Monday, November 01, 2004

Slate Breaks It Down

Slate’s Electoral College estimates have been all over the map, literally. Last night, their map showed a Kerry landslide with both Ohio and Florida colored a lovely shade of blue. This morning, those states shifted to Bush, only to be split this afternoon, with Kerry taking Florida and Bush taking Ohio (for a tie 269-269.)

Slate’s exasperation about the constant flux of the numbers is pretty funny, actually. So what they’ve decided to do is take an average of Bush’s numbers in the swing states and, assuming his level of support on Election Day does not exceed his pre-Nov. 2nd polling, they’ve charted the likelihood that Bush will win each state as well as the Electoral College ramifications thereof.

Interestingly, this method confirms that the race is really down to Ohio and Florida. It shows that Bush is more likely to win Ohio than Florida and more likely to win Florida than Wisconsin. So if Bush wins his most likely states up to and including Ohio, Kerry wins 286-252, but if Bush also wins the next most likely state, Florida, Bush wins 279-259. Also, confirmed within this estimate is the idea that Kerry can win with either Ohio or Florida but Bush needs both of them to win.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home