Sunday, June 08, 2008
General Election Tracker
WE’VE MOVED! Democratic Convention Watch is now at http://www.DemocraticConventionWatch.com
This is the first DemConWatch General Election Tracker. Over time, we will be adding more sources, and start looking at trends. We hope all our readers who are missing their superdelegate fixes will find our General Election coverage equally as interesting and informative.
We will be introducing House and Senate trackers later this month.
Update 6/7: Added Electoral-Vote.Com
We’re purposely ignoring Maine and Nebraska CD splits for now to keep things simple. We’ll add them in later if we need to.
The Obama estimate gives Obama 100% of the EVs in a state that is solid for them, 80% of the EVs for a leaner, 50% of the EVs for a Tossup, and 20% of the EVs for state that is McCain-Lean.
Obama Average: 282.9
Map showing consensus of sources:
<p><strong>><a href=’http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/campaign08/electoral-college/’>Electoral College Prediction Map</a></strong> – Predict the winner of the general election. Use the map to experiment with winning combinations of states. Save your prediction and send it to friends.</p>
Consensus solid states:
Obama: CA, DC, HI, IL, MD, NY, RI, VT – 131 EVs.
McCain: AL, AZ, ID, KS, KY, OK, SD, TN, UT, WV, WY – 71 EVs
| DCW General Election Tracker | ||||||
| State | EVs | NBC | OpenLeft | Front Loaded | Electoral- Vote.com |
|
| Date | 6/5 | 6/4 | 6/5 | 6/7 | ||
| Obama (O) | 153 | 185 | 152 | 190 | ||
| Obama-Lean (OL) | 47 | 57 | 55 | 54 | ||
| Tossup (T) | 138 | 86 | 137 | 92 | ||
| McCain-Lean (ML) | 84 | 64 | 48 | 78 | ||
| McCain (M) | 116 | 146 | 146 | 124 | ||
| Obama Total | 200 | 242 | 207 | 244 | ||
| McCain Total | 200 | 210 | 194 | 202 | ||
| Obama Est | 276.4 | 286.4 | 274.1 | 294.8 | ||
| Alas | 3 | M | ML | ML | ML | |
| Ark | 6 | ML | M | M | M | |
| Colo | 9 | T | OL | T | OL | |
| Conn | 7 | O | O | O | T | |
| Del | 3 | O | OL | OL | OL | |
| Flor | 27 | T | ML | ML | M | |
| Geo | 15 | ML | M | M | M | |
| Ind | 11 | ML | T | T | T | |
| Iowa | 7 | T | OL | OL | OL | |
| Louis | 9 | ML | M | M | ML | |
| Maine | 4 | OL | O | O | O | |
| Mass | 12 | O | OL | OL | O | |
| Mich | 17 | T | T | T | T | |
| Minn | 10 | OL | O | O | O | |
| Missi | 6 | ML | M | M | ML | |
| Misso | 11 | ML | ML | T | T | |
| Mont | 3 | ML | ML | ML | ML | |
| Nebr | 5 | ML | M | M | M | |
| Nev | 5 | T | ML | T | ML | |
| New H | 4 | T | T | T | OL | |
| New J | 15 | OL | O | OL | O | |
| New M | 5 | T | OL | T | T | |
| North C | 15 | ML | ML | ML | ML | |
| North D | 3 | ML | T | T | ML | |
| Ohio | 20 | T | T | T | T | |
| Ore | 7 | OL | O | OL | O | |
| Penn | 21 | T | OL | T | OL | |
| SC | 8 | M | T | T | T | |
| Tex | 34 | M | M | M | ML | |
| Virg | 13 | T | T | T | T | |
| Wash | 11 | OL | O | OL | O | |
| Wisc | 10 | T | T | T | OL | |
The New York Times looks at where the campaigns are taking the battle.
Posted by Matt at 12:04 AM 
I see that one source has Nebraska’s 5 electoral college votes for McCain and the other source as a Leans McCain. Nebraska can split electoral college votes by congressional district. I would say that the source is true for four of those votes, but one vote for the 2nd congressional district centered in Omaha should either be a toss-up or leans Obama. There is a very large African-American population, and the turn-out for the democratic caucuses in February was amazingly large. I really think Obama will be able to take at least one of these electoral college votes.
“our readers who are missing their superdelegate fixes”
You folks are awesome. 🙂
i think it would be helpful to show a total of “solid” and “leans” for each candidate too….
It’s still quite early, but it is fun to track!
Happy signs:
Alaska ML (Open Left)
Arkansas ML (NBC)
Colorado T (NBC) OL (Open Left)
Florida T (NBC) ML (Open Left)
Georgia ML (NBC)
Indiana ML (NBC) T (Open Left)
Iowa T (NBC) OL (Open Left)
Mississippi ML (NBC)
Missouri ML (Both)
Montana ML (Both)
Nebraska ML (NBC)
Nevada T (NBC) ML (Open Left)
New Mexico T (NBC) OL (Open Left)
North Carolina ML (Both)
Ohio T (Both)
South Carolina T (Open Left)
Virginia T (Both)
All the above states voted for Bush in ’04. We’re starting off this G.E. with Kerry states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New Hampshire up for grabs, though I suspect that only Michigan stands a large risk of swinging. Colorado, Iowa and New Mexico seem headed the right way. It’s a pleasure to see Virginia as much of a tossup as Ohio; Florida, Indiana, North Carolina and Montana close behind; and South Carolina a Tie according to Open Left.
Also, Rasmussen has been tracking this way back when.
Rasmussen Balance of Power
To be honest I am not very confident about Michigan. The state is hurting badly, both candidates are about even on economic issues(equally bad I will say, Romney actually seems the best there). And there’s the primary. There are still many Hillary supporters(some independents too) angry at Senator Obama. He didn’t campaign there at all, so McCain got a jump start. Obama’s strongest issue is probably Iraq, but people care more about the economy here.
Please add a total Obama/McCain.
I would like to see a column from fivethirtyeight.com as well.
In tracking the GE phrgndumass at DU has designed an indicator to work along the lines of a Dow and Jones Industrial Average.
You can see it here and I would like to suggest that you add it to your other GE projections, as it combines a number key indicators like Intrade along with polls.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132×6299333
Another site that updates data for EV counting is:
http://www.electoral-vote.com/
They say they update daily but I am not sure if they are up to Matt and Oreo’s standards though…
How about adding a link to this General Election Tracker on the left side of the page above the superdelegate link 🙂
Actually, I think EV is up to this site’s tough standards once everyone starts polling. They discard the partisan polls and use multiple pollsters for each state. There numbers are averages of the polls within the last week so (as long as there are enough polls) the mechanism avoids the problem of the statistical blip suddenly changing the appearance of the state.
Did some updates, still a work in progress, keep the suggestions coming.
Me and my friends will try our hardest to make sure Colorado turns blue in November!
Electoral-vote.com uses a last poll methodology, which is good because it means that the latest poll is given weight but bad because if that poll sucks, it’s meaningless.
It’s absolutely not “happy signs” that battleground states are tossups this election year. States like PA and MI should be solid Dem, especially after 8 years of Bush. And we can write Ohio off right now. If Obama couldn’t win it in the primary, he’s not going to take it in the general. Not unless he picks Strickland.
denver danny,
Don’t lose hope about Ohio. Rememer, this is June. Obama is in a fairly strong position now and he has an excellent organization which will soon change the situation there for the better, given time. We’ll get OH, especially now that HRC is out (and may even campaign there for Obama) and the Democrats are coming together as a team 🙂
I have been looking at electoral-vote.com for several days, and I don’t think it has been updated. The last poll for Florida, for example, was May 20!!
I expect opinions to change a lot in the coming months, but I am concerned that we won’t have adequate data. I mean seriously, are those organizations polling everywhere or just the battleground states?
1. In the table, the light blue on the dark blue background, is just about invisible to my eyes.
2. I miss my superdelegate updates. Call the wah-bulance!
You guys have to include
www.fivethirtyeight.com
Sabermetrics for politics
Thirding the suggestion for fivethirtyeight.com. Best projections on the web.
We’re going to add 538 in. Unfortunately, he doesn’t do a clean state-by-state breakdown like other projections, (ie, strong/lean/tossup) so we have to figure out exactly how to incorporate his data. Suggestions welcome.
And we’ll fix the text colors tonight.
thanks in advance for color-fixing – even with my strong reading glasses, I still can’t read it. I’m just an old white woman, have pity on me.
😉
Please fix Obama’s birthplace under Consensus Solid: Hawai’i is HI, not HA.
About 538: I agree you should add it. They list the percentage chance of winning for each state on the left sidebar.
I’d say 90% or more is Solid for the leader in that state, 60% or more is Leans to the leader and
any state where the leader has less than 60% is a Tossup (currently NH,MI,NV and OH).
If one includes leads less than 67%, you add Tossups VA,MO,WI,CO,NM with PA and IN just over the border in Leans.
I vote for the first set, so as to minimize the number of tossups.
skywaker, electoral-vote uses a last poll methodology but includes all polls within a week of the last poll. Right now that methodology is a bit flawed because polling is still infrequent. Once you get close to the general, that methodology basically means averaging all polls within the last week.
I find that an acceptably accurate methodology since older polls do not show the influence of more recent events and thus are of questionable continuing validity.
Matt and Oreo-
Are ya’ll going to add a link to the top left of the page for the General Election Tracker page? 🙂
Yes, but the plan is to have new updated posts (one will be up soon) as opposed to updating the same post. This will allow more historical comparisons between posts.
I have to wonder about Katrina-impacted states. I’ve been following one blog of a couple rebuilding their house. They were solid Republicans before. They hate Bush now.