New Mexico

General Election Tracker - June 12

June 12, 2008 by admin

This is the DemConWatch General Election Tracker, a summary of the best election projections on the web.

We will be introducing House and Senate trackers later this month.

Update 6/12: Updated OpenLeft, 538 and Electoral-Vote.com

Obama Average: 275.3 (was 275.2), some Indiana movement for McCain, Colorado and Wisconsin movement for Obama.

Here are the states that span 3 categories:

Connecticut: Electoral-vote.com has it as a toss-up - that won't last.

Florida: NBC and CNN have it as a tossup, but Electoral-vote.com has it as Strong McCain. Expect everybody to move to McCain-Lean for now.

Indiana: Only Frontloading HQ still has it as a toss-up, but NPR has it as Strong McCain. If Obama can keep this state in McCain-Lean, that's a good sign in a state that Kerry lost by 21%.

New Mexico: OpenLeft has it as Obama-Lean, CNN at McCain-Lean

North Dakota - Two have it as tossup - that won't last.

Map showing consensus of sources. Wisconsin moves back to Obama.

General Election Tracker - June 11

June 11, 2008 by admin

This is the DemConWatch General Election Tracker, a summary of the best election projections on the web.

We will be introducing House and Senate trackers later this month.

Update 6/11: Updated OpenLeft, Frontloading and Electoral-Vote.com

Obama Average: 275.2 (was 277.8), due in large part to 3 projections moving South Carolina from Tossup to McCain-Lean, which was due to a new Rasmussen Poll showing McCain with a 48-39 lead. As we expected, the tossups didn't hold.Which removes South Carolina from the list of states spanning 3 categories. We still have:

Connecticut: Electoral-vote.com has it as a toss-up - that won't last.

Florida: NBC and CNN have it as a tossup, but Electoral-vote.com has it as Strong McCain. Expect everybody to move to McCain-Lean for now.

Indiana: Three have it as a toss-up, but NPR has it as Strong McCain. If Obama can keep this state in McCain-Lean, that's a good sign in a state that Kerry lost by 21%.

New Mexico: OpenLeft has it as Obama-Lean, CNN at McCain-Lean

General Election Tracker

June 9, 2008 by admin

This is the DemConWatch General Election Tracker, a summary of the best election projections on the web.

We will be introducing House and Senate trackers later this month.

Update 6/9: Added CNN and NPR.

Obama Average: 277.8 (was 281.0) - due to inclusion of CNN at 273.4 and NPR at 266.1, the first estimate under 270.

As we've got 7 projections now, we have some serious divergence of opinion on some states. One thing we'll start to look at are the states that span 3 categories:

Connecticut: Electoral-vote.com has it as a toss-up - that won't last.

Florida: NBC and CNN have it as a tossup, but Electoral-vote.com has it as Strong McCain. Expect everybody to move to McCain-Lean for now.

Indiana: Three have it as a toss-up, but NPR has it as Strong McCain. If Obama can keep this state in McCain-Lean, that's a good sign in a state that Kerry lost by 21%.

New Mexico: OpenLeft has it as Obama-Lean, CNN at McCain-Lean

North Dakota - Two have it as tossup - that won't last.

South Carolina - Three have it as tossup - that won't last either.

Map showing consensus of sources:

Sunday with the Senators: A Primer

June 8, 2008 by admin

BACKGROUND: There are 100 voting members of the US Senate, 2 from each state in the Union. (And if you think “Oh, EVERYBODY knows that”, very sadly, no, they do not.) The Senate is broken into three classes: I, II, and III, based on which year they are up for election. Theoretically, that means that there are either 33 or 34 seats up each even year. However, this year, there are 35 Senate seats up for election, due to people having been appointed to fill the seat of others (due to death or retirement).

In the political world, people talk in terms of “Safe” “Favoured” “Lean” and “Toss-Up” seats. The seats normally refer to the party holding the seat. So a safe Democratic seat means “we can run a Styrofoam cup for that seat and we’ll hold it against the Republicans.” The other designations refer to a combination of poll results, history of who and/or which party has held the seat, and a sense of how sure “they” are about who will win the seat.