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 all major candidates appear in. In order to compare the candidates fairly I used only polls where all major candidates are included. See here for polls: http://www.davidwissing.com/gen2004polls.html
- 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 9%, Clark trails Bush by 9.5%, Lieberman trails Bush by 10%, Kerry trails Bush by 11.5%, Gephardt and Edwards trail Bush by 13%
Using the formula above to determine electoral vote only Clark wins California (by 2%). Dean loses by 0.5% and the other candidates lose by 1 to 2%. And only Dean wins Michigan. Clark and Lieberman lose by less than 1% and the others by more.
The results by candidate:
Gephardt loses to Bush by 13% and 474-64 in the electoral college (Gep wins DC, HA, MA, MD, NY, RI)
Edwards loses to Bush by 13% and 452-86 in the electoral college (Edwards wins the same states as Gephardt plus CT and NJ)
Kerry loses to Bush by 11.5% and 452-86 in the electoral college (same states as Edwards)
Lieberman loses to Bush by 10% and 431-107 in the electoral college (same as Kerry but add IL)
Clark loses to Bush by 9.5% and 376-162 in the electoral college (same as Lieberman but add CA).
Dean loses to Bush by 9% and 411-127 in the electoral college (same as Lieberman but add MI and VT).
Conclusion: The electability debates are much ado about nothing. The two most electable candidates are at the top of the Democratic field. Ultimately we first need to close the national gap from the 9 to 13% margin and then the real election will be decided in PA, FL, AZ, IA etc. Incidentally, contrary to coventional wisdom, Dean does best head to head in most of the swing states of the contenders.
I plan to update this regularly using the same methods so that we can plot candidate's progress over time as we hopefully close the gap on Bush and get to a point where the states in play get closer to putting someone over 270.
Method suggestions welcome if you think the methodology can be improved.
