In an attempt to find out where the candidates are today in the electoral vote I used the following formula:
- Take median of Bush vs. candidate in the last four polls that the four most polled candidates appear in. In order to compare the candidates fairly I used only polls where each of the four candidates are included.
- Add Bush's lead over each candidate nationally to the partisan index for each state found here: http://www.fairvote.org/map/pres2000.htm#battleground
Example: In an even national election the Democrat is likely to beat the Republican by 12% in California. Thus if Bush leads a candidate by ten points nationally on average the Democrat would beat him by only two in California.
- Add 8 points to any home state candidate and 2 points to any candidate whose state borders the state to include some small regional effect and a large home state effect.
- Average the combined total of procedures above to the latest state poll for each candidate. Where the result is a tie, give the state to Bush if the governor is Republican and to the Democrat if the governor is a Democrat.
This method combines national polls, a state's partisan History and state polls to try to arrive at a relatively objective picture of where the candidates stand today.
Results:
In median of the last four national polls Dean trails Bush by 14.5%, Clark trails Bush by 14%, Kerry trails Bush by 18.5%, and Gephardt trails Bush by 21%
The results by candidate:
Gephardt loses to Bush by 21% and 484-54 in the electoral college (Gep wins DC, HA, MA, NY, RI)
Kerry loses to Bush by 18.5% and 477-61 in the electoral college (Kerry wins CT, DC, HA, MA, NY, RI)
Clark loses to Bush by 14% and 474-64 in the electoral college (Clark wins DC, HA, MA, MD, NY, RI).
Dean loses to Bush by 14.5% and 471-67 in the electoral college (Dean wins DC, HA, MA, MD, NY, RI, VT).
Obviously I think the election will be a lot closer than this! I expect next week's results to be better for the Democrats. Rasmussen's tracking poll already has Dean gaining 5 points on Bush since the Rasmussen poll used as the least recent of the four polls here (in order to ensure that all candidates were polled at the same time I had to use the Rasmussen poll that last polled all four candidates vs. Bush).
See my other diary entries for other weekly updates and critiques/criticisms of my methods.
Note that the larger gaps between the Dem candidates and Bush this week than last week is more because I threw out old pre-Saddam polls with Edwards and Lieberman that helped all Dems, than because of any shift in momentum towards Bush in the last week. Think of it as like a tracking poll when a good day at the front end of the track gets lopped off.