The Atlas Electoral College Calculator has been a very popular feature on the site. One of the alternate uses of the tool has been to create maps for discussion on the forum (such as what-if scenarios, predictions, etc.). A common feature request for the calculator is to show popular vote percentages of the winning candidate as different shades of red and blue (and green) in the same manner as presented with the Atlas results maps. This functionality has now been added to the calculator. The user has an option to turn the feature on or off in the Map Options box (in the off-state, the map generator simply ignores the percentages shown in the boxes). The name has also been changed from the Electoral College Calculator to the Electoral College Calculator and Map Generator.

Yesterday saw the debut of the new mock election. A signficant improvment over the one that I hosted in 2000, the mock election tracks results via data, maps, and statistics in all US States as well as Canadian Provinces, European and other countries. Either the free or paid levels of site membership is required in order to participate in the mock election.

I have put a lot of work into trying to solve several shortcomings with the popular User Prediction feature. The problems have been the following:

• Lack of the ability to predict individual Congressional Districts in Nebraska and (especially) Maine.
• User annoyance for Members of managing multiple logins and passwords
• The presence of some degree of spamming by some users
• Due to ip limitations to control spamming, the inability of some legitimate users to create predictions

I have attempted to address all of these issues with today’s upgrade. The User Prediction section now has the ability to call and change results for individual congressional districts in those states that choose electors by congressional district (Maine and Nebraska). The compiled median results also support these individual electoral votes.

Members no longer have to choose username and password (essentially the ability to skip step 1). Once members have logged into the site, the software automatically recognizes their prediction. For those many site visitors and predictors, I have created a new Free version of site membership. This “User” level of membership allows for creating and updating user predictions, posting comments to polls, and participating in the soon-to-be-launched mock election. The one hassle, however (and I apologize in advance), is the need to register. This process also includes a email-verification step in an attempt to limit spamming.

Current predictions can be completely upgraded to the new format (all versions) – individual congressional districts are called for the same candidate as the currently-chosen statewide winner. The process is:
1. If you have not signed up, please do so here.
2. Then, upgrade your user prediction here

Please submit a bug if there are any problems.

The Electoral College Calculator has been well-received! Its even now featured on one of the support sites for Wesley Clark (http://www.us4clark.com/). Atlas visitors have also submitted several suggestions for improvements. Without losing the elegant simplicity of the current EV calculator, I’ve added a second, “deluxe” version that can be viewed via the link in the 2004 section. This version includes a dynamic bar graph showing the totals of each democratic, republican, and tossup electoral votes with the all-important 270 EV milestone. In addition, the page features the ability to generate a map from your state selections. Play around with it and let me know what you think. Note that the current state polygons of the generated map are only the first-draft. The rough-edges will be refined in due time. The same functionality will eventually be ported to the user prediction section to help alleviate the upload problems that have been plaguing PC users.