October 8, 2004
Blog electoral predictions – and the eve of the end of days
I woke up this morning imagining it’s election night. As soon as polls have closed in each state, the networks are busy projecting the results based on their exit polls. “With 2% of the vote in, ABC is calling Pennsylvania for Kerry, 52% to 48%.” You know, that type of thing. But as the night wears on, the networks have to eat their predictions with an unusual frequency. “We’ve got a change. With 35% of precincts reporting, we are now moving Pennsylvania into the Republican camp, 53% for Bush, 46% for Kerry, and 2% for Nader.” One after another, states are flipped.
And then the networks begin to notice that some of the flips occurred where the electronic voting machines were doing the tabulation.
The Democrats, no longer shy about pursuing electoral matters vigorously through the courts, demand recounts wherever e-voting was used. The most basic pillar of democracy — that the electoral process is honest — has been toppled. Three months later, the matter is still in the courts and the people are in the streets.
Now, onto something more fun. Mathew Gross, the former lead Dean blogger, has asked bloggers to take a guess, before the 2nd debate, at what the final electoral tally will be. I ran historic and current polling data at the precinct level through my simulation software. Then I ignored the results and took the following wild-ass guess:
Popular vote*:
Bush: 64.3%
Kerry: 51.8%
Nader: 1.1%*
Electoral vote:
Bush: 275
Kerry: 262
Nader: 0
*Numbers do not add up to 100% because of over-enthusiastic e-voting machines.