You’re right, my mistake, I transposed the names. Subconscious wishful thinking, I guess.
Me too. But the reality is that polling costs money, and there’s a limit to how much they’re going to spend on a poll of one state.
Still, I think there’s a good argument that if they’re going to interview a few hundred people to poll a small state like NH or NV, then they should be willing to go up to a sample of 1000+, every now and then, for a contested large state such as OH, FL, or PA.
Badnarik:
While I’m certainly hoping that Badnarik will become a refuge, on Election Day, for conservatives who just can’t bear voting for Bush, I don’t have high hopes.
I think his name, of all things, is a handicap for him. It practically rhymes with ‘apparatchik’; my recurring assumption earlier this year, when I’d hear the names of the minor-party candidates get rattled off, was that he must be the Socialist Workers’ Party candidate. I’ve gotten past that (although I still think of him as ‘Boris Badnarik’), but then I’m a political junkie.
When conservatives shoot the shit, and they get to the point of saying, “There’s no way in hell I’d vote for Kerry, but it’s becoming harder and harder to bring myself to vote for Bush,” it’s difficult for me to envision the next line, “maybe I’ll vote for Badnarik instead,” being a natural, and the name’s the reason. It’s irrational, but humans are irrational. And IMHO, it will be a stumbling block to the sort of buildup of chatter that would make it more likely for conservatives to pull the lever…well, ok, touch the screen, or whatever…for him on November 2.
If he pulls as much as 1% in a small swing state such as NV, or 0.5% in a large swing state such as OH or FL, I’d be extremely surprised.
I don’t know. Speaking as a conservative… apparently, paleoconservative, specifically, I’ve been told, I tended to vote Libertarian if I didn’t like the Republican candidate. I did, in fact, vote for, ah… Brown? last election. This year, I’m voting for Kerry.
But a lot of people who are Republicans that I know, are saying that they just can’t vote for Bush. Spread spectrum of age and financial situation. (Though they tend to range from well off to very well off, with dips into college-destitute but well-off someday)
A few of them like Kerry. Some of them say they won’t vote for him, though. They’re probably going to vote Libertarian.
Except, there’s the whole perspective on how the party wants to legalize heroin, and a lot of people have bad feelings about that.
latest www.electoral-vote.com has Kerry with 280 votes. Interesting.
Daniel
I haven’t been able to get that site to come up for the past half-hour or so. But this site has it at Bush 295, Kerry 243:
Check the date, Lib - 10/3. The Debate 1 bounce isn’t there yet.
For the first time in a while, today (10/8/04) http://www.race2004.net/ has Kerry solidly ahead of Bush in electoral votes – 243 for Kerry, 196 for Bush. But that’s with 99 e-votes still counted as Undecided. Florida is now ranked as Undecided.
They run this sidebar, though:
But of course we can dismiss anything that starts with the words “If the election were held today.” It ain’t.
I just noticed that you’re in Tampa, we’re moving to Westchase next week. So, are you undecided as well?
There appears to be a site mirror at http://www.electoral-vote2.com.
Daniel
Not at all. I’m a frustrated Socialist who always votes Democrat. (Why waste your vote?)
The current Rasmussen electoral projection has it for Bush 240 to Kerry 169.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/
You might also note that Rasmussen hasn’t linked to the story regarding the infamous “hump” on Bush’s back during the debates — unlike some of the other “unbiased” electoral college projection sites -
Well, gee, then, that alone proves they’re more reliable.
I’ll just note that they give Bush exactly one more vote than www.electoral-vote.com gives him. And since figuring out their methodology costs $95, I’m going to consider them just one more data point, not the Holy Grail of election predictions.
Daniel
And gave Kerry 111 more votes. Oh, and where did I say “that alone” makes them morre reliable - just another point to consider in addition to the admitted support for Kerry some of the site owners have indicated. I think pointing to such a far fetched allegation, on your otherwise “neutral site,” speaks for itself.
Son of a gun! http://www.electoral-vote.com/ is back up (10/8/04) and it does, indeed, put Kerry ahead of Bush, 280 to 239! 
Kindasorta. With the usual caveats, reservations and qualifications:
Nothing to it, as it turns out. It involves Gaussian elimination (non-math-geeks: you don’t have to care about that), but this cute little gizmo will do the Gaussian stuff for you, so you don’t have to.
Necessary condition: the poll has to tell you how well the two leading candidates are doing among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. But assuming ity tells you that, you can find the poll’s party ID numbers just by plugging stuff in.
In the following example, I’m using Bush and Kerry as the two leading candidates, but if the same data is available on a Senate race, change the names as appropriate.
The link I’ve provided above has three rows with four boxes for you to fill in per row.
Top row: put 1’s in all four boxes.
For the second and third rows, turn your percentages into decimals. (So when I say ‘%’ below, 85% is .85, not 85.) Then:
Second row, first box: % of Dem vote Bush gets.
Second row, second box: % of GOP vote Bush gets.
Second row, third box: % of Ind vote Bush gets.
Second row, fourth box: % of total vote Bush gets.
Third row, first box: % of Dem vote Kerry gets.
Third row, second box: % of GOP vote Kerry gets.
Third row, third box: % of Ind vote Kerry gets.
Third row, fourth box: % of total vote Kerry gets.
Then the X, Y, and Z boxes at the bottom will give you the % of the sample that identified as Dem, GOP, and Independent.
It’s that easy.
An example:
The most recent Pew poll has Kerry leading 85%-9% among Democrats, Bush leading 90%-3% among Republicans, and Bush leading 42%-39% among independents, for an overall 48%-41% Bush lead.
First row: all 1’s. No matter what.
Bush has 9% of the Dems, 90% of the Reps, and 42% of the Inds in this poll, for 48% total. So the second row is .09, .90, .42, and .48.
Kerry has 85% of the Dems, 3% of the Reps, and 39% of the Inds in this poll, for 41% total. So the third row is .85, .03, .39, and .41.
Plug in those numbers, and it’ll tell you that the Pew poll’s sample had 30.6% Democrats, 33.5% Republicans, and 35.9% Independents.
In my next post, I’ll explain the math behind it. Non-math-geeks can skip right past that part.
We’re simultaneously solving 3 equations in 3 unknowns, which is no big deal. The unknowns are the percentages (in decimal form) of Dems, Reps, and Inds in a given poll’s sample. We’ll call these unknowns D, R, and I, respectively.
One of the three equations is automatic: D+R+I=1: the number of Dems plus the number of Pubbies plus the number of Inds has to add up to 100%. Or (to format it the way we’ll want it later) **1.00D + 1.00R + 1.00I = 1.00. **
The other two depend on the poll’s providing how the vote is split by party. To return to my example of the most recent Pew poll, Bush has 9% of the Dems, 90% of the Reps, and 42% of the Inds in this poll, for 48% total. His 48% total has to be made up of the component pieces: the fraction of Democrats who support him, times the fraction of Democrats in the poll sample, plus fraction of Republicans who support him, times the fraction of Republicans in the poll sample, plus fraction of Independents who support him, times the fraction of Independents in the poll sample.
That shortens to 0.09D + 0.90R + 0.42I = 0.48.
Similarly, Kerry has 85% of the Dems, 3% of the Reps, and 39% of the Inds in this poll, for 41% total. And by the same process, that’s:
0.85D + 0.03R + 0.39I = 0.41.
So that gives us three equations in three unknowns:
1.00D + 1.00R + 1.00I = 1.00
0.09D + 0.90R + 0.42I = 0.48
0.85D + 0.03R + 0.39I = 0.41
In matrix form, that’s
1.00 1.00 1.00 | 1.00
0.09 0.90 0.42 | 0.48
0.85 0.03 0.39 | 0.41
Then you do Gaussian row reduction to get the answers.
Okay. Now, Daniel’s site comes up for me. Indeed, they are interesting numbers.
Still- “too close to call”. Good news for Kerry, yes, but there’s still 25 days until the election, and the lead is hazy and diminutive.
Exactly. We’ve got two more debates, at a minimum, to go through; there’s plenty more news to come out; and who knows what the minor candidates might do that might affect the election.
Daniel