Obama gained support nearly everywhere compared with John Kerry in 2004: But in some places the movement was 20 points or more in the other direction. Appalachians and Okies A lot of residents of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee sure didn’t like Obama. Imagine that. Click the map for the NYT interactive slide show.
Entries from November 6th, 2008
A pause from our usual programming
November 5th, 2008, 4:59pm by Sam Wang
I realize that many readers do not share my politics. I’ve attempted to use my judgments, but not my preferences, in the analysis – perhaps with success. My intention was to provide any thinking person with relatively transparent analysis of polling data. So I was pleased to receive this note: “Although our politics are different, [...]
Tags: 2008 Election
A first look at post-election evaluation
November 5th, 2008, 5:58am by Sam Wang
Good morning! First, congratulations to President-elect Barack Obama. It’s a historic day. His campaign inspired millions. But also condolences for his grandmother’s passing – what a loss, and at what a time. Let’s take a quick look at the performance of the Meta-Analysis and my other predictions. Preliminarily, things look quite good. The EV total. [...]
Tags: 2008 Election
Election returns thread
November 4th, 2008, 7:30pm by Sam Wang
Here’s a thread to discuss returns, topics from the Geek’s Guide, and more. 7:59 pm: Watching returns on ABC. TV is an amazingly bad way to get returns. Go to Yahoo.com or dailykos.com. (In the end CNN is quite good.) It’s hard to rely on most states’ returns because partial returns are often so misleading. [...]
Tags: 2008 Election
The wisdom of crowds of crowds
November 4th, 2008, 4:27pm by Sam Wang
Is it time for Meta-Meta-Analysis? A consistent answer emerges!
Tags: 2008 Election
The cheat sheet (a.k.a. Geek’s Guide) is here!
November 4th, 2008, 11:11am by Sam Wang
Confused about what to watch for tonight? Read the cheat sheet! [PDF]. I’ll be using the Geek’s Guide to tracking national returns – which races to watch, a way to identify polling biases, and more. (Note: the map is the estimated mode of the distribution, but the topline estimate is the median.)
Tags: 2008 Election
Final predictions for 2008
November 4th, 2008, 5:06am by Sam Wang
The data are in. It’s time for predictions – with error bands.
Tags: 2008 Election
Make your own personal prediction!
November 4th, 2008, 12:30am by rvdb
(A prediction from Bob Vanderbei. Enter yours in comments!)
Tags: 2008 Election
Accounting for poll biases
November 3rd, 2008, 11:57pm by Sam Wang
Here’s your tool for handling many biases: last-minute swings, the Bradley effect, the cell phone effect – and others as well.
Tags: 2008 Election
InTrade inefficiencies
November 3rd, 2008, 11:06pm by Sam Wang
Electronic markets such as InTrade are driven by polls and arrive at similar probabilities. But a few exceptions offer opportunities.
Tags: 2008 Election



