2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 3/15/2004

TradeSports.com ^ | Monday, March 15, 2004 | Momaw Nadon

[Momaw Nadon]

State	% Chance of Bush Winning	Bush Electoral Votes	Kerry Electoral Votes
Alabama	92.0	9	0
Alaska	93.0	3	0
Arizona	73.0	10	0
Arkansas	67.0	6	0
California	17.0	0	55
Colorado	80.0	9	0
Connecticut	13.0	0	7
Delaware	23.0	0	3
District of Columbia	1.0	0	3
Florida	62.0	27	0
Georgia	91.0	15	0
Hawaii	13.0	0	4
Idaho	95.0	4	0
Illinois	18.0	0	21
Indiana	87.0	11	0
Iowa	46.0	0	7
Kansas	92.0	6	0
Kentucky	87.0	8	0
Louisiana	83.0	9	0
Maine	35.0	0	4
Maryland	17.5	0	10
Massachusetts	5.0	0	12
Michigan	37.0	0	17
Minnesota	31.0	0	10
Mississippi	92.0	6	0
Missouri	63.0	11	0
Montana	91.0	3	0
Nebraska	95.0	5	0
Nevada	65.0	5	0
New Hampshire	59.0	4	0
New Jersey	17.0	0	15
New Mexico	58.0	5	0
New York	15.0	0	31
North Carolina	82.0	15	0
North Dakota	95.0	3	0
Ohio	65.0	20	0
Oklahoma	95.0	7	0
Oregon	36.0	0	7
Pennsylvania	49.0	0	21
Rhode Island	5.0	0	4
South Carolina	87.0	8	0
South Dakota	95.0	3	0
Tennessee	77.0	11	0
Texas	94.0	34	0
Utah	95.0	5	0
Vermont	7.0	0	3
Virginia	88.0	13	0
Washington	35.0	0	11
West Virginia	49.0	0	5
Wisconsin	47.0	0	10
Wyoming	95.0	3	0
Totals		278	260

[Momaw Nadon]

I went to TradeSports.com which is a futures market in which people bet on the outcomes of various things.

According to the current trading prices of the futures contracts, an estimate can be found of what traders are betting will be the outcome of 2004 Presidential Election.

If the traders are correct, President Bush would receive 278 Electoral Votes and John Kerry would receive 260 Electoral Votes.

If the weighted probabilities of President Bush winning in the states are added up, and then divided by 538, and multiplied by 100, then President Bush should get 288.88 Electoral Votes.

270 Electoral Votes are needed to win the Presidency.

Opinions and commentary are welcome.

[Momaw Nadon]

Previous projections:

2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 3/8/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 3/1/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 2/23/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 2/16/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 2/9/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 2/2/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 1/26/2004
2004 Projected Presidential Electoral Votes as of 1/21/2004

[Patrick1]

Great..this always cheers up the doom and gloomers on here.

[Lexinom]

Total chance of winning, given these probabilies:

63.42%

Sum / 51

[CROSSHIGHWAYMAN]

Bush will get over 300 electoral votes

[blackie]

We are winning ~ the bad guys are losing ~ trolls, terrorists, democrats and the mainstream media are sad ~ very sad!

~~ Bush/Cheney 2004 ~~

[Patrick1]

I agree.

[dalebert]

I think Bush could take Calif.

[princess leah]

Are they counting the dead votes and the Florida 2-for-1 voters who vote up in New York as well?

[netmilsmom]

Bush will not take Ohio because of their Rino Governor. Subtract 20 from Bush.

[So Cal Rocket]

From last week, Bush has gained ground in:
Georgia
Idaho
Iowa*
Kansas
Louisiana
Massachusetts
Nebraska
New Hampshire*
New Jersey*
Oklahoma
Texas
Virginia
West Virginia*
Wisconsin

Bush has lost ground in:
Arkansas
California
Delaware
DC
Florida*
Illinois
Kentucky
Michigan*
Minnesota*
Missouri
Tennessee

*battleground state

[MineralMan]

Totals 355 183


These were the totals in January. What happened? Now it's 278 to 260.

I don't think it's time to relax just yet. Ohio's in play, and could be lost. FL's not a lock, either. No time to relax.

[JTG]

I see Bush winning Minnesota and Wisconsin, and Kerry possibly winning Florida. I think that Arizona is safe for Bush, and that Oregon and Washington are safe for Kerry(although Nader could put those in play for Bush). I think Bush will still carry New Hampshire and has a shot to carry Maine.

[Dave S]

Totals 355 183 These were the totals in January. What happened? Now it's 278 to 260

Remember Howard Dean??

[curmudgeonII]

Bush has a chance of winning both Florida and Ohio by considerably more than 60%?
Come on, now.

[raloxk]

where did you see this:

I doubt very much Bush will lose in:

AR
KY
TN

Bush could lose FL and MO

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I come up with 98.2% if you accept the stated probabilities. I formed the weighted sum of the Bush Votes, for instance Alabama is worth 9 x 0.92 = 8.28 votes and found the variance for each state, for instance for Alabama = 9*0.92*(1-0.92)= 0.664. I get the expected number of votes for GWB = 288.88 with a variance of 80.94 votes squarted >> a standard deviation of 9.00 votes. That means that W is 2.1 sd above 270. The probability under the far tail, the probability of NOT winning =(1-ERF(((288.88-270)/9)/SQRT(2)))/2= 0.017927869 ~ 1.8% . This requires that you accept the stated probabilities.

We may only be a train bombing away from becoming Canada.

[amordei]

Kerry will not even compete in Florida. He will use his limited funds on states with a better return.

[Patrick1]

Florida is not a battleground state.

[mtbopfuyn]

If we could kick out Houston and Austin, Bush would carry TX 100%, but I'll settle for the current 94%.

[Dante3]

I just don't understand how anyone as poorly qualified for the office as Kerry could have so much support among the Democrats. Why not Zell Miller, Nunn, Kerrey, Lieberman, even Gephardt? They would have been far better than this dorky, creepy character.

[raloxk]

"Kerry will not even compete in Florida. He will use his limited funds on states with a better return."

youre joking right?

[amordei]

Florida, yes. Ohio, maybe. 2002 confirms that Florida has moved past 2000 pretty clearly.

As for Ohio, having lived there and experienced the one party domination (GOP), I can understand why some think that Ohio will go Democrat. However, the state (more than the other midwestern battlegrounds) is on the Bush side culturally.

[amordei]

No. He has to spread his matching funds on a longer time horizon than Bush, because of an earlier convention. The actual results on the ground since 2000 do not support wasting money on the state.

NH, OH, NV, NM, possibly AZ. Those are better states for Kerry and his funds will go there.

[tjwmason]

I think Bush could take Calif.

I have a little thought about California. It would be utterly impossible for a Democrat to win the White House without it (and without the largest upset in electoral history), therefore if the G.O.P. can even begin to make inroads there the Dems will have to divert resources. If California becomes any sort of battle-ground, then all of the Rat dollars will have to flood over there. Potentially this would be of more use to Bush than actually winning the state's college votes (though I doubt that he would say no to them).

[Lexinom]

I didn't factor the weightings, which would be

elect_votes_state / elect_votes_total

per state. Good formulation you give.

BTW I don't accept the stated probabilites. The human experience is so incredibly limited, we can't possibly know every single factor or predict future events. Just remeber to VOTE, no matter what the numbers say.

[dalebert]

EXACTLY.

[Future Useless Eater]

>>...went to TradeSports.com which is a futures market in which people bet on the outcomes of various things.

If we start depending on the betting lines as 'polls' wont
the George Soros'es of the world try to manipulate the polls
by betting increasingly heavily, shortly before the election for Kerry?

Most of these betting lines are in Europe.
Scotland Yard should checkout if Al-Qaeda had bet heavily
on the Socialists just before the Spanish bombings.

[Republic If You Can Keep It]

BTW I don't accept the stated probabilites

Fair enough.

But remember, this is a futures market. Buyers & sellers have settled on these prices using real money. It's worth taking notice.

[truth_seeker]

"Bush will not take Ohio because of their Rino Governor. Subtract 20 from Bush."

Care to 'splain' that one at me, since I know nothing about how your governor would impact Bush?

Not trying to fight, just to learn.

[netmilsmom]

I'm in MI but have relatives in OH.
Bob Taft has been a disaster to the GOP there. He has raised the taxes to the point that the SOS is getting signatures for a repeal. While jobs are beginning to come back generally in the Midwest, most companies won't touch Ohio with a ten foot pole. My hubby is looking for work there and can't find a bit. It is very sad.

[tenthirteen]

All of this thread is depending upon whether KERRY will be nominated. I think the smart money is that he will not. We haven't played cowboys and CLINTON yet.

[solo gringo]

This is to close we need for Bush with about 300 or more.And Kerry the communist with a hell of a lot less.

[raloxk]

"I think the smart money is that he will not."

youre kidding right. Since the traders at Tradesports have Kerry at 98% for the nomination, Id say the smart money is on him.

[finnman69]

Kerry is up 3 in the latest Rasmussen FL poll. FL is going to be a fight. I see Bush having to defend a lot of his base states. I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing, but he can't take one battleground state for granted,

[Political Junkie Too]

I did one better.

I took the probabilities and ran a Monte Carlo simulation with them. I ran 200 simulated elections and plotted the results as a cumulative probability distribution. I did this 11 times and took the middle election result (in Expected Value) in order to eliminate extreme randomness. The result was this:

The P10 value for Bush electoral votes was 246 (292 Kerry). This means that there is a 10% probability that the actual result is less than or equal to Bush getting 246.

The P50 value for Bush electoral votes was 289 (Kerry 249). This is the mid-point where there is an equal probability of the actual value being higher or lower.

The P90 value for Bush electoral votes was 334 (Kerry 204), meaning that there is a 90% probability of the actual vote being less than or equal to 334.

The expected value of the Bush electoral vote was 288.765. The expected value is the probability-weighted average of all the points on the cumulative probability distribution.

Of course, this is all dependent on the given probabilities being accurate.

-PJ

[tenthirteen]

Take a walk over to the thread "KERRY is making a Foll of Himself". There are at least eight responses from other thread goers with the same exact sentiment that I have about KERRY not being the nominee.

It's about time you woke up and smelled the coffee.

[raloxk]

smell the coffee???

what I smell is Kerry already has enough delegates. Stop the Hillary paranoia.


Kerry is so nasty and negative right now, that if he wins he'll completely poison the congress against him. The GOP gladly worked with Clinton but I cant see the same thing happening with Kerry.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Cute, nice work! I think your simulation agrees with my analysis, BTW. Analysis is generally more accurate than Monte Carlo when the problem is ameniable, as in this case.

[tenthirteen]

Okay; let's split the difference. Perhaps we should just wait and see who the nominee is after the Dem convention. As of now, KERRY seems to be going the route of what-do-you-mean DEAN.

See you after the convention.

[raloxk]

I agree Kerry has become Dean without the charm (wasnt Dean somewhat charming). Doesnt make sense after watching Dean implode that Kerry would move further to the left.

[Ciexyz]

The dead voters in Philly will keep PA in the Democratic camp.

[Texas_Dawg]

Nice work. I track TradeSports.com's futures market for the election every day as well. It is a great way to process where we are.

[Fledermaus]

Except for a switch from winning NM and losing WV, this is nothing but a list of the states Bush won in 2000.

So the election is going to be fought in those states that were very close in 2000 (like NM; Bush got 41,000 more than Gore in WV) or in the states the other party thinks they can't shift like Ohio or Missouri or Florida for Kerry and Michigan and Pennsylvania for Bush.

[Jeff Chandler]

All of this thread is depending upon whether KERRY will be nominated. I think the smart money is that he will not. We haven't played cowboys and CLINTON yet.

Yes. He could claim medical problems, then Hillary could rife to the rescue.

[curmudgeonII]

Florida, yes. Ohio, maybe. 2002 confirms that Florida has moved past 2000 pretty clearly.

I don't question that Bush may very well take both Ohio and Florida. I don't think, however, that he has has a two out of three chance in both states [which is what these odd makers are saying].

[libravoter]

KERRY seems to be going the route of what-do-you-mean DEAN.

The difference being that Dean sank BEFORE the primaries. However, Kerry, sinking as he may well be, already has enough delegates for the nomination. So in order to win, he'd have to basically drop out.

Do you think he's going to drop out?

[tenthirteen]

I think he will be forced out. I agree with Dick MORRIS, who maintains that the CLINTONS will generate the horsepower to expose KERRY as a lightweight who cannot possibly beat BUSH. KERRY will then fade and a guest candidate will ride in to the rescue.

I could be wrong; MORRIS could be wrong.....we'll see.

[tenthirteen]

I think he will be forced out. I agree with Dick MORRIS, who maintains that the CLINTONS will generate the horsepower to expose KERRY as a lightweight who cannot possibly beat BUSH. KERRY will then fade and a guest candidate will ride in to the rescue.

I could be wrong; MORRIS could be wrong.....we'll see.

[Political Junkie Too]

One difference with simulation is that I can see what scenarios (combinations of states won/lost) yield what results. I can look at the EV and say which states (based on probabilities) led to that EV.

-PJ