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.

BUSH ADMITS MISTAKES
Lots of them, and I agree with all in the list.

IRAQ = VIETNAM?
Iraq is as like Vietnam figuratively as it is literally, and Christopher Hitchens demonstrates the lack of depth of the senior Senator from Massachusetts and those like him.

NEW YORK TIMES HYPOCRISY
A lot of folks are doing a good job highlighting The New York Times' new-found love for racial profiling - just as Democrats seem to have become big fans of strong intelligence agencies and preemptive, unilateral action in the face of non-imminent threats. Michelle Malkin does a great bit of NYT bashing in a recent column:

According to the Times, Bush should have "rushed back to the White House, assembled all his top advisers and demanded to know what, in particular, was being done to screen airline passengers to make sure people who fit the airlines' threat profiles were being prevented from boarding American planes."

That's right. The same editorial board that has barbecued the Bush Justice Department after the Sept. 11 attacks for fingerprinting young male temporary visa holders traveling from terror-sponsoring and terror-friendly nations (editorial, June 6, 2002); temporarily detaining asylum seekers from high-risk countries for background screening (editorial, Dec. 28, 2002); and sending undercover agents to investigate mosques suspected of supporting terrorism (editorial, May 31, 2002) now expects us to believe it would have applauded Bush for his vigilance if he had swiftly ordered airport security officials to stop thousands of young Middle Eastern men at airports during the summer of 2001 on the basis of an ill-defined threat.

Enjoy the rest, here.

BUSH NOT TOLD OF MOUSSAOUI ARREST
CIA Director George Tenet never mentioned to the President in August 2001 the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, who had overstayed his visa and was learning to fly. We later found out he was to be a hijacker, so his arrest was fortunate and may have saved lives. But this failure by intelligence officials and Tenet to report their concerns about why an Islamic extremist would be taking flight lessons isn't going to be the big issue, after all, Tenet was a Clinton appointee. No, the Democrats are going say Tenet didn't tell Bush because Bush was vacationing in Texas. Like it was 1870 and the Western Union guy with the fast fingers wasn't on duty at the telegraph.

The AP is already trying to highlight that point with their headline. Imagine that.

STATE POLLING UPDATE
A recent Quinnipiac poll shows Kerry with a 14 point lead in New York, which Gore won by more than 20%. New Jersey is looking like a toss up, with Kerry leading by 1 if Nader is not in the mix, and Bush leading by 4 if Nader is an option. Gore won New Jersey by more than 15%. Check back next Tuesday to see how this effects the Electoral Vote Prediction.

Thanks to Dales' Electoral College Breakdown, which also presents a good analysis of the Electoral College.

THE NEW REPUBLIC DREAMS OF BUSH'S IMPEACHMENT
Just what you'd expect from the left, though I'd expect to see the hope that Rice is tried for war crimes in the pages of The Nation rather than The New Republic. Here's how it starts:

A hush fell over the city as George W. Bush today became the first president of the United States ever to be removed from office by impeachment. Meeting late into the night, the Senate unanimously voted to convict Bush following a trial on his bill of impeachment from the House.

Moments after being sworn in as the 44th president, Dick Cheney said that disgraced former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice would be turned over to the Hague for trial in the International Court of Justice as a war criminal.

Read the rest if you want to be annoyed.

DEBUT OF FEDERAL REVIEW COMPOSITE POLL
I have uploaded the first public Federal Review Composite Poll and Electoral Vote Prediction. Bush and Kerry are tied at 48.9, although I see a trend in Kerry's favor. See the full analysis here.

This is a serious attempt to make a prediction, based on how public opinion stands today, and it will be updated weekly. In any judgment calls I make, I try to lean toward Kerry in order to eliminate, or at least mitigate, bias toward Bush. Unfortunately, since the Electoral Vote Prediction uses 2000 results as a baseline for the analysis, that means a close popular vote will often show Bush leading the Electoral Vote, a bias built into the system by history, not by me.

I welcome your comments regarding everything from presentation to methodology. You can post comments to this entry, or at Free Republic. If someone could load the analysis into Democratic Underground (I was tombstoned long ago), I'd appreciate it. It would be interesting to see comments from there as well.

UPDATE: You can also comment on the analysis at Democratic Underground. Thanks to Brian for hooking me up. Now, I expect to get some serious constructive criticism.

TALKING DOWN THE ECONOMY
John Kerry has been harping on the economy for some time, recently complaining about all the jobs lost during the Bush Administration. Never mind that the job loss figure that he quotes is from only one of the many reports compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- the Establishment Survey of National Non-Farm Employment, Seasonally Adjusted -- which shows a job loss from January 2001 to March 2004 of 1.8 million jobs. He doesn't consider the Establishment Survey that isn't seasonally adjusted (I can't figure why seasonal adjustments would matter over multiple years when seasonal variations should even out), which shows a gain of 1.6 million jobs, or the Household Survey, which shows a gain of 1.5 million jobs during the Bush Administration. Fine, the press seems to think that he's quoting the right statistics. But the bad news for Kerry is that all of those losses may be turned into gains by November, if the pace from the first quarter keeps up, during which the economy added over 500,000 jobs.

It's also interesting to note that employment is a lagging economic indicator. If the economy turns sour, it takes a while for employment to fall. If the economy turns up, it take a while for employment to increase. During the first 9 months of the Bush Administration and prior to the effectiveness of Bush's first budget, the economy lost over 800,000 jobs, according to Kerry's preferred survey. Perhaps these were Clinton losses or dotcom bubble losses. In fact, job creation began its fall in June 2000, eight months before Bush took office.

HOW BOUT THE INDEX OF LEADING ECONOMIC INDICATORS?
There's also the Conference Board's Index of Leading Economic Indicators, which economists have used for years, surprise, as an index of how the economy is doing. Kerry doesn't like those numbers either, as they show that

The upturn in the leading index since March 2003 has been signaling stronger economic growth, and real GDP growth picked up to a 6.1 percent annual rate during the second half of 2003. While the growth rate of the leading index has slowed somewhat in recent months, it is still signaling relatively strong economic growth in the near term.

MAYBE GDP IS BAD? NOPE.
Of course, Kerry doesn't like that other major indicator of economic performance, Gross Domestic Product. GDP went flat in Clinton's last year in office and turned up again in late 2001 and is even accelerating today. Kerry can't point to these numbers to say the economy is bad.

THE STOCK MARKET?
There's no help for John Kerry here either. The market began its plunge during Clinton's second term, but has been heading steadily upward since fourth quarter 2002, despite a war.

THE ORIGINAL MISERY INDEX?
Then there's the Misery Index, created by Chicago economist Robert Barro in the 1970s, which is simply a combination of the unemployment rate and inflation. A favorite of the press, the Misery Index was higher under Bush 41, Carter and Clinton than under Bush 43. Obviously, Kerry doesn't like these numbers either because they don't support his efforts to talk down the economy.

LET'S MAKE SOMETHING UP!
So, let's see, employment numbers, GDP, the Misery Index (inflation and unemployment) and the Index of Leading Economic Index all show a pretty good economy under George W. Bush. So, Kerry asked his advisors to get him some numbers that show the economy is bad and, like the crafty accountant, when asked what 2 + 2 equals answered "what number do you have in mind", Kerry's people rejected all accepted economic indicators and made a new one, which Kerry calls his Middle-Class Misery Index.

CARTER ECONOMY BETTER THAN REAGAN ECONOMY!
This set of cherry picked numbers is a nice little political lie, as it shows good economies under Democrats and bad ones under Republicans. So, contrary to all common sense, Carter presided over a better economy than did Bush 41, Bush 43 and even Reagan, according to the Kerry Misery Index. The simple assertion that the Carter economy was better than the Reagan economy is so hilarious on its face that Kerry should be laughed out of the campaign. It is far more disturbing than Howard Dean's scream.

Not only is this Index a ridiculous attempt to dismiss all accepted economic indicators, it is also a poor strategic move for the Kerry campaign. Voters tend to support candidates that focus on positive visions for the country. Kerry has chosen to put "misery" at the center of his campaign.