So I’ve found a neat website that tries to be fairly even in combining various electoral vote polls at http://www.electoral-vote.com/ They seem to do a good job in the summary below explaining the latest polls and such. They also have an RSS feed for those of you who do that, I’ve just started and it’s been pretty cool so far (thanks Totally.
So their most recent map of the US gives Kerry a slight lead:
Interesting that Maine is a battle ground state.. who knew? (Well not me at least) They also mention that it’s possible that Missouri may be the key deciding state this year, so I e-mailed my cousin who teaches at Washington University in St. Loui a note saying ‘Please vote.. that is if you are voting for Kerry, it you’re not.. then don’t bother, it doesn’t make a difference anyways :)’
This website goes on to explain a really weird electoral scenario (all this from this page:
Several people noticed that using the new interactive maps it is easy to produce a tie in the electoral college. In fact, if you look at the map for Aug. 6 and Bush wins Missouri, you have a tie. What is supposed to happen next is described on the Electoral college page, namely, the newly-elected House of Representatives chooses the president, with each state having one vote. To make it easier to see how that would come out with the current House, I have colored the Excel spreadsheet with the state data to indicate which party controls which state delegation. Currently the Republicans control 31, the Democrats control 14, and 5 are tied. While the Democrats have a chance to recapture the majority of seats in the House, they have no chance in the world to capture a majority of the state delegations, especially since a number of the states in the West have one or two (well-entrenched) Representatives. Thus if the electoral college is tied and the House votes, Bush wins. However, all is not lost for the Democrats. The Senate picks the Vice President, so if the Democrats pick up the two seats needed to recapture the Senate, we get a hybrid administration: Bush-Edwards. And don’t forget, the Vice President’s one constitutional power is to cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate. It could get real dicey.
Wow. Bush/Edwards? And you thought the 2000 election was weird?
In browsing around the web I also found this AOL straw poll that gives Bush at 525 Electoral votes.
WTF? What world do they live in? That’s like every state except Vermont and DC.
Upon further inspection the reason behind this skewed map is apparent:
AHHHH… ok so that explains it.. anyone stupid enough to still be using AOL, and to actually use AOL as a their news source.. and to take part in their straw polls.. that’s gotta be a pretty select herd of idiots.. no wonder a majority of them vote for Bush.
[ducking from flames from my AOL using friends]
Actually.. for any of you who do use AOL still.. go vote in this silly poll and see if you can turn the tide 🙂 I notice some states are very very close.
Or better yet.. just snicker at the biased optimism of the Republican AOL users.. yeah guys, Bush has got it all locked up. In fact, you don’t even need to go out and vote. Don’t worry about it. 🙂
Ok enough partisan comments from me for the day.
-Matt