About this Site

Welcome to Electoral Vote Predictor, which tracks political polls for U.S. federal elections. The site was immensely popular in 2004, ranking in the top 1000 Websites in the world and the top 10 blogs in the world, with about 700,000 visitors a day. In some surveys, it was the most popular election site in the country. In 2006, it tracked the Senate and House elections. In 2008, it tracked the presidential and congressional races and was getting over 1 million visitors a day at the end. In 2010 it did the Senate and House. In 2012 it is tracking the presidential race and the Senate but not the House because House races are polled too infrequently and there is no historical data for the new congressional districts to fill in the many gaps.

Unlike other sites, which track generic national polls, this site tracks the state-by-state polls. After all, the presidency is decided by 51 separate state elections and the Senate by 33 separate elections (in 2012). As new state polls are released, the maps, spreadsheets, tables, graphs, etc. will be updated. In the maps, the states with white centers are statistical ties and are subject to rapid fluctuations.

The main page contains a map showing the state of the polls for the presidency. Putting the mouse on a state pops up information about the polls there. Clicking on a state goes to a graph of the presidential polls for that state. There are numerous other pages with election data on the site. From any page, clicking on the "electoral-vote.com" name on the red banner at the top of the page takes you back to the main page.

On the blue bar above the map are two links:

Link name	Description
Senate map and races	Information about the 33 Senate races
Downloadable polling data	Raw and processed polling data in multiple formats for you to view and download

To the right of the map are two clickable buttons:

Link name	Description
Previous report	Link to yesterday's page
Next report	Link to tomorrow's page (useful when you have gone back several days and want to go forward)

Polling methodology and using polls is not as simple as you might think. The Polling methodology file explains polling and the methodology used here in detail. The site is updated once a day, generally by 7 a.m. Eastern Time. For this reason, polls released during the course of a day will not show up until the next morning. This is the same news cycle as a (printed) morning newspaper.

Before sending e-mail, PLEASE, PLEASE read the FAQ first. Your question may be answered there. Please DO NOT send e-mail announcing a new poll until you have checked the site the next morning. Getting 1000 e-mails about a poll I already know about is not so much fun.

I am a libertarian and lean towards the Democrats, but I have a lot of respect for traditional conservative Republicans like Sen. Barry Goldwater, who believed that what consenting adults do in private is none of the government's business. Like Goldwater and also Bill Clinton, I believe in balancing the federal budget.

Despite my political preference, I have bent over backwards to be scrupulously honest about all the numbers, and have carefully designed the main page to be strictly nonpartisan. If you want an election site that has a pro-Republican bias from beginning to end, including all over the main page, try www.electionprojection.com.

Menu of Icons to the left of the Map

Menu item	Description
Welcome	This page
FAQs	Frequently Asked Questions
Electoral vote graph	Graphs of the projected electoral college over time, from January until today
Graphs of all polls by state	Single page showing the graphs of all polls in the 50 states + D.C.
Current score by state	Current best estimate of presidential race in all states by average recent polls
Icons for bloggers	Icons with up-to-date projections for your blog or Website
Data galore	Lots and lots of other election data
Donations	If you like this site and would like to help publicize it

Data Reuse Policy

You are free to reuse the data, maps, graphs, tables, charts, and other information in any way you like if you credit the source and provide a link back to this site if feasible.

Acknowledgments

The primary host for this site is at HostRocket.com. They have fast servers, redundant fiber-optic connections to the Internet, and a knowledgeable technical staff. I recommend them highly, especially for business applications where reliability and customer service are important.

The nice colored maps with the pop-up boxes are produced completely automatically from each new day's spreadsheet by code written by Eric Paulson of Viking Web Development. The code uses a library written by Walter Zorn.

Data collection is being done by Sally Montoya, Jaime Fuller, and Michael Collis . It is a lot of work and greatly appreciated.

Thanks to Herb Weisberg of Correlation Research for statistical consulting.

I would also like to thank 'Grumpy' for producing the software that makes the time series graphs as well as much other help.

John Sinteur has provided technical assistance in many ways as well as writing an always-amusing blog The Daily Irrelevant.

Sally Montoya has been a great help with data collection. Thanks also go to Jaime Fuller and Michael Collis of American Prospect for their wonderful help. Without them I couldn't have done this.

Thank you very much.