The 2010 Endorsements scripts for US Senate and for Governor have been upgraded to provide the ability for other members to comment on your endorsements. All existing endorsements are defaulted to comments off. To enable comments on your endorsements, simply update your endorsements map (no changes to actual endorsements is required), and, when you reach step 2 (after the map is generated) check “Yes” on the option to allow other members to comment on your endorsements.

The Atlas results database has been upgraded to support the event in which two U.S. Senate races occur in the same year from the same state. The term “class” has been added to distinguish between the elections. There are three U.S. Senate classes that alternate every two years - repeating every six. 2010 is a class 3 election. There also happen to be three Special Elections that are also taking place on November 2, 2010 - Delaware (Class 2), West Virginia (Class 1), and New York (Class 1). Delaware and West Virginia do not have a Class 3 Senate seat, and therefore have only one contest on November 2. New York, however, does have a Class 3 Senate seat and has two Senate contests on Nov 2. To support this, I’ve upgraded all general election contests from 1990 through 2010 - and all the past special two-senate-from-one-state contests not previously included in the results menus are now available. These include 1992 CA & ND, 1994 TN, 1996 KS, 2008 MS & WY and 2010 NY.

The 2010 General Election endorsements for U.S. Senate and Governor are open for use. Choose whom you consider to be the best candidates for the job in all Senate and Gubernatorial contests.

The map at the right shows a small version of the statewide results in Washington of the 2008 General Election for President by precinct (Obama in Red, McCain in Blue). This was made possible because the Washington Secretary of State has posted all the precinct-level GIS shape files. Most of the shape files line up with the county precinct data (although there are a number of discrepancies). The map link to the right brings you to the forum topic discussion on the 2008 Presidential Results by Precinct in Washington. The maps provide a very detailed geographic breakdown of the results, clearly showing the urban-rural split that has developed between the Republican and Democratic regions of support. Additional tweaking of the map is planned to incorporate the closest match to precinct boundaries used in the 2008 General Election for several counties.

The preliminary (unofficial) results of the 2010 Massachusetts Special Senate Election are available. In a surprise, Republican candidate Scott Brown defeated Democratic candidate Martha Coakley 52% to 47%. This result is actually very similar to the 2002 Gubernatorial Election Result where Mitt Romney defeated Shannon O’Brien by 5 percentage points (50% - 45%). Also, interestingly, the voter turnout for the snowy January 19 Special Election actually exceeded the turnout in both the 2002 and 2006 General Elections (preliminary figures show 2,249,026 votes in the special election vs. 2,194,179 votes in the 2002 General Election and 2,219,779 votes in the 2006 General Election).

The 2010 Gubernatorial Election polls database and pages are now online. Follow the evolution of support for the candidates in the top state executive office. Use the information to help tune your 2010 Gubernatorial Predictions. The 2010 U.S. Senate polls database and pages are forthcoming as development continues to incorporate support for two elections in the state of New York.

A very popular feature of The Atlas community are the Election Predictions. For 2010, the Gubernatorial and Senatorial election predictions are now online and active. A new feature this year adds the ability to predict the special election in states where the primary seat is already up for election. In addition, there is a new column in the prediction table that shows the status of the contest (for example: Open Republican seat or Democratic Incumbent running for reelection). So have a hand at electoral prognostication!

The 2008 data files for US President, US Senate, US House of Representatives, and Governors have been updated - these mostly include updates to Massachusetts - which only recently released “Public Document #43 - Massachusetts Election Statistics” - the only official data to the city and town level.  The files also include several corrections to the official data discovered during compilation of precinct returns. These files are available for immediate download on your myatlas page (for previously purchased files.

A new 2008 voter registration and turnout file is also now available on the store page.

The 2009 Gubernatorial interactive features of Predictions, Polls, and Endorsements are now available. There are only two races this year - in New Jersey and Virginia.

The 2008 New York Presidential General Election township map is now complete. . The precinct data was collected by contacting each of the 57 (non-New York City) Counties individually. The precinct data was aggregated by City and Town to produce this map.

Obama was victorious in 372 cities and towns to McCain’s 623 (there were two ties). However, Obama’s 372 victories were in places of considerably higher population - those 372 cities and towns cast 5,961,925 votes for Presidential Candidates, whereas in McCain’s 623 cities, and towns, a far less 1,679,564 votes were cast.

Relative to 2004, Obama increased Democratic victories by 154 (a 70% increase), many of the Republican-to-Democratic flips were in Upstate suburbs, the North Country (Northern Adirondacks and Quebec border), and in the Catskill region. Three towns flipped from Kerry to McCain (Throop (Cayuga), Brant (Erie), and Sangerfield (Oneida)).