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Sunday, May 16, 2004
General Election Cattle Call, May 16
Posted by Chris BowersNational Two-Party Vote Projection
Kerry: 52.74
Bush: 47.26
Status: Lean Kerry
Electoral Vote Projection
Kerry: 316
Bush: 159
Too Close to Call: 63 (AZ, AR, CO, LA, MO, VA and WV)
States Changing Hands: FL, NH, NV and OH
Now, some people may object to the states I have either projected for Kerry or listed as "too close to call." They may point out that recent polls from Arizona, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Oregon, and West Virginia actually show Bush leading Kerry by a few points. While I am aware of these polls, I need to point out that my state-by-state projections are based on a variety of indicators, including the national two-party vote projection, the partisan index for each state, recent state trial heats, long term-state voting trends, state-by-state approval ratings and state-by-state negatives. All of these indicators provide a more complete context in which I can make state-by state projections, rather than just the twists and turns of random state-by-state trial heats.
Kerry is up by 5.48% now, and he is starting to knock on the door of a ���solid��� lead (7.01%+). He is also starting to threaten the outer limits of pro-Bush swing states: CO, LA, NC, TN and VA. For the first time, all data points used in the calculation of the GECC favor Kerry.
This is an important turning point in the election. If Bush can stop his slide, he should still be close to Kerry when the Democratic convention comes around. If not, his situation will start to become serious.
Posted at 07:09 PM in General Election Cattle Call | Technorati
Comments
I think things are starting to swing slowly but surely to Kerry.It will take a lot of hard work to keep the pressure on the evil Republicans. But like Chinese water torture ...drip...drip...drip, the chickens are Finally coming home to roost. George Bush and his sleazebag minions deserve to be stomped on and crushed to death politically, so that they can never again raise their bigoted, ignoramous heads out of the trenches again.
Posted by: Alan Snipes at May 16, 2004 08:49 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
Is there a reason that your electoral vote results are so volatile? Just in the past 4 cattle calls (the 12th through the 16th) the "Too close to call" number has gone from 80 to 46 to 44 to 63, as compared, for instance, to the projection for Kerry's proular vote which has smoothly moved from 50.5 to 51.6 to 52.1 to 52.74.
I understand that the nature of the electoral college system means that numbers are going to jump up and down by discrete amounts, as states are awarded to and taken away from each candidate (or the too close to call category), but it still seems like a lot of movement over a short period of time. Is it simply that the current moment is atypically volatile?
Posted by: Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) at May 17, 2004 01:53 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
Ed,
the number one reason why the electoral projections are so volatile is that I am so volate when it comes to projecting them. Calcutating states this far out is very difficult, and I am frequently changing my mind.
Eventually, with more practice and confidence, I'll settle into more stable projections.
Posted by: Chris Bowers at May 17, 2004 09:48 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
This a link to a website that gives updated polling data from a number of key states, including all the swing states.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry_sbys.html
Posted by: canadian4kerry at May 17, 2004 06:31 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
Does anyone have any insight into the sampling methodology of the various polls? I look at the comparisons at http://www.pollingreport.com/BushJob.htm and I notice that Fox consistently gives Bush 5-6 points higher approval in their polls than anybody else. Rasmussen's daily poll also seems to have a Republican bias, though less of one.
I was poking around the Fox site and found the claim that they do random digit dialing to get their poll respondents. Clearly their sampling is not unbiased, so what are the more biased polls really doing? Limiting the sampled phone exchanges to walled communities?
Posted by: Randy P at May 17, 2004 08:43 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
the number one reason why the electoral projections are so volatile is that I am so volate when it comes to projecting them. Calcutating states this far out is very difficult, and I am frequently changing my mind.
Yeah, I understand what you mean. For a while, in my own projections (the latest is here, from about a week ago), things were balanced so precariously in some states that every new poll that came out had me switching states from category to category. I decided then to wait a bit for more confirming evidence (a second poll, some compelling analysis from folks like yourself, or whatever) before I made a switch.
Posted by: Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) at May 19, 2004 01:01 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
I posted an update on western politics today that I gleaned from the latest Campaigns & Elections magazine:
http://makesmeralph.typepad.com/makesmeralph/2004/05/campaigns_elect.html
Posted by: Ralph at May 19, 2004 01:49 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
Chris - this is great information. (Great = makes me happy + useful!)
I'm wondering where you get your data about VA being too close to call - I haven't seen any VA polls recently. I'm one of the few people to completely agree with DavidNYC that Virginia should be considered a swing state (albeit a 2nd tier one) but I think we have better than a snowball's chance of turning Virginia blue this year and would love to see some data that backs this up thatI could forward to other Virginians and feature on http://www.democracyforvirginia.com. Any information you can share would be welcome!
Thanks.
Posted by: Maura in VA at May 20, 2004 11:32 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
Okay, that may well be the most embarrassing run-on sentence I've ever written (above). When will I remember to hit "preview" first?!?
Posted by: Maura in VA at May 20, 2004 11:34 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
Maura, check out Chris's post on swing state voting trends over at MyDD. To wit:
Virginia: Lean GOP, slowly sliding DNC 1984. : GOP +4.5, DNC -3.5 1988. : GOP +6.4, DNC -6.4 1992. : GOP +7.6, DNC -2.4 1996. : GOP +6.4, DNC -4.1 2000. : GOP +4.7, DNC -3.9 (DNC & Green -4.4) Although slowly, it would appear that Virginia is close to switching regions (it would become Northeast / Mid-Atlantic instead of South). It will be difficult, but Virginia is becoming a winnable state for national Democrats.
I think Chris was supposed to cross-post this entry over here. :)
Posted by: DavidNYC at May 20, 2004 12:09 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment
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Posted by: Dan at November 12, 2004 08:08 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment