Seven days pass, and, lo and behold, my last survey of Electoral College tracking / prediction / projection / forecast / scoreboard / map sites is once again passe, so let's check in and see what the trackers have to say.
SITES
Larry Allen (9/6 - new) Kerry 254 - Bush 233 - ?? 51 (CO, FL, NV, WI) (new to survey)
(Note: Leip has started to provide compiled figures for the 500 most recently posted entries, which I'm now using in hopes that they will more accurately reflect the current status.)
(Note: The Newsweek map shows 13 swing states. I've derived the numbers here by looking at each state's latest poll, as provided by Newsweek, and assigning each state accordingly.)
Our Campaigns (9/12): Kerry 264 - Bush 274 (no change)
MEDIAN: Kerry 254 - Bush 259 (remainder: 25) (was: 254-263-21)
MODE: Kerry 254 - Bush 233 (remainder: 51) (was: 254-284)
Note: I've dropped the averages for "Sites with no ??," since they didn't seem to be very helpful. (If anyone misses them and wants them back, please let me know.)
"Mean" is what we usually call "average." All items are added up and divided by the number of items.
"Median" is the center point, the middle value in a list. There are as many values larger than the median as there are values that are smaller.
"Mode" is the number in a list which appears the most times.
RANGE Kerry max: 311 (327) Kerry min: 146 (161)
Bush max: 316 (300) Bush min: 166 (147)
SUMMARY
A very difficult week to categorize by the evidence of the electoral college trackers. On the one hand, Bush is clearly still slightly ahead at this point (20 sites have Bush winning, 30 winning or ahead, while only 14 show Kerry winning, 18 winning or ahead; and Bush is ahead on mean and median), but Kerry gained on more sites than he lost on, whereas Bush gained and lost equally. Bush was not able to consolidate his substantial gains of last week, and, in fact, lost a little ground, but Kerry also wasn't able to take advantage of that and stayed static or lost a little himself.
Overall, a week of stasis or minor losses for both candidates. Kerry sits at 249 to 254 electoral votes, while Bush is just slightly ahead of him with 253 to 259. (Both are below the 270 vote threshhold.) Whatever "convention bounce" Bush received seems to have played itself out.
UPDATES ETC.
Invariably, no matter how many times I check and recheck them, immediately after I post the survey a number of sites will update their numbers -- sometimes I suspect they're just waiting for me to publish before they make their changes -- so for a few days (assuming I have access to the web) I'll update figures, make corrections, and add any new sites that come to my attention. I'll note these changes here, and mark the entry for each altered site as well.
(9/13) One prediction site I wanted to note, but didn't want to include in the survey, is SqueezeVote.com, which issues a daily Electoral College prediction map based on the sales of George W. Bush and John Kerry squeeze dolls. As of 9/12, their numbers were 267-132-139 -- but the map is decidedly odd: the "swing states" include TX and GA!
(9/13) Alan Reifman has an interesting essay on whether pollsters should weigh their poll results for party i.d. here. There's already been some discussion about it over on MyDD.
Kenneth Quinnell (8/8): Kerry 303 - Bush 207 - ?? 28 (out of date)
NOTES
From each website I've taken the most comprehensive set of numbers offered, if possible without a "toss-up" category or other caveats, just Kerry versus Bush. Many of them differentiate between "solid" or "strong", "slightly" or "weak", and "leaning" or "barely" states, but I've combined them all together in order to present numbers which are as comparable as possible.
I encourage everyone to use the links and check each site for the specifics of that site's methodology and presentation.
My convention is that Kerry is listed first and Bush second, bold type indicates a winning candidate (i.e. 270 electoral votes or more), and italics or underlining indicates a leading candidate.
Sites which haven't updated in a while will be temporarily removed from the list until they're freshened. The time period I'll keep a stagnant site on the list is a little under a month right now, but that will tighten up as we get closer to the election.
One-time Electoral College status check articles from the news media (as opposed to ongoing features) will be included, but only for a single interation of the survey, unless they are replaced by a new article.
As always, if anyone has links for any other sites that regularly track Electoral College status, please feel free to send them my way and I'll be glad to add them to the list. I'm also more than happy to hear from the proprietors of any of the sites surveyed here, should they have any complaints, comments, or suggestions for improvements.
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
selfish
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sleazy
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unAmerican
uncaring
uncivil
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unrealistic
unreliable
unrepresentative
unscientific
unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
without integrity
wrong-headed
Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz
"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)
Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
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recent listening
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
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"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
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Corrections
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Substantive textual changes, especially reversals or major corrections, will be noted in an "Update" or a footnote.
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the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
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