Princeton Election Consortium

Here’s a great resource – a compilation of early voting numbers. It’s amazing. Compared with the total number of people who voted in 2004, about half that number have already voted in seven states: CO, GA, NV, NM, NC, OR, and TN. Many more states are close behind. Hats off to Prof. Michael P. McDonald [...]

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Tomorrow afternoon at 1:20pm Eastern, Josh Gold and I will be on the Leonard Lopate Show to talk about the neuroscience of being undecided. I’m told there will also be someone from the Pew Center to talk about polling. Tune in – WNYC, 93.9 FM, 820 AM, and online streaming audio.

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In the wee hours tonight, one of you will make the 1,000,000th view of this site. That’s on a par with the traffic I received in 2004, when the Meta-Analysis was just a single page of HTML. Compared with 2004, more of you have responded to my suggestion that knife-edge situations are the most efficient [...]

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Today’s New York Times is a target-rich environment for a brain geek. In addition to my own op-ed on the brains of undecided voters, there’s an op-ed by David Brooks on irrational decision-making in financial markets. All decisions, all the time. And for my second geek, there’s the piece on polling analysis (in which I [...]

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In Tuesday’s New York Times, Joshua Gold and I have an op-ed on the neuroscience of being an undecided voter. It draws upon themes found in my book Welcome To Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys But Never Forget How To Drive. Full text, with scientific references, after the jump.

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This morning I’ll be on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles. Air time: 8:20 am Pacific.

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(Updated to reflect the effect of Senator Stevens’s conviction today. A Begich win over Stevens would make a 59-41 split even more likely. -Sam) The voting makeup of next year’s Congress is a simple sum of votes, and therefore poses an easier estimation problem than the Presidential race. Many other sites give just the average [...]

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As I’ve written many times, you should never get too concerned with a single poll. But what about the flip side – can you trust aggregates of polls? The answer is yes. In Presidential and Congressional elections since 2000, the general approach I advocate has an exceptionally good track record. Simple meta-analysis of polls should [...]

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There’s just so many posts like this a guy can write. Today, Obama is still crushing McCain. Still. Crushing. McCain. The Popular Meta-margin is approximately Obama +7.5%. It would take that much shift in state polls to make the Median EV Estimator a 269-269 dead heat. The national margin is Obama +7.0+/-1.1% (n=10, surveys spanning [...]

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