Playing with the Electoral College

I found a new favourite political site! You should check it out. It's called 270toWin.com, and it allows you to change the way the Electoral College would play out, based on who wins what.

I've decided to post updates on here what the EC would look like based on polls from reputable polling companies and/or news sites. So not what the national polls is on Obama vs. McCain, but rather, what the polls say for a particular state. I've re-found another site, one that I followed back in 2004; it is another, very good political site, called Electoral Vote. He updates his sites daily, whereas I'll just do weekly. As you may know, the candidate that wins the popular vote of a state, wins that state's votes in the EC. You need 270 EC votes to win the Presidency outright, thus the name of the site.

I'll then post the changes and a picture of said EC, assuming I can figure out how to insert photos on here! :) Hopefully these two sites will not be upset I'm using their information to post updates to the 2008 election on my blog, but we'll find out. In that regard, I will always acknowledge their better-ness on this topic. I certainly could not do that they do. But I'd like to keep updated as much as possible this year, so hopefully this will help! I may get updates more than weekly as we get closer to Election Day, this year November 4, where things can change more quickly.

Also keep in mind that polls this far from the actual vote are not even close to being 100% reliable, but still interesting to think and talk about.

So to kick things off, here is the current Electoral College vote, as of June 22, 2008.

According to the following Electoral Map, Obama would win 317-194. That's not really even close, which is pretty interesting, considering all the players. One important fact to point out is Florida (the state in 2000) is a dead heat, 45-45. But Ohio (the state in 2004) is leaning Obama by 3 percentage points. Yes, this is within the statistical error, but is important to note, considering he is black and a lot of folks in Ohio would not vote for someone like that. I know, because I know a lot of those people, unfortunately. That's how it is here. This will be very interesting in the days and weeks and months ahead. If you'd like to see where I came up with this info, I can send you the spreadsheet I'm saving this to.

Assuming I've done it correctly, you'll also see a picture of said EC after this. Click on it to view it in more detail.



Let me know what you think? Again, for more in depth coverage of the 2008 election, be sure to check out 270toWin.com and Electoral Vote! I couldn't do this without them.