primary election

Electoral device for choosing a party's candidates for public office. The formal primary system is peculiar to the U.S., where it came into widespread use in the early 20th century. Most U.S. states use it for elections to statewide offices and to the national presidency; in presidential elections, delegates are selected to attend a national convention, where they vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged. A closed-vote primary is restricted to party members; an open-vote primary is open to all voters in the district. Names can be placed on a ballot by an eligible citizen's declaration of candidacy, by nomination at a pre-primary convention, or by a petition signed by a required number of voters. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries political parties in some countries (e.g., the United Kingdom and Israel) adopted similar procedures for the election of the national party leader. Seealso electoral system; party system.

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Formal process by which voters make their political choices on public issues or candidates for public office. The use of elections in the modern era dates to the emergence of representative government in Europe and North America since the 17th century. Regular elections serve to hold leaders accountable for their performance and permit an exchange of influence between the governors and the governed. The availability of alternatives is a necessary condition. Votes may be secret or public. Seealso electoral system, party system, plebiscite, primary election, referendum and initiative.

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Constitutionally mandated process for electing the U.S. president and vice president. Each state appoints as many electors as it has senators and representatives in Congress (U.S. senators, representatives, and government officers are ineligible); the District of Columbia has three votes. A winner-take-all rule operates in every state except Maine and Nebraska. Three presidents have been elected by means of an electoral college victory while losing the national popular vote (Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, and George W. Bush in 2000). Though pledged to vote for their state's winners, electors are not constitutionally obliged to do so. A candidate must win 270 of the 538 votes to win the election.

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Electoral-Vote.com (formally, Electoral Vote Predictor) is a website that analyzes state polls to predict the outcome of U.S. elections. Well known for its color-coded electoral map of the United States, the site was created during the lead-up to the 2004 U.S. Presidential election to predict the winner. The site tries to improve on national polls usually reported in the media by predicting which way each state's electoral vote will go based on statewide polls. U.S. presidents are in fact elected by separate popular elections in each state, rather than direct popular vote of the entire country. The winner of each election receives the state's electoral votes equal to its members of Congress (see Electoral College for details). EV.com's method thus simulates the actual process. Updated throughout the campaign, visitors can see who is "ahead" at any time.

The creator of the website is Andrew S. Tanenbaum, an American computer science professor living and teaching in the Netherlands who goes by the pseudonym "The Votemaster".

2004 Presidential election

The site began operating on May 24, 2004 with a simple map and a few links to other pages. The information available grew over time, though. During the months leading up to the 2004 U.S. Presidential election, the site was updated daily to reflect new state polls. The site was immensely popular, attracting nearly 700,000 daily visitors as election day neared and was the most popular election site in the country, in the top 1,000 Web sites in the world, and in the top 10 blogs in the world.

The main page consisted of a map of the United States with the individual states colored varying degrees of red or blue, based on the polls for that state. For instance, Illinois, a state that was polling strongly for Democrat John Kerry was colored dark blue, whereas Michigan where Kerry's lead polled by a small margin was colored light blue. Analogously, Texas was dark red during the whole campaign, indicating Bush's strong lead there. All of the polling data were provided in multiple formats, including HTML, Excel, and .csv for downloading. Other features included historical data on previous elections, charts and animations showing the polls over the course of time, cartograms and links to hundreds of other pages and external Websites with tables, charts, graphs, and other election data and information.

The main algorithm just used the most recent poll(s) in every state. If two polls came out on the same day, they were averaged. This algorithm used all published polls, including those by partisan pollsters such as Strategic Vision (R) and Hart Research (D). A second algorithm used only nonpartisan polls and averaged all polls during the past three days. A third algorithm used historical data to predict how undecided voters would break. Maps for each of the algorithms were given every day, but the first one got most of the publicity since it was on the main page.

The site's final tracking using algorithm 1 posted on Election Day, November 2 gave 262 electoral votes to John Kerry and 261 to George W. Bush, with 15 tossups. The second algorithm (averaging 3 days worth of nonpartisan polls) gave Kerry 245 and Bush 278 with 15 tossups. The third algorithm (predicting the undecideds) predicted 281 for Kerry and 257 for Bush. The actual vote gave Kerry 252 to Bush's 286. Clearly using nonpartisan polls and averaging a few days worth of polls did best. This algorithm got 47 states plus D.C. right, 1 state (Iowa) wrong, and said New Mexico and Wisconsin were too close to call. The most-recent-poll wins algorithm got 46 right, 4 wrong, and one too close to call.

2006 Midterm election

On September 6, 2006, the site began tracking the 2006 Congressional elections in the Senate. Shortly thereafter, the House of Representatives was added. The map on the site's front page displayed polling for the 2006 Senate races. For House races, the site featured a "Hot House Races" page with links to Wikipedia articles on the candidates, links to the candidates' official websites, and notes on the races. The relatively small number of House election polls as well as 2004's House vote totals were used to project the makeup of the House on the site's front page.. The site correctly predicted the winners in all 33 Senate races.

2008 Presidential, Senate, and House elections

As of late December 2006, the site began its 2008 coverage, which includes the presidential race, all 33 Senate races, and about 40 House races that were close in 2006 and are expected to be highly contested in 2008. For each of the known presidential, senatorial and House candidates, a photo is given, linked to the candidate's Wikipedia entry, along with a brief description of the candidate and race. The site also has four prototype maps, one showing the 2004 presidential election, one showing the governors by state, one showing the senate by state and finally one showing the House delegations by state. No polling data was presented until December 2007 when data on the primaries was presented.

Polling data has been constantly presented each day and analysis given on the likely outcome of the upcoming primaries as well as upcoming trends.

External links

• electoral-vote.com
• "Poll Crazy" http://www.guardian.co.uk/salon/story/0,,1331599,00.html 2004-10-20

References