Electoral-Vote.com guy is 'coming out' tomorrow. Guess who it is!

[requiem99]

Make guesses here!

My guess, since it has to be someone stupid AND a democrat due to his shitty methodology and the fact he has admitted to being a Kerry supporter... I have no idea. Your guess is as good as mine!

Edit: He has said, and I quote, "Tomorrow is the big day when the Votemaster comes out of the closet into broad daylight." -- He made a similar comment on Friday, so I think he is someone we already know.

EDIT 2: I am NOT saying Kerry supporters are stupid for the love of fucking god what the hell is wrong with you people calling me a freeper? I'm going to the polls at 7am just like most of the rest of you and I'm bringing a camera to catch any shit, so stop questioning my support of our man just because I said ONE SINGLE PERSON was stupid due to his horrible website. GOD.

[loathesomeshrub]

1. Why does it have to be someone stupid????

[Bombtrack]

7. because his or her methodology is totally and completely naive and idiotic

they pick and chose 1 poll to switch a state completley. And they pick them at their discretion. They don't look at a state as a composite of polls as one should. And they call states within the margin of error when the whole point of the margin of error is to see that often something is a tossup that's unproductive too call.

[petepillow]

16. I think E-Vote makes their methodology pretty clear.

they also explain why results looks fishy, if you read the daily blog. there's much to be learned by digging deep into the site. it's not definitive and all-inclusive, it's a reference point for political junkies. and a pretty well-done one at that for average people who are looking for explanations of all these arbitrary polls flying about the press this year.

i don't know, perhaps you've done a better daily running compilation of polls? if so please include a link. there's no perfect way to do it, after all. perhaps you should send YOUR solution to e-vote.com.

[bullimiami]

8. because his methodology is bozoic, (nt)

[Lex]

11. LOL! "bozoic"

:thumbsup:

[Bozos for Bush]

17. Hey, I take offense to that LOL

Clowns have feelings too! lol

[NDFan]

2. Huh? nt

[phish420]

26. yeah...huh? nt

[Nicholas_J]

3. Election projection also has Kerry winning

Plus the fact thaqt the incumbent always ends up getting fewer votes than the last polls indicate, both nationally and in state polls, as well as the fact that Zogby's new polls calling cell phones has Kerry fifteen points head of Bush is bad news for Bush, since now there areas many cell phone owners as home phone owners. This method of polling has been totally disregarded up until this poll, and is likely to add a totally new factor to the polling data.

[Mojambo]

4. Hmmm

I...just...don't...care.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Bombtrack]

13. saying a democrat can be stupid makes you a freeper?

I haven't remembered other posts from requiem but this thread does not make an indication of him or her being a freeper.

Electoral-vote.com is an idiotic site and I've been saying that for a long time. Back in between conventions and before when they had Kerry up by 100 EVs I was saying it and everybody else who believed it just got their hopes up way too high because of it.

[Bozos for Bush]

6. Freeper alert? (n/t)

[harpo]

9. its a repuke...don't believe their crap site

[DianeG5385]

10. Rush Limbaugh

Trying to make us dems feel over confident. We only win if we vote! Poll have generally been wrong. How determined are we? How strongly do we feel about the direction of our country??? Remember we are doing this to make this country better for the freeps as well. They know not what they do, they have been brainwashed!

[requiem99]

12. Hey, read my post before you call me a freeper. Sheesh!

[Bozos for Bush]

18. Well perhaps you need a 3rd edit

I for one believe Democrat's methodology is every bit as good as neo-cons.

[requiem99]

21. In general Democrat methodology is BETTER because we're reality based

But in THIS case its bad. BAD.

[petepillow]

14. what the hell are you talking about?

why stupid? what has he done that's bad? i don't understand your beef with the electoral-vote person. he/she has vigilantly kept a daily educational, informative, and i feel, relatively bipartisan log of the polls in a way that's easy to understand. the site has proved a useful outlet for students, instructors, and average people like myself to follow how the polls translate to the electoral college. from what i can tell, this has been a service to the public and well done at that.

anyways, i am curious to know who it is. i think DU should be very grateful to this person because he/she has publicly been on our side, while at the same time has maintained a neutral integrity that many biased asshole commentators could never project.

in a way, the E-V.com person is a hero of sorts.

[requiem99]

15. Here is why the site is bad:

Taking the latest poll without using the brain you were given to weed out partisan pollers, outliers, and not averaging polls at all to show the "Daily Map" that 95+ percent of people don't go farther than on the site, thus giving an incorrect picture of the election standing, all the while touting your site as having "the clear picture of who is ahead" is just simple and complete bullshit, and the guy running it should be properly ashamed of himself, hard work or not.

[Bozos for Bush]

19. I do agree however that his red/blue states seem to flip flop a lot

I'm sure he will work hard to come up with a better site in 2008...at least I hope he does, since I visit his site everyday.

[harpo]

20. hear hear !!!

:puke:

[gottaB]

27. Those aren't convincing arguments

averaged results: http://www.electoral-vote.com/fin/oct31z.html

using his brain to make a projection: http://www.electoral-vote.com/pred/index.html

The links are right there under the map. So he's a dummy because people don't click the links? I don't think so.

Also, I don't see the claim that he's giving "the clear picture of who is ahead," nor can I even find on that site the phrases "clearest picture," "clearer picture" or "clear picture."

His claim is to "track the election via the electoral college with a red state/blue state map of the US updated daily using the latest state polls."

It seems to me you're putting a lot of hard work into criticizing this site for not being what you want it to be.

[foo_bar]

28. you're right about the garbage in garbage out aspect

But e-v is just reporting what's out there. It would be nice to see Likely Voter fudge factors for cell phones and reverse psychology, but no one knows what they are yet. You can't just weed out datapoints you don't like without some sort of corrective bias.

[ima_sinnic]

22. whois says:

Domain Name: ELECTORAL-VOTE.COM

Administrative Contact -
E Piner - [e-mail]
electoral-vote.com
Brooklyn
Brooklyn, NY 11229
US
Phone - (718)3397044
Fax -
Technical Contact -
E Piner - [e-mail]
electoral-vote.com
Brooklyn
Brooklyn, NY 11229
US
Phone - (718)3397044
Fax -
Billing Contact -
E Piner - [e-mail]
electoral-vote.com
Brooklyn
Brooklyn, NY 11229
US
Phone - (718)3397044
Fax -

Record updated date - 2004-07-27 23:08:29
Record created date - 2004-05-26
Record expiring on - 2005-05-26
Database last updated on - 2004-09-20 19:17:52 EST

Domain servers in listed order:

DNS1.HRNOC.NET 216.120.225.19
DNS2.HRNOC.NET 216.120.238.25

https://registrar.godaddy.com/whois.asp?isc=&se=%2B&from_app=&mscssid=&pl_id=1&prog_id=GoDaddy&domain=electoral%2Dvote%2ECOM

:shrug: anybody we know? :shrug:

[realcountrymusic]

23. Oh come on -- let's keep our focus

1) E-V.com is definitely not a "stupid" project. the guy who runs it (if it IS a guy) has done a real public service, whether you agree with his (her) "methodology" or not. the site is a quick way to get almost all of the very most recent state poll numbers, and it has an over-arching "GOTV" message. The webmaster wrote his/her own program to crunch the numbers (I'd like to see some of the "smart" critics of the site try that themselves) and s/he puts it out there for everyone to bitch about every day. S/he runs it on 5 different servers that are relentlessly attacked by RW hackers. And today's E-V.com has it: Electoral Vote Predictor 2004:   Kerry 283   Bush 246

2) Even if it showed Shrub up by 100 EVs, to blame the website makes no sense. The site is transparent about its sources and methods. Its editorial commentary is a) pro GOTV and b) pro-Kerry. But even pro-Bush sites like electionprojection.com that are honest and open about their poll-crunching methodology are in my good book. Blaming the messenger for bad news is what Freepers do. Blaming messengers purporting to be "objective" when they are in fact slanted and editorializing hacks is another matter -- a fair criticism of almost all the mainstream media. But E-V.com is another story. I have never understood the carping about it on DU. I read E-V.com every day and am grateful for it, just as I am for RCP and ElectionProjection, both coming from the right, for being honest and providing useful news and analysis. I'm a diehard democrat and have been a Kerry backer since he first announced. I am exquisitely sensitive and pissed off about media bias on the corporate news stations. But I see *nothing* to object to about E-V.com

3) My guess is as good as any of yours. It has to be someone computer savvy and liberal and good at math. How about Paul Krugman? My fantasy is that it might be Al Gore, which would be rich.

Now can we stop bickering about such trivia and GOTDV? (*Get out the damn vote!)

RCM

[requiem99]

24. I bitched about it when Kerry was up by a hundred EVs, for the same reason

So you can't say its because I don't like the results. Bad methodology is bad methodology, PERIOD.

I do like raising awareness of the election, and pumping the GOTV effort, that is always helpful to us, but thats not what I'm talking about here.

[realcountrymusic]

30. no one knows what "good" methodology is

There is actually instructive commentary on this today on electionprojection.com -- that guy uses a much more complex statistical model (he is some sort of mathematician). He points out that his RW readers also bitch when he shows Kerry ahead. But he also says that E-V's simpler methodology (laetst poll trumps all) might be right or might be wrong.

The important point (in any science, imperfect or not) is that the methodology be transparent and for both sites this is the case.

We'll see whether his methodology is "stupid" or not come election day. But it's no more stupid, prima facie, than any other poll discussion, analysis, etc. I've seen. S/he also references other smart people's thoughts about how to read polls. It is simply not an exact science, as we all now know so well. There is no accepted "smart" methodology (and I speak as someone with a PhD in a social science field). In 2000, as we now hear constantly, most polls showed Bush ahead by 4-6 going into the final day, yet Gore won the popular vote -- this is where Zogby earned his (very recent) stripes. Polls are based on models that are riddled with assumptions about voter behavior and extraneous circumstances (such as the weather on election day). There is almost no (REALISTIC) way to account for most of these assumptions scientifically, as is the case in any such generalized social science problem. Voting is complexd behavior, and the population being studied is so large, diverse, and volatile that the only valuable information to be gleaned from polls, as ANY good pollster admits, is an aggregate trend-line. All of this is amplified by the unpredictable factors in the current election -- millions of likely new voters (maybe); intensity of passion on all sides; a storm across the midwest and south on election day; world events that are deeply significant in their emotional impact; a deeply polarized electorate; a shilling mass media intent on intervening in and affecting results; the influence of early results on western time zones; butterflies beating their wings in China. Take your pick. Elections are complex, perhaps even stochastic processes. Many factors introduce bias and even randomness into any election, and this one more than most .

E-V.com uses a very simple model, the virtue of which IS its simplicty. It doesn't claim to be "better" -- in fact the site (if you read closely) is not making predictions. It is simply an aggregation of the most recent state polls from all sources.

The mistake here is on the part of people who WANT polling to be more scientific than it can be,who need to be reassured or frustrated by polls, and who don't understand the basics of statistical modeling of human behavior. Give me a homogeneous population of 20 people and ask me to model one simple behavioral dimension statistically over 10 years of observation with every other factor controlled, and I'll give you a prediction. But it will have nothing to do with anything as complex as electoral democracy in a country of a quarter billion people in the throes of a war. Otherwise, we could all stay home on tuesday and let social scientists tell us who won.

Get real. And Get Out the/and VOTE.

RCM

[fujiyama]

32. Sorry

It's a nice looking site with a great layout....but it's not a public service. It's been a way to get weak supporters an ulcer. There are several problems with the site:

It doesn't really look at the polling firm and gives the same credibility to partisan firms.

It gives no info regarding the polls internals.

He doesn't give a direct link to the poll itself.

There are several other electoral map sites I've found MUCH more useful. I have ignored electoral vote this entire cycle and I'm glad. I don't care what his politics are. I find his "methadology" deceptive and foolish. Strategic Vision polls are and have always been junk, but to this guy it's all the same.

I like www.dalythoughts.com myself. He's admittadly a Bush supporter, but his methadology is pretty consistant and while I sometimes disagree with his analysis it's usually pretty sound. He updates it very frequently and takes various factors into account - margin of error, relative trends, doesn' use include partisan polls (D or R), and he gives the link to EVERY poll he uses.

I also like www.race2004.net I'm not exactly sure of his methadology, but he also includes links to every poll.

As you said though, it's irrelevant. At this point, the polls are meaningless when it's so close. It's time to GOTV!

[carolinalady]

25. i think he voted for Nader --JMO

[DemocratSinceBirth]

29. Michael Moore?

[realcountrymusic]

31. one more thing

Apparently, E-V.com gets half a million hits a day and is one of the top 10 sites ON THE ENTIRE INTERNET(s).

Given that its commentary is almost completely pro-Kerry and completely GOTV-oriented, we ought to be kissing this guy for helping all of us who believe in the power of the people's medium to go around the mainstream gatekeeper corporate media.

And as a webmaster/sysadmin, I have to say I am astounded that the votemaster at E-V could take such a straightforward public-service project, present it so elegantly, and starting from zero shoot it into the stratosphere of internet(s) success. S/he is a model for any of us who would use this medium for its highest possible purposes. After the election, win or lose, I hope some DUers will join me in thanking her/him.

RCM

[A-Schwarzenegger]

33. He should stay in.