PROJECTING THE ELECTION
Many of you are aware that with the debut of this week's Composite Poll and Electoral Vote Prediction, we're joining several others in the Electoral Vote prognostication business. Other very good prediction sites include those at Electionprojection.com and Dales' Electoral College Breakdown.

Federal Review didn't join the fray in order to offer an alternative, better projection than those two, just a different one. All three of these projections present valid and useful information in evaluating the race. Electionprojection analyzes head-to-head polls, job approval polls, and right-track/wrong-direction polls to determine where the popular vote might go, and then applies its results to each state's 2000 outcome to determine a potential electoral vote outcome for 2004.

Dales' Electoral College Breakdown focuses primarily on state-by-state polling without regard to the overall national popular vote and then applies analysis to to the state-by-state polls to determine the trends for each state, which are then categorized as tossup, slight advantage, lean, strong advantage and safe. He also includes detailed analysis and historical polling numbers for each state. Quite a burdensome task, but one I am very greatful he has undertaken.

Federal Review's effort grew out of our composite poll from 2000 -- a way of averaging weekly polls and smoothing out margin of error swings. But I realized that the national popular vote I was tracking doesn't tell you who will win, as the 2000 outcome reminded us all. So, I've combined my composite poll result with a state-by-state mathematical analysis that takes into account state-by-state polling. I don't account for the job approval and right-track/wrong-direction numbers in the detail that Scott's Electionprojection does, and I don't provide as detailed an analysis of the state-by-state polling as Dales' Electoral College Breakdown does. Thus, if state-by-state polling is dead on the money, Dales' will be "more right" than me, and if job approval and right-track numbers factor heavily into how people actually vote, then Electionprojection is going to be "more right" on the national popular vote.

Sure, I tried to address what I see as problems in the other two analyses. Dales' analysis relies heavily on polling that is infrequent and applies his own analysis. I think his analysis is objective and fair, but I'd have a hard time believing Bush would lose, say, Tennessee, despite what the numbers told me. That's my bias and why I have the "numbers" make those decisions for me. Although I think it is possible for Bush to win Pennsylvania but lose Florida, this outcome is impossible in Electionprojection's analysis, and there's historical data that supports Electionprojection's result, but not mine.

While I expect some friendly comparison of results between these sites in November, I don't see them as competitive, but as more information for us political junkies.

And if you see all three sites calling things the same way, then you can bank on that result.

I'll also note another site: Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Dave has a prediction page that allows users to post what they think will happen in the Electoral College. Federal Review's page on Dave Leip's site is here. He then aggregates the predictions and gives you an idea of what people believe will happen. That may be just a useful as any of our projection sites and I urge you to check it out.

Finally, I can't find any comprehensive projection sites run by Democrats, liberals, Kerry-supporters, whatever. Election Projection, the ECB and Federal Review's predictions may have pro-Bush bias, even though we all try like hell to avoid it. It would be interesting to see a detailed analysis from the other side that tries to avoid bias, too. Let me know if you find one.

And thanks to Scott for the mention.