Electoral Map

I recently discovered the web site electoral-vote.  Note the gadget to the upper right.  It updates itself with every poll.

Assuming the polls are accurate, it currently (August 9th, 2012), shows Obama winning 323 to 206 electoral votes, plus 9 (Colorado) too close to call.  Almost more importantly, it also checks the Senate races, which will result in the Democrats retaining a slight majority, 50 to 48, plus 2 undecided (50 votes plus the Vice Presidents = a majority).  Currently the republicans hold 47 seats, so in effect the GOP is projected to lose the presidency, win one Senate seat, with two up in the air.

I like there projects much better than the standard ones, because it shows the accuracy of the prediction, as opposed to simply declaring all the swing states as 'up for grabs'.

For comparison purposes, CNN calls:  Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virgina and Florida as "up for grabs".  Electoral Vote, using the recent polls, says, of those states, Nevada, Iowa, and Ohio are likely Democrat, Colorado is a tie, New Hampshire, Virginia and Florida are 'barely Democrat".  Also note that Electoral Vote says North Carolina is only 'barely Republican'.  North Carolina is the only state Electoral Vote calls "barely Republican".   CNN shows North Carolina, along with Indina, Missori, and Arizona as 'leaning Romeny".

Note this map includes Rasmussen polls.   But Electoral Vote offers you the possibility of eliminating them.  If you do this, North Carolina becomes Barely Democrat.  Why would you do that?   Rasmussen is an arm of Fox News.  More importantly there is study that shows that most polls do not change radically just before an election, but Rasmussen DOES suddenly get more pro-democrat.  As in, they don't want to look stupid, so they stop using biased methods

Example:  If you don't pick up, Rasmussen randomly picks a new phone number.  But Democrats are more likely to be younger and go therefore out of their home, so in effect, they get a slight bias towards Republicans.  In addition, all polls try to call the same percentage of republicans and democrats as the state has (if a state has 40 republicans 30 independents and 30 democrats, they don't want to accidentally call 60 democrats and 40 independents) , but Rasmussen starts off with higher assumptions of percent republicans for many states.