Election Update

Looks like the results may be in dispute after all... See this breaking news report from the ONN.


[Link]

Final Results post later

The Chart is updated with the projected final results, but I want to wait until everything stabilize a bit to make a final results post... Hopefully this evening.

Take that, Joe the Plumber.

It's over. From now on, you can officially say to all the racists you meet: "That's PRESIDENT Barack Hussein Obama to you!"

Senator Kay Hagan

For the first time since 1952, come Jan 4, neither a Dole nor a Bush is serving as an elected official.

Useful site while you're watching the results

Just found this useful site for examining the county-by-county results as they come in, and comparing them to 2004. So far, things are looking good both in Indiana and Florida. Note, for some odd reason, these people invert the colors from virtually every other site in the world, so red means Kerry and blue means Bush.

www.uselectionatlas.com

Oddity in Indiana

Probably nothing, but this has me a bit concerned...

Look at the pop-out over the map. Note that both candidates have the identical number of votes in Marion County, which is suspicious by itself. But while they both have the same vote count, McCain is listed as being ahead by 1%.

Update: To clarify, I think this is probably a glitch with the CNN website, but it's hard to say for sure.

The Breakdown for Election Day, Nov. 4 2008!

Wow... It's almost over. The results will start coming in, around six hours from now.

Before I do anything else, everyone who reads this site should go an read "The top ten reasons you should ignore exit polls" that Nate posted today. He tells us why, even more than usual, exit polls don't tell us a thing this year.

Ok, Here's the movement:
VA and OH: Weak Obama to Barely Obama
MO: Barely McCain to Tied
WV: Weak McCain to Strong McCain

Now everybody go VOTE! Remember, the future of the Economy depends on it, the future of the Health Care depends on it, the future of the Environment depends on it, the future of the War depends on it... The future of the WORLD depends on it. There has never been such an important or historic election in our nations history, so PLEASE be a part of it!

Obama's EV count in states where he's polling over 50%: 287 EVs. (291 if you include RI which is under 50%, but with a 22 point margin)

If the election were held today and...	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama	406	132
...all Obama <5% went to McCain	278	260
Shift since yesterday:	+0	+33
Shift this week:	+0	+28

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

For the raw poll data and more details, see this day's page on Electoral-Vote.com:

The Breakdown for Nov. 3

Just none more day to go. And absolutely nothing happened. Very anti-climactic. Things actually did tighten just a little bit, but nothing significant. If you average all fifty states worth of polls, the race moved from 48.96% Obama to 44.86% McCain yesterday to 48.94% to 45.14%, a net gain of .3%. If this was Oct. 3 that would be reason for optimism, but on Nov. 3 it's not terribly helpful. The other thing to note is where the race is tightening...

Note that he still has at least a 5% lead in every state that tightened today, other than Kentucky which he had no chance of winning, anyway. The only thing that concerns me at all there is Ohio, which dropped below the 50% threshold.

On the other hand, the big prize actually moved in Obama's favor:

If Obama can take FL, it's pretty much over. His lead there is small, but the trend is in the right direction.

Obama's EV count in states where he's polling over 50%: 287 EVs.

If the election were held today and...	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama	406	132
...all Obama <5% went to McCain	311	227
Shift since yesterday:	+0	-0
Shift this week:	+0	-5

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

For the raw poll data and more details, see this day's page on Electoral-Vote.com:

PDF Version of the Election Score Card

For those of you who won't be around your PC during the election (like myself), I made a PDF version of my Election Score Card that you can print out and keep the tally manually. If you'll be near your PC, the spreadsheet version is much more useful, but this is a good backup.

McCain's Must Win States

Nate did some number crunching that I've been hoping for for a long time today, and he tells us What A McCain Win Looks Like.... He shows the four most likely scenarios where McCain wins, and he gives us this useful bit of info:

"Also, there are some states that truly do appear to be "must-wins" for McCain. In each and every one of the 624 victory scenarios that the simulation found for him this afternoon, won Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Indiana and Montana. He also picked up Ohio in 621 out of the 624 simulations, and North Carolina in 622 out of 624. If McCain drops any of those states, it's pretty much over."

I think that MT is less of a must-win, since it only has 3 EVs, but I agree with the others.

Here are the other states to watch in order of poll closing time (all times EST):

• IN: Most polls close at 6PM. Unless it's a blowout, we won't know the result until later.
• VA: Polls close at 7PM. Could be called soon after the polls close.
• FL: Most polls close at 7PM, but likely won't be called until later.
• GA: Polls close at 7PM, but likely won't be called until later.
• NC: Most polls close at 7:30PM, but likely won't be called until later
• OH: Polls close at 7:30PM, but likely won't be called until later
• PA: Polls close at 8PM. Most likely will be called fairly quickly.
• MO: Polls close at 8PM, but likely won't be called until later.

PA and VA are probably the two that will be called first. If those two go to Obama, McCain has virtually no realistic path to the White House. Obama has solid leads in both of these states, and he's polling above 50% in both of them. If there is a blowout in any of the others we may know sooner, otherwise we'll know when those two are called.

UPDATE: Added Ohio, which I had forgotten. My estimates of when the reports will come in is solely based on polling margins. The bigger the margin, the sooner we should have a solid idea of who the victor is. Poll closing times courtesy of the Green Papers.

Election Cheat Sheet: Final version?

Ok, here's the newest version that has a bunch of improvements, and it's much easier to use.

Just type the winner's name in the 'Winner' column, and everything else happens automatically. You can use either 'Obama' or 'obama', 'McCain' or 'mccain', but anything else will not work with the calculations. After you've entered each name once or twice, the Autocomplete should take over so you will only need to enter 'o' or 'm'.

NE and ME will now work like all the others, however you can still split their votes if needed. Just enter the votes as needed. Note, this will overwrite the formula that's there now, so once you enter data in those fields, you can't go back to the autocalculations. No big deal, just something to remember.

This might be the last version, unless there is more feedback. I'll try to update the polling data at least once more, but I wouldn't expect any additional major changes.

[Excel File]

UPDATE: It looks like some of the formatting is lost if you save this a an Excel file, then open it again in OpenOffice (which I use). If you're using OpenOffice, you'll probably have better luck with this [ODS file]. The differences are minor, and don't affect the functionality, just the formatting of the charts. Excel user might want to try both versions to see which works best for them.

UPDATE 2: I've made several tweaks to the spreadsheet, so if you downloaded it earlier (say before 9:30 PST Sunday), you'll probably want to download a new copy, or just wait and get the truly final version with updated polling info probably tomorrow evening. There's also a PDF version available here if you won't be near your computer during the election.

The Breakdown for Nov. 2

John McCain had another relatively good day in the polls today. Three states moved, two towards McCain and one towards Obama. PA and NM both tightened a bit, moving into the Weak Obama category with leads of 9 points and 8 points respectively. On the other side, AR moved to Weak McCain with a 9 point margin.

With just two days left, an eight-point or greater lead is pretty much insurmountable. Even if you give McCain a 5% bonus for the Bradley effect, McCain would lose 311 to 227. In reality, between pollsters not calling cell-phones, and the simple reality of the economy, I expect a reverse bradley effect in many states, so I doubt that it will be that close. And as noted yesterday, 311 is a big number since it means that McCain would need to take both PA and OH, plus at least one additional state (or some other combination of 43 EVs-- 42 to tie) to win.

Obama's EV count in states where he's polling over 50%: 307 EVs.

If the election were held today and...	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama	406	132
...all Obama <5% went to McCain	311	227
Shift since yesterday:	+0	-0
Shift this week:	+10	+6

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

For the raw poll data and more details, see this day's page on Electoral-Vote.com:

Election Cheat Sheet, beta 2

Ok, here's an updated version with some of the changes you've suggested.

On this version, The EVs are calculated automatically, so just put any positive number (I'd put a '1', but put whatever you want since it has no effect on anything) in the appropriate 'tally' field and the EVs are calculated automatically. The only exceptions are NE & ME which allocate their EVs by congressional district, so you'll need to manually enter the appropriate values.

Some caveats: 1) There is no error checking, so if you give a state to both candidates, it will not complain. 2) I can't seem to figure out how to lock the cell functions, so watch for stray key presses. The purple cells are auto-calculated, so just avoid them.

What do you think?

[Excel File]

The Breakdown for Nov. 1

With just three days left before the Election, John McCain had his best day in weeks. Unfortunately, by all indications, it's probably too little and too late.

The biggest move of the day is MO which moved from Barely Obama to Barely McCain. The other moves in McCain's favor are ND, which moved from tied to Barely McCain and MS which moved from Weak to Strong McCain.

The big move in Obama's direction is AZ, McCain's home state, which went from Weak McCain to Barely McCain. Since the Obama campaign has announced that they intend to start advertising there, AZ is definitely one to watch.

Before anyone gets too concerned about these states moving, it's important to look at the map. Even without these states, Obama has a 353 EV total, well beyond the required 270. And even if you take away the two states where Obama's leads are under 5%, he's still at 311EVs. That's important since it means that he'd need to lose an additional 42 EVs before he would lose. In other words, he would need to lose both PA and OH, plus one additional state (or one EV from ME) before he would lose. Obama currently leads in PA by 10 and in OH by 6, and with three days left, those are nearly insurmountable margins. McCain's odds of taking all four of the states that he must take (PA, OH, FL and NC), plus any additional state, all without losing a single one of the five states he's under 5% in are incredibly slim. I've said all along that the race would tighten as we get closer to the finish line (as has Nate and most other pundits), and that's all that is happening here.

UPDATE: One correction: McCain actually needs to take 43 EVs in the noted scenario to win. 42 EVs would lead to a tie, which would be decided by the incoming democratic congress who would elect Obama.

Obama's EV count in states where he's polling over 50%: 307 EVs.

If the election were held today and...	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama	406	132
...all Obama <5% went to McCain	311	227
Shift since yesterday:	+10	-0
Shift this week:	+10	+6

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

For the raw poll data and more details, see this day's page on Electoral-Vote.com:

Election Cheat Sheet Beta 1.0... What do you think?

Some of you have requested a cheat sheet that you can print out that gives the expected outcome of each state. This is my first draft of such a cheat sheet. Please let me know if there's anything I should add or change before election day.

Some notes: States are sorted by poll closing time, and then sorted by margin. States that have big margins should be called almost immediately, so I thought this might be a better sort order than simple alphabetical. I'll consider hanging this if needed.

States marked * have polls that may close before or after the noted time, but the majority of polls should be closed by this time, so the networks could call the states at this time.

Alaska is marked ** to denote that it's polls actually close at 12:00 AM, not 11:59PM.

Please put any feedback in the comments.

Thanks!

The Breakdown for Oct. 31-- It's scary!

Ok, it's not really that scary, but in honor of Halloween, I had to do something.
It might be a little scary if you're really on the concerned side, though.

McCain had his best day in the polls since Oct. 23. The good news for Obama is the WI has moved back into the Strong Obama after one day in the Weak column. The bad news is that two states moved the other way. Both IN and MT are now in the Barely McCain column, MT moving from tied and IN from Barely Obama. Neither of these states are overly critical to an Obama win, however, so don't be too frightened.

Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to update the site tomorrow morning, and may not be able to get it updated tomorrow at all. In the meantime, here are a few things to help you pass the time:

To get an idea how difficult McCain's quest for PA is, check out this widget. McCain has only lead in a few polls in PA all year, so switching it now will be no easy task.

This widget will let you see the chart, as well as a few other useful visualizations. I especially like the pie chart that beter shows just how big of a lead Obama has. I would be more annoyed that the developer of this widget stole my chart design if he hadn't apparently designed it more than a month before I designed mine.

Finally, the simulator at Election-Projection.net is great for all of us wannabe Nate Silvers. The rest of the site is great also. Should be plenty to keep you busy until I update the site on Sunday.

Thanks to Blues Tea-Cha for all these links.


Obama's EV count in states where he's polling over 50%: 307 EVs.

If the election were held today and...	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama	396	142
...all Obama <5% went to McCain	311	227
Shift since yesterday:	-0	-0
Shift this week:	+15	-+6

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

For the raw poll data and more details, see this day's page on Electoral-Vote.com:

Colorado Voter Purge Stopped

Big news in the fight against voter suppression just came in from CO. In a monumentally rational move, it was decided that votes should be counted unless they are known to be bad, instead of being assumed to be bad from the outset:

Under the agreement, voters removed from the rolls will be permitted to cast provisional ballots, and those ballots will be counted unless election officials can prove the voters were not eligible. To strike such ballots, county election officials must conduct an extensive records review on each one, a decision that must then be reviewed by Mr. Coffman’s office.

If ALL provisional ballots were treated this way, they wouldn't be nicknamed "placebo ballots". No one wants anyone to vote illegally, but the notion that we should disenfranchise tens of thousands in an effort to prevent a few hundred (or less) people from casting illegal ballots is absurd.

The Breakdown for Oct. 30

In spite of 29 new polls in 24 states, not a lot of movement today. WI tightened up a bit, moving it (just barely) into the Weak Obama category, while MO went the other way, moving from tied to (just barely) barely Obama.

UPDATE: As noted by Blues Tea-Cha in the comments, WI tightened up today, not MN. The error has been corrected.

Obama's EV count in states where he's polling over 50%: 307 EVs.

If the election were held today and...	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama	396	142
...all Obama <5% went to McCain	311	227
Shift since yesterday:	-0	-0
Shift this week:	+15	-25

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

For the raw poll data and more details, see this day's page on Electoral-Vote.com:

Reasons for optimism

I talked to my friend Jen today, and she was quite concerned about the possibility of the election being stolen. I sent her a list of several reasons why I didn't think it was likely. Some of it has been mentioned here before, but I thought it contained enough new material that I'd post it here as well.

* Obama currently is polling at a 5% or more lead in 311EV worth of states (270 needed to win). That means that in order to win, McCain will need to switch at least three states that are currently polling at better than 5% for Obama (See the map at Electoral-Vote.com), and he has to do that without losing a single state that is polling at a closer margin. This late in the game, that big of a lead is very unlikely to switch.

* McCain is making a big play for PA, but I just don't see it switching. Obama has lead decisively in the polls all month, with an average lead of 11.43%. The media claims things are tightening, but only if you cherry pick in the polls. The average lead for this week alone is still 11% in ten polls. Only one poll out of 23 in the last month has showed Obama under 50 percent in PA, and his average in the last week has been 52%.

* PA, VA, and OH are the states most talked about as "swing states", and all three currently have Democratic Governors and Secretaries of State. It's much harder to steal the election if you don't control the election. McCain absolutely must win both PA and OH if he wants to have even a slight chance of winning. Obama can safely lose any one, and most likely he would still win even if he lost two of the three.

* For McCain, FL is an absolute must-win state. If he loses FL, he has no realistic chance of winning. To give you an idea of how crucial FL is if McCain somehow won CA, Obama would still have a 97% chance of winning if he wins FL (assuming all other swing states are unallocated-- see 270towin.com). As far as Obama is concerned, FL would be great to win, but it really doesn't matter if he loses it, so long as he doesn't lose all 8 other competitive states (NV, CO, MT, ND, MO, IN, OH, and NC), plus either PA or VA. If Obama wins even one of those states, he wins regardless of what happens in FL. Of those eight competitive states, three are tied, Obama has a lead under 5% in two and a lead of 6 or 7% in the remaining three (and he's currently ahead in FL by 3% as well). McCain doesn't lead in any of the states that are generally considered competitive, though some states that he was expected to win easily (GA and AZ) have recently moved to within Obama's grasp.

* There is lot's of talk about "the Bradley Effect", but there is absolutely no evidence of such a thing happening this year. In fact, all evidence suggests that Obama is actually doing -better- than the polls suggest. There are a number of reasons that this would be true, but a couple of the main ones is that most pollsters don't poll people who don't have land-lines, a group that largely includes young people who live in cities, college students, etc-- groups that largely support Obama. When those people are polled, Obama's numbers go up dramatically (See this post at FiveThirtyEight.com -- tons of other great stuff on this site also. It's the single best polling site on the net). Pollsters also use a likely voter model that takes into account whether people have voted in previous elections. Obama has registered more new voters this cycle than ever before, so those people are under-represented in the polls.

Ok... That's enough for now... Hopefully you'll be a little less scared now. FYI, here are the biggest things that I'll be watching for on Tuesday are:

1) Will we get a filibuster-proof 60 seat majority in the Senate? Not looking like we'll make it (57-58 is probable, though) but if Obama's coattails are big enough it could happen.

2) Will McCain be able to hold his home state of Arizona? Right now it's looking like he will, but things are a lot closer than he would like.

The Breakdown for Oct. 29

After a brief flirtation with good news yesterday, things continue to go downhill for McCain today. NH has moved back into the Strong Obama column, and NV has moved from Barely Obama to Weak Obama. At the same time, McCain lost ground in MS which has is down to a 8 point McCain lead, so it is in the Weak McCain category today.

The McCain campaign lately is focusing nearly all it's resources on the state of PA. I've commented a couple of times on the apparent futility of that course, though I'll admit I really don't see any other course for them to take. But looking back over this months polls, suddenly that course seems even less likely to work then it did before. PA is currently polling with an 11 point lead for Obama, but even more importantly Obama is the choice of 52% of the people in the 10 polls that EV.com uses for their number. In fact, looking back over all the polling data that FiveThirtyEight.com shows, Obama has only polled under 50% in PA in one poll all month. With Obama polling above 50%, McCain can't just swing undecideds, he must actively steal people who say that they intend to vote for Obama. That's not impossible, but it's much harder to do.

Obama's EV count in states where he's polling over 50%: 307 EVs.

If the election were held today and...	Obama	McCain
...all McCain <5% went to Obama	396	142
...all Obama <5% went to McCain	311	227
Shift since yesterday:	-0	-5
Shift this week:	+15	-25

(See this post for an explanation of these numbers.)

For the raw poll data and more details, see this day's page on Electoral-Vote.com: