The site has a new feature - timelines for the 2008 Republican and Democratic Primaries.  These pages show a summary of all the contests in chronological order, including vote percentages, estimated delegates, winning candidates, summary national map, pie charts, and county-map icons.  Links are provided for each state summary results page.  The timelines will automatically update following each event.

I have created a new method for posting election results in Blogs - an interactive election map “widget” - a small snipet that can be placed in the code section of a blog post. The map has mouse-over interactivity, including a county-level imagemap with the floating text box of results plus links to more detailed returns. Below is an example comparing the 2004 General Election Result in South Carolina to the 2008 Republican Primary in South Carolina.

The link for this code may be seen by clicking on the link titled “Blog Interactive Map Widget Code for this Contest” in the “Election Tools” section of any state (or national) summary page. The code can then be placed in an uselectionatlas.org weblog post (note in order to use this widget, you need to enable the pageview plugin on the “Plugins” tab in the admin section of you weblog. At this time, this widget can’t be used on other weblogs since iframes are generally not permitted using most blogging software.

The Primary Predictions for the GOP and Democratic nomination contests have been up for a few weeks. Although these features greatly simplify the (very complex) process, they provide an interesting excercise in running scenarios in the present dynamic environment. The prediction for the state of Iowa is closing at noon (EST) on January 3 - so, if you want to get complete primary predictions in, be sure to do prior to that time. Predictions for contests held in other states will close at noon (Eastern) of the day in which the respective election or caucus is held.

I have found 12,301 votes cast in the 1940 General Election that have not been tabulated in any secondary source that I have looked at (including Congressional Quarterly and Clerk of the House).

In my annual drive between Eastern Massachusetts and Upstate New York, I often stop into a very deep repository of past election data - the New York State Library in Albany to collect additional past election data. This trip was a bit different, as I spent some time four floors above the library in the New York State Archives. Here, they have many original hand-written and typed records of election returns. Among the new data that I collected, was a sheet of write-in returns for the State of New York for the office of President in 1940. The document, titled “Statement of scattering vote cast as the General Election for Electors of President and Vice-President”, tabulated 12,301 write-ins for President. These votes include 11,289 for Communist Party candidate Earl Browder, 121 votes for Socialist Labor candidate John Aiken, and 891 votes for scattered write-ins. The vast majority of these write-in votes were recorded in the New York City boroughs of Bronx, Kings, and New York, where Browder received about 0.5% of the vote in these Counties as a write-in. The document only includes write-ins for 12 of New York’s 62 counties. Some of the larger counties, such as Erie, are absent, so it is likely that there are even more votes for Browder that are uncounted. These votes will soon be added to the Atlas election results database.

I was contacted this week by a reporter from the Austin American-Statesman newspaper in Austin, TX with a question about a story that they are working on. He wants to present a data that can visually represent the relevance of the Texas Primary to the Presidential nominating process. Texas holds its primary on the old “Super Tuesday”, March 4, 2008 - after 35 other states have already held their contests (20 states - give or take - now vote on a single day, February 5, 2008, a date that has been dubbed “Super Duper Tuesday”). The Republicans allocate 65% of their delegates prior to March 4 and the Democrats allocate 55% (the Democratic number is a reduced due to the penalty applied to Michigan and Florida for violating party rules by placing their nomination contests prior to February 5. These two states have been stripped of all delegates. The Republican number is reduced due to the penalty applied to Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Wyoming for violating party rules. The delegate count for these states has been reduced by half.)

In response to this request, I have created an additional feature - on each of the polling state summary pages, there is a new section that shows the number of delegates awarded prior to the date on which the state-under-view holds its contest. In addition, a new graph shows the projected delegate count for the top candidates as allocated by the states holding primaries and caucuses earlier than the given state. This graph also shows the projected delegate standing as a function of time - as the polling data evolves with the campaigns.

If the line representing the leading candidate is above the bold win line (half-delegates + 1), then the state contest is no longer relevant, otherwise, the delegates awarded for the state contest are helping to determine the party nominee. Currently, the Texas Democratic Primary and the Texas Republican Primary are both relevant, as no candidate has exceeded the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination prior to March 4. These charts will be updated as the campaign unfolds.

Projected Delegate Allocation Prior to this Contest:

The Atlas Weblog system has been upgraded to Wordpress Mu - a scaleable blogging system for multiple users. Please send me a note if you have an interest in publishing your own free weblog on this site. The system also includes custom pages and will support your own weblog ads, if desired.

Prediction scripts are now available for the 2008 Senate Election and the 2008 Gubernatorial contests (joining the already-available 2008 Presidential Predictions. The 2006 Senate aggregate prediction called 32 of 33 contests correctly - only missing Virginia. The 2006 Gubernatorial aggregate prediction called 35 of 36 contests correctly - only missing in Minnesota. Give a try at election prognostication! Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, the Atlas operating system software and core services were upgraded. This included the core OS, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Please submit a bug if you happen to find that any of the site features were broken by this upgrade. Many thanks and enjoy!

With all the clamoring amongst the states to move primary contests to the front of the line, the Atlas has decided to leapfrog them all, unveiling today the 2008 Presidential Primary Mock Election contests: the 2008 Republican Mock Election and 2008 Democratic Mock Election. The Atlas Mock Elections in each state are set up as open primaries (meaning that any registered voter of any party affiliation may cast a ballot in either the Democratic or Republican primary). In the real primary and caucus system, each state sets the rules for participation:

• Open primaries allow voters of any party affiliation to vote
• Modified open primaries allow independent or unaffiliated voters as well as those affiliated with the party holding the election contest
• Closed primaries limit the participants to those registered with the party holding the election contest

The allocation of delegates for the Atlas Mock Primaries are modeled after the rules for each state - typically awarding delegates proportional to the popular vote in a given state or via winner-take-all (the same system as 48 states and the District of Columbia use in the general election to award Presidential Electors). In the real primary system, a certain set of delegates are allocated via the vote in congressional districts - this level of detail has been omitted on the Atlas mock election - where all the district delegates are awarded as part of the “at large” group. Overall, the primary process is quite complex.

Go now and cast your ballot!