Monday, October 25, 2004
A tale of three websites
So I promised I'd post a little more on my U.S. election predictions. To begin with, I'd like to give some credit where it's due and identify the three websites I've been using to follow this thing and to formulate my own thoughts.
Number one with a bullet is the New York Times Interactive Election Guide. It's the best of the three, I think, because it's tends to be a little more inert, and doesn't go fanatically changing its projections every time something untoward happens. Beyond that, it has, as the name suggests, a pile of cool interactive features.
The highest profile of the three sites I've used is electoral-vote.com. It's been getting a lot of attention, which is a shame because it's not really very good. I mean, polls are all very well and good, but as I write this the site has, among other things, got Hawaii in the Bush column. Hawaii, which Gore won in 2000 by more than eighteen percent, and which hasn't gone Republican since 1984 (when, to be fair, every single state except Minnesota chose Reagan over Mondale). Mind you, it compensates for this with the almost as ludicrouse classifications of Colorado as "Barely Kerry" and Arkansas as "Exactly Tied". If Hawaii goes Bush or either Colorado or Arkansas goes Kerry, I'll drink a warm cup of my own semen.
The last of the three, which is something of a counterbalance to electoral-vote.com, is race2004.net, which is presently making the indefensible prediction of Kerry winning the election 300 votes to 238, a conclusion it reaches by pretty much assigning every undecided state to Kerry on the basis that "undecided voters usually vote for the challenger".
More to come. . .
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So I promised I'd post a little more on my U.S. election predictions. To begin with, I'd like to give some credit where it's due and identify the three websites I've been using to follow this thing and to formulate my own thoughts.
Number one with a bullet is the New York Times Interactive Election Guide. It's the best of the three, I think, because it's tends to be a little more inert, and doesn't go fanatically changing its projections every time something untoward happens. Beyond that, it has, as the name suggests, a pile of cool interactive features.
The highest profile of the three sites I've used is electoral-vote.com. It's been getting a lot of attention, which is a shame because it's not really very good. I mean, polls are all very well and good, but as I write this the site has, among other things, got Hawaii in the Bush column. Hawaii, which Gore won in 2000 by more than eighteen percent, and which hasn't gone Republican since 1984 (when, to be fair, every single state except Minnesota chose Reagan over Mondale). Mind you, it compensates for this with the almost as ludicrouse classifications of Colorado as "Barely Kerry" and Arkansas as "Exactly Tied". If Hawaii goes Bush or either Colorado or Arkansas goes Kerry, I'll drink a warm cup of my own semen.
The last of the three, which is something of a counterbalance to electoral-vote.com, is race2004.net, which is presently making the indefensible prediction of Kerry winning the election 300 votes to 238, a conclusion it reaches by pretty much assigning every undecided state to Kerry on the basis that "undecided voters usually vote for the challenger".
More to come. . .
