Nov 03 2008
The Election and Statistics
Election day is hours away and I still can’t believe it’s here. I’ve never been so excited about an election in my entire life. No matter which side you’re on, this will be such an energizing *and* exhausting day. The first time I voted was back in 1992 (H.W. Bush vs. Clinton) and since then I cannot remember such an energized and anxious campaign on either side.
What’s also exciting is the use of “statistics for the common folk” as I like to put it. Everything in this campaign has been measured from every angle possible.
What can we learn from the election analysts? What we already knew (but it’s a nice reminder!) … it’s all about segmentation! The “projected votes” polls have been broken down:
- by race
- by gender
- by economic status
- by previous Bush/Gore voters
- by state
- by region within a state
- by blue collar
- by white collar
- by ethnicity
- by whatever you’d like!
Even with all this data, it’s still just opinion polls at this point, though.
The Clinton/Obama primary race was, to me, more exciting because the primaries were on different days for different states. That created analysis based on true (in the actual votes vs. opinion polls sense of the word) numbers. For the general campaign, it’s only projection … until tomorrow!
Nonetheless, it’s interesting to track. My favorite election *statistics* site (and maybe the only true election statistics site out there) has got to be FiveThirtyEight.com. If there is another one as thorough, please let me know.
My least favorite pre-election (psuedo) statistics tool? You may already know for me it’s the stupid CNN tracker bar from the debates (ugh!). I hate eye candy. Pretty or cool for the sake of being pretty or cool. For some things that’s fine, but for something that touts analysis, pretty and cool has no place unless there is also some meat. It’s an insult to our intelligence.
All-in-all, though, I’m not sure I’ll miss the projection analysis. Why? Because tomorrow it will be replaced by actual voting analysis! For that, I cannot wait. Finally, some real numbers!
