« Vote Could Depend on Religious Voters | Main | How do we come up with these numbers? »

November 02, 2004

What we choose to present

What we choose to present

We have chosen a “medium” discount factor to balance the “inertia” of earlier polls and trends suggested in recent ones. Had we treated all polls taken after October 1 equally, President Bush would have been the run-away winner of this election (with probability of winning over 90%). This choice of discount factor is our best educated guess about the result of this election. When all the election excitement fades, we will be performing postmortem analysis of this and past election, hoping to shed light on voter trends to better treat polls of various vintages. The following chart also provides some insight as to the tightness of this race, with the following rules to “categorize” the electoral votes:

  • If a candidate has a 95% chance or high to win a state, we call it solid.
  • Leaning is in the (85%, 95%) interval.
  • Soft is in the (65%, 85%) interval.
  • If neither candidate has a 65% or higher probability of capturing that state, we put it in the “toss-up” category.

whatWeChoose1.gif

whatWeChoose2.gif

Note that there is no guarantee that the candidates will get their red/blue electoral votes with the probability of attaining them depending on into what category they fall. If we count up the blue/red votes, we have Kerry 287 and Bush 227. Those 24 “toss-up” votes belong to: Ohio 20 and Hawaii 4.

whatWeChoose3.gif

We should point out that our analysis is based on the inferred probability (inferred from polling data) that a candidate will win a state’s popular votes (thus, its electoral votes), and NOT on the exact polling statistics.

The percentages (on the map below for each state) represent the probabilities that either candidate wins the state (thus its electoral votes) cummulatively based on the state-by-state poll data.

Please refer to the methodologies section for a general description on how these probabilities are computed, and to the mathematical section for a mathematical description.




If you are unable to view the interactive java map above, please click on the electoral college map for the static image


Posted by Can Sar at November 2, 2004 08:33 PM

Comments

In history, in social life, nothing is fixed, rigid or definitive. And nothing ever will be. by free online poker

Posted by: free online poker at December 22, 2004 12:53 PM

Post a comment