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News from the Votemaster

There was quite a discussion of this site on Daily Kos yesterday. The Clinton camp was apparently using the maps here to show that Hillary Clinton is more electable than Barack Obama. The Daily Kos editor-in-chief, Markos Moulitsas, took a closer look at the data, especially which states are statistical ties, and came to quite a different conclusion. Nearly 300 people commented on his posting.

CQ Politics has a state-by-state rundown of the general election.

About two weeks ago we had a table listing how liberal interest groups rated all the senators. That was followed by a table listing how conservative groups rated them. Those tables are available on the Data galore page listed on the menu. Today we have liberal group ratings of members of the House. Conservative group ratings will follow (maybe) next week.

The Senate listing is very partisan. With one exception, it is all blue on top and all red on the bottom. No Republican votes like a Democrat and only one Democrat votes like a (relatively liberal) Republican. The House is also partisan, but with more members, there is a bit more mixing due to local circumstances. The most liberal Republican representative is Chris Shays (R-CT), the only Republican congressman left in all of New England. He knows if he voted like a Republican he'd be unemployed within 2 years. Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD) voted liberal enough to get a 75% rating from the liberal groups and what happened? A primary challenge from the right and he was defeated in the Republican primary earlier this year. The message here is clear: think for yourself and be defeated. Democrat Al Wynn (D-MD) ran into the same problem. He wasn't liberal enough for his constituents and was defeated from the left by a young black woman, Donna Edwards, who got a lot of support from the blogosphere. The least liberal House Democrat is David Boren. He's from Oklahoma so he understands how he'd better vote.

There are many competitive House races this year--something for everyone--and in many states across the country from Oregon to Virginia. See the "Hot House races" link on the menu above for a discussion of about 50 of the most contested ones.

The seven groups used in this study are:

The data is available for download in .csv format so you can slice and dice the data as you wish. The ratings are for 2007. For Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), some of his votes were made as a House member before he was appointed to the Senate.

Additional ratings from other interest groups can be found at www.vote-smart.org.

Thanks to Ramy Rahal for collecting the data.

A new primary poll in Indiana shows it to be a statistical tie. Indiana is part of ye-olde-rust-belt, so it should vote like Ohio and Pennsylvania, but with a couple of footnotes. First, northwestern Indiana is really suburban Chicago and gets Chicago TV, so Obama is well known in that part of Indiana. Second, the state has a lot of typical Midwestern farm towns. Third, unlike Pennsylvania which is basically a blue state and Ohio which is a swing state, Indiana is a red state. Obama has done relatively well in other red states, but he certainly can't count on that here and both candidates will be fighting tooth and nail for this state. Hoosiers are not accustomed to being the center of attention, but this looks like their 15 minutes of fame.

The polling results for all primaries and caucuses are available as a Web page and in .csv format.

Here are the delegate totals from various news sources rounded to integers (Democrats Abroad has 22 delegates, each with 1/2 vote). The sources differ because in most caucus states, no delegates to the national conventions have been chosen yet, just delegates to the district, county, or state convention so there is some guesswork involved. Furthermore, some of the unpledged delegates are elected at state conventions in May or June. Finally, the PLEOs (Party Leaders and Elected Officials) sometimes waver and may tell different reporters slightly different stories that they interpret differently.

Delegates

Needed to win: 2024

Here is another source for delegate totals.

WWW www.electoral-vote.com