I think fivethirtyeight changed my life. Seriously - it's the only website I know of that appeals to my politick geek and my stats geek in equal proportions. I often play with Kos' electoral map using Nate Silver's numbers (as I find them to be amazingly well done). So I'd like to share some of my creations with you.
Map 1
I call this "The Traditional". Basically, any state where McCain or Obama have a 5 point lead or less gets colored yellow. The rest get colored the traditional red or blue.
She's a beaut, ain't she? Of course, that's probably not really news to anyone.
Map 2
What to title this one. If you're an optimist maybe "John McCain's Dream World"; if you're a pessimist maybe "The Super Duper Bradley Effect". Either way, this is the map you get if you take Nate's numbers and apply the MoE in such a way that it always favors McCain as much as it possibly can:
That's a bit more of a nail-biter, eh? If you're gonna be throwing the Republicans some anvils, do note the states in yellow.
Map 3
This one's a lot more interesting, and is the ying to map 2's yang; this is the map you would get if you took the margins of error and pulled them all Obama's way. I call it "Hope".
A guy can dream, right? Given that new voter registration and cell-phone-only voters generally aren't included in polls and that they are likely to vote for Obama in a big way, I'd say the actual map splits the difference between 1 and 3.
Anyway, thanks for fantasizing with me for a bit everybody.