Democrats pulling ahead in Electoral Vote simulations based on prediction markets

This week's Electoral Vote Simulation is starting to show a wide lead in the electoral votes for the Democrats. I chalk this up to the Intrade prediction market data for each state beginning to reflect recent polling results which favor Obama and that are lower for McCain. This data should have taken into account the recent financial crisis in the news, McCain's strange campaign and debate off-again on-again gambit, and the debate itself. I think that these results offer some proof, along with the polling data, that Obama "won" the debate and that the economic issues are favoring him.

The median electoral vote result from 1000 simulations is 303 votes for the Democrats, while 85% of the simulations show the Democrats with more than the 270 electoral votes needed to win. This is the highest margins since I started running these simulations at the beginning of September. These results are also reflected in the strong vs weak Democratic or Republican states as seen in the table below.



The states that are weakly Democratic are Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Virginia with new addition Florida pulled from the Republican side, the one that is weakly Republican is North Carolina. This shows a strengthening of Obama in formerly weak Republican states, and a weakening of McCain in formerly strong Republican states. I am sure there will be some regression to the middle before election day, but this is bad news for the Republicans no matter how you spin it.

For comparison I have included links below to much more professional interpreters of election and polling results. Other sites with electoral vote simulations of the election are:

FiveThirtyEight.com which has Obama at 329.3 electoral votes to McCain's 208.7 and the Democrats winning in 83% of his 10,000 simulations. This site uses a simulation based on the polling data and uses models to weight polls differently and to use regional information when individual state polls are unavailable or outdated.

Electoral-vote.com has 286 electoral votes for Obama, and 225 for McCain with 27 in a tie. This site also uses state by state polling data.

RealClearPolitics.com has Obama with 249 electoral votes and McCain with 163 with 126 in the toss-up category. They also use polling data.

270towin.com uses the last 1000 simulations in their visualizer to build up a results that has Obama with 298 electoral votes and McCain with 240. They have the Democrats winning in 85.6% of their simulations. They also use probabilities of each state winning based on polling data with some clipping of the data.

The Truthisall 2008 electoral model has Obama winning almost all of their 5000 simulations. They seem to be real concerned about election fraud and have a hard to understand election model with assignments for undecided voters.

I have also mentioned getting my data from the Intrade Prediction markets, and Yahoo's Political Dashboard.

I invite you to form your own opinions about the various electoral vote models across the web. I run my model for fun and I sue the Intrade prediction market data because it is very easy to turn into a simulation. Some have issues with this data. I don't have the time or the energy to review the state by state polling data to create probabilities for simulation, and I think that FiveThirtyEight.com has done a very good job of doing that. I just think that the model doesn't seem to be transparent enough for me to duplicate it as you could do with mine so it is hard to check the results or evaluate the assumptions. 270towin.com seems to have a similar good approach, but still lacks transparency in the model, and have their own opinion about handling the data. The other models fall further away from these good examples.

My idea is to gather all of the voters on November 4th, count their results, assign electoral votes according to the rules in each state (winner take all, except for Maine and Nebraska) and see who wins. That results will have the least error (though there will be some).

What is this preserver preserving

Not sure what this PRSEVER virgina license plate driver is preserving. Certainly not the planet with the huge unsustainable Chevy Tahoe that they are driving. I suppose they can afford the gas to drive that thing from Virginia to Lancaster, PA where I spotted it.

Maybe they preserve art. I am sure there is a suitable explanation for their choice of personal license plate that is lost on me.

Architectural Eyesores

James Howard Kunstler posts comments about an architectural eyesore each month. I encourage you to click through all of them. Then you should have a licensed psychiatric professional with you because you will want to kill yourself. His commentary is as insightful as it is biting, with enough obvious truth to it that your vision will darken momentarily.

This one is from January 2008, it is an addition to the Akron Art Museum. There are many more that are just like this or worse.

New Oreo packaging is the best!

The new Oreo cookie package comes with new resealable technology that really is convenient and really works.


Don't just rip open the package at the end like you used to do. Pull on the tab like it directs. We will also see that you won't have to try to cram the whole package into a ziploc bag to keep the cookies fresh.


The SEALED indicator is intact until you open the package.


Pealing back the top of the package allows you to access three rows of Oreos and even sticks to itself to remain pealed back if needed. The white section provides the surface to restick the top of the package to when you seal it back closed to retain freshness.


The SEALED indicator is slit once the package has been opened to warn of tampering.


Once resealed, the Oreos will remain fresh for a long time, much longer than my willpower to not eat them all.

Lepidoptera Love Asters (video)

On Saturday I noticed that either moths or tiny butterflies were flying all over the asters in the front garden bed. I don't know if the video does it justice, but dozens of tiny and colorful moths were flitting off and on the flowers and all around the area. There were the family white butterflies and there were many types of orange spotted winged moths that looked like tiny butterflies.



Here is a list of Lepidoptera that feed on asters. Wikipedia seems to indicate that it is mostly moths that feed on asters rather than butterflies.

Democrats back in the lead again in the Presidential Electoral Vote Simulation

This week's simulation of the electoral votes based on the InTrade Prediction market data once again shows a Democratic victory in 63% of the simulations, with a median Democratic electoral vote count of 281. Today, FiveThirtyEight.com has the Democrats even further ahead with 312 electoral votes and a Democratic victory 74% of the time, but he uses a less transparent simulation using polling numbers for his simulation.

This is an upswing from last week's prediction of a republican victory and probably represents the inTrade prediction markets digesting the bump in popularity that Senator Obama has gotten due to the recent crisis in the financial markets. The candidates seem to trade the same few states back and forth as before. This week Colorado and New Hampshire are weakly Democratic, and Ohio and Virgina are weakly Republican. Nevada is essentially tied in the Intrade data. Losing Nevada would still leave the Democrats with 273 electoral votes.

Intrade has jumped on the visualization bandwagon with a graphic on their front page showing the electoral college results based on their prediction data. They join Yahoo's election dashboard, who was already using the Intrade data, as well as poll data. Truthisall has his own simulation in which he thinks Senator Obama's chances are even better than my results or 538's results. He thinks that there has been systematic election fraud for decades so I invite you to interpret his results yourself. 270towin has their own simulation based on the polls. They predict the Democrats have a median 276 electoral votes and a Democratic win 60.2% of the time.

Evidence of MI6 activity in Delaware

I spotted James Bond's car on the street in Delaware the other day. He brazingly put his double-O number on his license plate. Is the British Intelligence Service allowed to operate on US soil?

When you think about it, James Bond isn't a very good spy (Charles Stross has pointed this out), since he goes around announcing himself (Bond, James Bond) all the time, Just like with this license plate.

Flying the Jolly Roger on talk like a Pirate Day

Ahoy! I quickly put up the Pirate Flag to celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day. Aarrrr!

I am still inspired from my February visit to Walt Disney World and the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. I even have the song on my iPod.

Yo ho, Yo ho, a pirates life for me.

Drink up, me hearties, yo ho.

Andean Condor at the Brandywine Zoo

Not only was this Andean Condor close to the front of the cage instead of hiding in the back, it had also spread its wings for the best view of these birds I have ever had in my visits to the Brandywine Zoo.

Perhaps it was all of the babies in strollers at the zoo on Sunday thinking, "ooh, birdie", while the Condor was thinking, "food". The cages keep us suitably separate from the animals.

Presidential electoral vote simulation predicts Republican Victory

The Palin Republican Convention bounce seems to be having a continuing effect on the presidential electoral vote simulation based on the Intrade Prediction market data of September 16th. As described earlier, I use the Intrade data to generate a probability for each state of tghe Democrats winning that states electoral votes. I generate 1000 Monte Carlo simulations based on these probabilities.

This week the chart shows that the the Democrats win with more than 270 electoral votes only 46% of the time. This is the first time that the simulations predict the Republicans winning more than half of the time. I think that we could see this coming as the prediction markets and polls continue to digest Sarah Palin's popularity and McCain's bounce. FiveThirtyEight.com shows similar results based on their excellent simulations based on state polls, with only 44.6% of simulations with an Obama victory.

As a prisoner of Excel as my math, simulation and graphing program, I am jealous of Yahoo's new election tracker dashboard that uses either state polls or the Intrade prediction market data to show the electoral vote results. It made me notice something interesting about the Intrade prediction market data. If I just use that data, as Yahoo does, to predict whether a state will go Democratic or Republican, the results is that the Democrats win with 273 electoral votes. But the prediction markets have been shown to represent the collected estimated probability that the players expect for a particular outcome. So while Delaware options are at 95cents (on the chance of $1.00 if the option pays) for the Democrats which makes that a pretty sure bet, Colorado is 55cents Obama vs 47.6cents for McCain which makes that close to even odds. That's why I like my simulation approach better.

The table below (click it for larger and more readable) compiles the simple sum of the prediction market data and then breaks out strong states, those with 60% chance of one of the sides, vs weak states, those with less than a 60% chance for one of the sides. It is there where you can see the closeness of the race.


Remember that in the simulation even Delaware could go for the Republicans 5% of the time. Highly unlikely but possible, especially with the potential error of the data we are using. A state like Colorado could go either way. The progression over two weeks since Sept 2nd doesn't seem to put more electoral votes in play in the weak states (51 to 56), but it does seem to move some weakly Democratic ones to the weakly Republican column. This week the states that are weakly Democratic are Colorado, New Hampshire and New Mexico, while the weakly republican states are Nevada, Ohio and Virgina. On Sept 2nd the states that are weakly Democratic were Colorado, New Hampshire and Ohio, while the weakly Republican states are Nevada, and Virgina. As the pundits have said, Ohio and Virgina are going to be important, and even some Western states are going to have a role to play