The preliminary (100% precincts reporting) data from the Kentucky Gubernatorial election is in. You can find the county map and data in the Gubernatorial section of the web site. It is a solid win for Fletcher (R) who leads in the unofficial tally 55% – 45% over democrat A. B. Chandler. I have not yet found preliminary county-level results for Mississippi.
Voted!
I cast my ballot this evening! Positions for Alderman and School Board were all that were on the ballot here. The city bought new optical ballot-reading machines (each paper ballot was about 8 1/2 x 15!) to replace the old lever machines that were used last year. It felt a bit like I was taking a high-school test… filling out little ovals (albeit with a pen instead of a #2 pencil). Overall, I believe the paper ballot read by optical-scanning machines to be an excellent system. Very accurate (especially relative to punch-cards), much faster to count than standard paper ballots, and a (sizable) paper receipt in the event of a need to recount or examine the election.
Vote!
Tomorrow is Election Day! Although most states do not have high-level offices up for election (exceptions being the Governor’s races in Kentucky and Mississippi. Note that the Louisiana Gubernatorial election runoff is on Nov 15th), many local races such as school board, aldermen, etc. are taking place tomorrow. Such off-elections traditionally have significantly lower turnout – and consequently individual votes can have a greater impact on the results. I encourage you to learn about the local offices up for election and the candidates interested in filling those positions – and then go to the polls! You can find information on voting in your particular state (offices, candidates, polling locations, sample ballots, etc.) at the Secretary of State (or equivalent agency) website. You can find a link to these websites on the Links page.
Electoral College Calculator
I was recently asked about a web-based interactive electoral college calculator. Such an application allows the visitor to dynamically color states “blue”, “red” (or “green”) to simulate various electoral college scenarios for one’s favorite candidate. I believe that this would be an excellent feature – one that could further be used in “what-if” scenarios of past elections. Unfortunately, I currently do not know how to implement such a feature. If you have knowlege in this area, please send me some tips.
In the meantime, there does exist an Electoral College Calculator at Gray Raven Ventures . This is an embedded java application. It loaded slowly on my machine, but once there was very responsive. It allows for four candidates (and they have chosen the media’s recent “standard” of blue for Democrats and red for Republicans). The map is a bit crude, but practical. It presently requires that one choose the state first, and then click on the party that you want to award its electoral votes to. This requires signficantly more clicks and mouse-movement to complete a scenario (a faster version would allow a user to choose a party and then fill all the states for that party). It also has an advanced feature to enter split electoral votes – if, for example, you would like to award one of Maine’s CDs to a different party from the statewide winner.
Perhaps the best feature is that you can manipulate this map to run “what-if” scenarios. On the left side is the ability to display the results from election (1789 through 2000). You may then change the winner of various states to see how this would have affected the outcome!
Update:Warning, This application locked my Netscape 7 browser and required me to reboot.
The Swing State Project
Here is an interesting site, called the Swing State Project. The site examines the swing states, defined as votes in 2000 for (Gore + Nader) – (Bush + Buchanan) < ±10%. They have used the data provided here for the determination of the swing states. Note the familiar map – and thanks for the compliment 🙂
New Threads in Old Forum
I have disabled the ability to create new threads in the old forum pages. Please start all new discussions in the new forum environment. Thanks.
New Forum!
I have installed a new forum based on the php/mysql open-source implemenation YABB SE. This will be a little painful, as you will need to reregister to use the new forum. Also, I don’t yet know of a way to import the old threads and posts.
There are a number of reasons for upgrading:
– more features!
– better reliability (old forum has a bug that “loses” threads)
– easier to remove problem posters
– hopefully faster!
– Party/Home State Avatars! (will be uploaded soon).
I encourage you to migrate to the new forum soon because I will begin locking threads in the old forum. I will keep it around only as an archive. Please feel free (as always) to provide feedback and comment on the new implementation.
Maine Maps
I just discovered a small error in the Maine county map boundaries for the elections 1980 – 2000. It turns out that the town of Otisfield seceded from Cumberland County in 1978 and joined Oxford County. I have now refelected this border change in the appropriate maps.
It appears to be a very rare occurance for towns to switch counties. I don’t know of another example for New England towns in the 20th Century. In 1890, New Shoreham, RI (Block Island) changed from Newport to Washington County. Anyone know of other examples?
California Recall!
Well, the California Recall is over. Preliminary results are in and it appears to be a solid victory for the recall and for Schwarzenegger. The top republican challenger received 47.8% of the overall vote and carried 50 of California’s 58 counties – including the populous counties of Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Riverside, and Sacramento. Interestingly, Schwarzenegger actually received slightly more votes than “no” votes on the recall (subject to change as more votes are tallied). Schwarzenegger’s best showing was in Sutter County (64.5%)
Bustamante’s support was limited to the San Francisco Bay area (although he lost Contra Costa County by a slight 0.44%). Bustamante’s best showing was in San Francisco (63.4%).
McClintock placed a solid third with 13.2% (he placed second in eight counties and fourth in one). His best showing was Stanislaus County with 23.9%. It appears that many of the more conservative counties opted for the more socially liberal Schwarzenegger over the more conservative McClintock.
Camejo placed fourth with 2.8% – barely half of his showing in 2002. His best county was Humboldt with 7.2%.
Overall, three counties were won with < 40% of the vote – Bustamante in Mendocino , Schwarzenegger in Contra Costa and Napa.
Note that it will take many days for all the ballots to be counted. A final tally will be posted on the site following the certification of the vote by the California Secretary of State.
CA Recall Ready!
The files for the 2003 California Recall are now available. You may access them through the link below the “Special Features” heading on the home page. I plan to have the preliminary unofficial results posted early Wednesday morning. I won’t be a “real-time” source of data… but will have nice graphs and maps. Please feel free to comment on the implementation… I still have a little time to make modifications.