA Times, DC Political Report -- links can be found on the sidebar) which don't assign a large number of states because there are no polls there which have statistically significant leads. While I understand the reluctance to assign a state based on subjective analysis or on leads inside the margin of error, this election is going to be close, and such reticence is, it seems to me, just a barrier to understanding what's going on. I'd rather see an assignment based on some clearly-explicated rationale, even if subjectivity enters into it, than a lot of pusillanimous pussyfooting, to use Spiro Agnew's (or, rather, William Safire's) immortal words. (Perhaps if I do these round-ups in the future, I'll include those in which the toss-up or unassigned states would not make a difference in who wins and loses.)
Update: I changed my mind and decided not to be such a pill, and to include those sites I left off before. Here they are:
Rasmussen: Kerry 286 - Bush 247 - Unassigned 5 (as of 6/21)
Charlie Cook: Kerry 228 - Bush 211 - Unassigned 99 (as of 6/16)
2.004k.com: Kerry 297 - Bush 237 - Unassigned 4 (as of 6/23)
These 17 websites (18 if you include mine), whose methodologies differ significantly, tell us that:
The election is very close: No one is predicting a run-away at this point
Kerry is slightly ahead: Of the 13 that predict a winner (based on the current situation), only 4 give the win to Bush
Well, I guess we already knew that, didn't we?
Oh, one addiitonal thought, which is that I'm quite surprised, given what I thought was the conservative nature of the informal methodology I'm using, to find that I'm at the high end, awarding Kerry 306 votes, more than anyone else. Perhaps I'll have to take a look at what I'm doing and make revisions.
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Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
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Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
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the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
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