SurveyUSA on Clinton and Obama

[ciphergoth]

I finished work on my screen-scraper for SurveyUSA's head-to-head, state-by-state Presidential election results, so it can now incorporate the latest polls as they're published. Here's the latest scattergram, zoomed in:

(see also the zoomed-out scattergram for the whole picture)

Putting that into the Electoral College, we get a narrow win for Clinton or a less narrow loss for Obama. This reflects what the markets are saying: Betfair give Clinton a 73% chance of taking the Presidency, but Obama only a 55% chance.

I had wondered why the Democratic party hadn't just given up and joined the Obama train; it turns out the answer is Florida, Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Missouri.

Comments

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

New Jersey? (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/05/a-barack-obama.html)

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

New Jersey!

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

See the bar chart - against these results, Obama needs to win New Jersey and North Carolina to take the presidency. NJ is way too close to call; NC is a little harder. Texas would give him a lock on the college, and is way outside Clinton's reach, but those big five are all vital battleground states.

[zotz]

Also . . .

That page lists six polls for NJ, of which Obama is ahead in three and McCain in three. The corresponding page for Clinton vs McCain has her ahead in five out of six. The site also currently estimates an almost-exact draw for Obama vs McCain, but a definite victory for Clinton against McCain, although if anything I would guess (I could very easily be wrong here - it's just an impression) that Tanenbaum would rather Obama won.

[shevek.livejournal.com]

Every time you do something like this, I just sit back and go "wow" and see the world in a whole new light. Thank you. This helps me a lot, especially as I spend so much time over there.

Do you keep an archive of your little toys, or do they just fall into bitrot?

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Wow, thank you for a lovely comment!

I'm embarrassed to say I'm not very good at publishing the code I write, but my plan to fix that is coming together - basically, the plan is that the Mercurial revision control system makes it vastly easier, and work are in favour of this sort of thing so they're hosting a suitable archive. I've already put one, small, Mercurial-related tool up there ( http://hg.opensource.lshift.net/ ), and stuff like this will follow soon I hope. It doesn't feel publishable quite yet.

[cjensen.livejournal.com]

You make the best visualizations ever! Thanks!

Sometimes it feels like the Democratic world is swinging toward Obama pretty hard. So I'm really shocked to see the number of states who are very pro-Clinton vs. McCain but very tepid for Obama over McCain. Especially Mass.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

This is what you get if you use only SurveyUSA data; they seem to be a good company but some of that is pretty out of date. I've just written code to read in the poll aggregate results from http://www.electoralvote.com/ and I get slightly different results:

http://hacks.ciphergoth.org/clinton_v_obama/2008-05-05-electoral-vote/

New Jersey is now in the firmly Democratic column for either candidate. But the margin charts are still showing a clear victory for Clinton and a knife-edged fight for Obama.

[henry_the_cow]

I read that Clinton has promised to cut the already paltry tax on vehicle fuel, so I hope she doesn't win. If we're going to have a president who's a global-warming denier and in the pocket of the oil companies & gas-guzzling masses, let's at least have one who's clearly identified as the enemy instead of one we're "supposed" to like.