Now that the conventions are finally (!!!) upon us, it's time to start paying attention to the end game, the big Nov. 4. With the presidency pegged on who grabs the majority of the electoral votes (the magic 270), the website FiveThirtyEight is one-stop shopping for all the data you'll need to suss out the horse race.
Calling themselves "Electoral Projections Done Right," and named for the number of electors in the electoral college, the mission of the site is to:
Accumulate and analyze polling and political data in way that is informed, accurate and attractive. Most narrowly, to give you the best possible objective assessment of the likely outcome of upcoming elections.
To see how it stands out, the incredible thoroughness of its methods, and whether it has a crystal ball, read more.
The site stands out from the field because it assigns weight to polls based on the track record, sample size, and currentness of the data, and — this is amazing — it simulates the election 10,000 times before every site update in order to "provide a probabilistic assessment of electoral outcomes based on a historical analysis of polling data since 1952." So no magical crystal ball, just some pretty fancy statisticizing. If you're a data hound, just curious, or need a tidbit to fire back in your next political discussion, you'll find it here.
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well i think that i can really expect that there's methodology to all this and that perhaps we can see how forecasting compares to the outcome. personally - i'm losing interest in the campaign more and more. i think that it will partially depend on who mcain lands on for a running mate - as long as it's not mitt romney then he may have my support even though i'm a democrat through and through.
thanks for sharing this site though - it's something new for me to follow aside from the clutter filled CNN etc...