Posted on 11/01/2004 9:57:14 AM PST by SmithL
History may never know how many working hours were lost to Andrew Tanenbaum's Web site, www.electoral-vote.com.
The site features a map of the United States in shades of blue, red, pink and white and a tally of which way the electoral college vote will go if the most recent polls are correct. (White is for tied, light blue is for states that are weakly leaning toward Kerry, pink is for states that are weakly leaning toward Bush.)
Updated as the poll numbers from each state arrive, it has become one of the world's 1,000 most popular Web sites and gets 600,000 visitors a day, according to Tanenbaum. At 11 a.m. EST, the site had Kerry ahead of Bush, 298 electoral votes to 231.
Until Monday, Tanenbaum maintained his anonymity.
Tanenbaum, an American living in Amsterdam, where he is a computer science professor at Vrije Universiteit, posted his biography on the site Monday. He said he lives in The Netherlands because his wife, who is Dutch, "couldn't do her kind of work in the U.S. whereas I could work anywhere."
He started the Web site as a means to register other overseas voters. Until last week, the site featured a banner ad giving voter registration information to overseas voters.
A Democrat, and a former lobbyist for the Sierra Club, Tanenbaum ran for a spot as an overseas delegate to the Democratic National Convention,
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I prefer to think of the hours as being "invested".
And this is the guy The Boston Herald decided to quote for its feature this AM
"Electoral Vote Predictor 2004: Kerry 298 Bush 231"
Agh.
interesting about his wife think of the kind of jobs you can do in amsterdam that you cant do in th states
theres one thats legal in nevada
...is a left wing Democrat who cherry picks his polls to give Kerry the edge.
The guy is claiming that Virginia is a tossup for crying out loud!
Needs a tattoo reading "Born To be Ignored"... stat. :)
i think he's smoking some of that "dutch tobacco"
She openly farms and sells pot?
This guy seems to use only the ever so reliable "down the john" Zogby and ARG for his numbers. Friday he had Bush with 284?
I just deleted his site from my favorites list!
Long live freedom and George W!
This is the guy that said Linux would never take off, so he's actually a fairly reliable indicator, so long as you assume the opposite of whatever he says.
See his links section
http://www.electoral-vote.com/info/political-websites.html
All lefty/Anti-Bush sites with no Pro-Bush ones. That's all you need to know.
He's definitely a left-wing Dem (he's said as much in his commentaries), but he doesn't cherry-pick. He unscientifically chooses the most recent poll, even if it came out a couple hours later than another one. Some of his poll sites are pretty weird-sounding.
If you mouse-over the states on the map on the Web site, it shows which poll was used.
Speaking of bizarre (and this is from a FReeper in MD), one day he had Maryland in a tie, because one poll happened to somehow find Maryland in a tie. That didn't last long, but it shows the pitfalls of NOT choosing your polls wisely.
Interesting revelation.
He's the guy who wrote MINIX, a version of UNIX intended for tinkering and which inspired LINUX.
Let' see, he has
Kerry 298 Bush 231
while
http://realclearpolitics.com/Presidential_04/RCP_EC.html
RealClearPolitics Electoral Count on Monday, November 1 has
Bush 227 - Kerry 207
I guess Tanenbaum's close, assuming you always round down to the nearest hundred...
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