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August 16, 2004
ELECTORAL PROJECTIONS
Because I'm not just a partisan, I'm also a political junkie... I've taken the liberty of linking to two separate electoral projection sites - and in the interest of fairness, I tried to find one whose authors are writing from the left, and the other whose author seems to be on the right. (How can I tell? Well, I think the essay "21 Reasons Why Bush Will Win" on the front page along with the electoral map might be a slight clue.)
Some of you may have difficulty believing this, but once election night (or even election assessments) comes, I pretty much turn off the partisan and go into pundit mode. It comes from starting my career in campaigns. You get paid for two things: spinning and messaging in public, and unbiased, accurate assessments in private. If you're spinning the expected results instead of telling the candidate the way things really are, you get a reputation as a cheerleader, and you stop getting calls before each campaign season.
So when it comes to calling or predicting the election results, I'm trying to look at every source, every projection, every poll I can. Objectivity matters. It's too early to make any kind of definitive anything, obviously. I'm just presenting you with resources for now. They're linked up in my "Escapades and Tirades" section.
The seemingly left-leaning site is the "Current Electoral Vote Predictor," which you can find here. As of August 16, they're projecting that Kerry has 327 electoral votes, and Bush 211.
The seemingly right-leaning site is "Election Projection," which you can find here. As of August 16, they are also projecting Kerry with 327, and Bush 211.
Read nothing into this about November's results. There are still 11 weeks to go, far too much is up in the air, and anything can happen or change. All we have here are some current projections. In the meantime, I'll make some projections/predictions of my own on Monday night, November 1.
