Does my new chart make sense?

[ciphergoth]

Imagine for a moment that it's 2:30 AM London time on November 5th and like me, you've stayed up late to watch the US elections. Six states have been called so far: Vermont and Virginia for Obama, and Indiana, Georgia, South Carolina and Kentucky for McCain. You go to my election page and see this diagram:

Does it make sense to you? How could I improve it?

thanks!

Update: wow, a flood of very helpful comments, thanks so much, keep them coming!

Comments

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

Makes sense to me.

The only minor thing I wasn't clear about was e.g. whether the swing in Virginia was predicted by the polls (are the results going as expected), but to be honest, I'm not sure that type of information could be included without reducing the clarity of the chart.

Am I correct in thinking that the chart currently predicts an Obama win by 4 votes in the electoral college ?

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I'd do a separate chart for how the polls did against reality; I have scattergram software for drawing that.

Forgot to answer your other question - no, this chart, in the (so far) invented scenario I describe, predicts an Obama win by 95 points. The colour of the states just indicates how they went in 2004; it's which side of the midline they are that indicates how they are predicted to go this time.

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

Ah right, yes. Bit of a braino on my part there...

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Not at all, just a useful indicator of what I need to do to make the chart clearer!