Posted by blogtransferaccount in 2008 Election.
Tags: 2008 Elections, expected values, United States Senate
Having already done an expected values calculation for the 2008 electoral college, it only made since to calculate the expected composition of the Senate following the November election.
To do this I gave each race a value between -1 and 1. A negative value represents the probability that the Democrats lose a particular seat, while a positive value is the probability that they gain the seat. A value of 0 means that the seat is “safe” in that there is a zero probability that it will change parties.
I list the probabilities for each election by the degree of competition that will categorize the race. My four categories are safe, leaning, marginal, and toss-up.
Using this method I got an expected value of 4.2 for the number of seats the Democrats will likely gain. Read on to see how I got this figure and if I think it’s an accurate representation of the election. (more…)
Posted by blogtransferaccount in 2008 Presidential Election, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain.
Tags: 2008 Presidential Election, Barack Obama, electoral college, expected values, Hillary Clinton, John McCain
Looking ahead to the general election between John McCain and Barack Obama, we’re likely going to be looking at an electoral map that is moderately different from that of the last two elections. Sure Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania will be key, but other states, traditionally red and blue, will be in play and add to the dynamics of the race.
In this post I evaluated each state independently, not necessarily based on current polls, but rather on the demographics of each state and the results from the exit polls from the primaries. I gave each state an arbitrary value between 0 and 1 that is the probability Obama will win the state. I then multiplied that value by the number of electoral college votes from the state and then added up the final value of each state to get the expected number of electoral college votes for each candidate. The equation looks like this… E(X)(Electoral Votes State 1) + E(X)(Electoral Votes State 2)… = Total number of expected electoral college votes for Obama, where (E)X is the probability Obama wins the state. I also broke break down all of the states by region.
The final total for the electoral college, based on raw winner-take-all probability, is McCain 258 to Obama’s 253 electoral votes with 27 (Ohio and Iowa), which are .5 probability tossups. However, when I calculated the expected values, the total was 290.1 electoral votes for Obama to 247.9 electoral votes for McCain. Read on to see how I got these values and for additional analysis.
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