March 23, 2004

THE BROTHERS JUDD 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION PROGNOSTATHON

THE BROTHERS JUDD 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION PROGNOSTATHON

In an attempt, probably feeble, to create our own version of a tracking poll, we've (well, the Other Brother has) set up a page where you can pick the electoral vote results for each state for the 2004 election. The unique feature here is that you can go in up to once a week and change your picks. We'll display a running tabulation of the current results. This should let us see how one (with all apologies to our readers) incredibly odd corner of the Internet sees the political climate at any given moment.

Eventually we'll freeze the picks (late October), turn it into a contest,and award prizes to the winners.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 23, 2004 12:00 AM
Comments

how about some javascript to pre-set the 2000 results? I will send it to you if you want.

Posted by: some random person at February 24, 2004 10:12 AM

Great idea...send it along and I'll incorporate it.

Posted by: The Other Brother at February 24, 2004 10:19 AM

How do I assign Vermont to Nader?

Posted by: Raoul Ortega at February 24, 2004 12:41 PM

Also, it is possible to have split results in Nebraska and Maine. I doubt that it will matter in Nebraska, but in Maine it might matter.

(If I remeber correctly-- the votes are awarded by congressional district, with the senatorial votes going to the the state "popular vote" winner, so it will be 4-0 or 3-1.)

Posted by: Raoul Ortega at February 24, 2004 12:45 PM

Raoul - true, but if the 2004 election comes down to whether Maine in 4-0 or 3-1 then we're in big trouble.
I entered a prediction already. I can go in in the future and change it? How will the trend in the numbers be noted?

Posted by: AWW at February 24, 2004 1:07 PM

Next week, there'll be a line for E(lection) minus 35, etc. as the weeks go by. I'll be adding in a detail view so you can see the individual entries for each week.

Posted by: The Other Brother at February 24, 2004 1:43 PM

The tie-breaker should be the closest guess as to the time when one of the major networks calls the election.

Posted by: jim hamlen at February 24, 2004 1:44 PM

Jim - With Ohio being the key state this year the media will announce Ohio for Kerry (or the Dem nominee) 5 minutes after the polls close with 2% of the vote in.

Posted by: AWW at February 24, 2004 1:49 PM

The detail view will be helpful to determine if entries are skewing the results (i.e. Kerry wins 50 states)

Posted by: AWW at February 24, 2004 3:23 PM

How about a map where each state is colored in proportion to all the selections? It would give some instant visual indication as to which states people think are going to be the "battleground" and which are safe territory. (Utah and Idaho a solid red, Mass. and N.Y. a deep blue, New Mexico washed out blue, Oregon a light pink, and Wisc. and Pa. a muddled gray, for example.)

Can the entry form prepopulate itself with my previous selections? That way I just need to flip a few states every time.

Maine-- true, but then it almost did matter, didn't it? (One of the basic rules of programming is that they error you decide to ignore because it will never happen is the one that you will be fixing first, after you clean up the mess it made.)

As for tiebreaker-- name the state where a elector does not vote as they are supposed to. Would anyone have put down D.C. last time?

Posted by: Raoul Ortega at February 24, 2004 3:58 PM

Raoul,

Click on "Save selections" and it will remember.

Posted by: The Other Brother at February 24, 2004 4:06 PM

Okay, I think I understand. All I clicked on was "Submit Selections", assuming that it would also save them. So either you need to make clear that one needs to use both buttons, make "Submit" do both automatically, or have a third "Save and Submit", or some other option not in the original design.

(Welcome to the wonderful world of designing and implementing User Interfaces!)

Posted by: Raoul Ortega at February 24, 2004 7:05 PM

This is awfully nice of you. But you really needn't go to these lengths for us, your faithful readers.

Save the Other Brother the trouble . . .

It's Bush 54%, Dem 45%, Other 1%.

40 to 10 in states.

California will be close, but goes to the Dems.

Thank you, Brothers Judd, for all you do . . .

Fred Jacobsen
San Francisco

Posted by: Fred Jacobsen (San Fran) at February 25, 2004 7:19 AM

Can the tie breaker be to identify which news anchor will be the first to slip up and refer on air to the Democrats as "we"?

Posted by: Brandon at February 25, 2004 10:54 AM

I second Fred's remarks. Thank you for a beacon in the vast wasteland.

Posted by: jim hamlen at February 25, 2004 1:12 PM

I'll third Fred's remarks. A nice change from the "holier than thou" conservative and libertarian sites (guess who) found on the web.

Posted by: AWW at February 25, 2004 1:24 PM

IMHO - The Brothers Judd is best blog anywhere.....

Posted by: BJW at February 25, 2004 2:55 PM

BJW...I second that emotion. Brothers Judd, you guys rock!

Posted by: Bartman at February 26, 2004 7:04 PM

You should delete the 100-0 entry.

Posted by: "Edward" at February 27, 2004 11:50 AM

So far (though, of course, it's still VERY early days), if I'm interpreting the readouts correctly so far, not many people are buying into Orrin's optimistic 50-0 scenario for Bush victory. The average as of tonight seems to be GWB 325 electoral votes (53% popular vote), Kerry 211 electoral votes (45% popular vote), with Nader presumably accounting for the other 2% - but even in Nader's absence Bush still wins handily. For my own part, I've been essentially calculating Bush winning all the "red" states plus taking a couple that went for Gore very narrowly in 2000.

Posted by: Joe at February 27, 2004 10:22 PM

Joe - true but this period may be Kerry's peak and Bush's trough as the economy improves, Iraq improves, and the American people get to know Kerry. Look for the numbers to improve for Bush but probably not to Orrin's 50-0 scenario (even McGovern and Mondale won some states)

Posted by: AWW at February 27, 2004 10:49 PM

Brandon, It depends on the definition of the word "we." If you define "we" as meaning you and bunch of other people all of whom share a common partisan viewpoint, then traditionally the honor is awarded to Brokaw, who was first to admit he was cheering for his fellow leftwing nutcases.

Posted by: erp at February 28, 2004 10:02 AM

Guys -

How about putting the prognostathon in a different place, so I don't keep crossing my eyes trying to remember if I've hit the refresh key when I get to your web page on my small computer monitor? Thanks.

Posted by: Andrew L at March 1, 2004 7:31 PM

Andrew:

The problem is that we sort of have to assume that most folks don't visit us all that often, so this needs to be where it's easy to see and self-explanatory.

Anyone got any ideas?

Posted by: oj at March 1, 2004 7:38 PM

Reduce the length of the explanation, so that the next post is immediately visible ?

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at March 1, 2004 7:49 PM

Better?

Posted by: oj at March 1, 2004 8:03 PM

I like it--thanks.

Posted by: Timothy at March 1, 2004 9:13 PM

Better indeed. Thanks, OJ.

Posted by: Bruce Cleaver at March 2, 2004 9:01 AM

I think it's better too. Last time you had a contest, I think I went several days before I noticed that there was new stuff under the contest post.

Posted by: some random person at March 2, 2004 11:45 AM
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