I keep coming across interesting 2.0-style election-related datacrunchers and visualizers … here’s the good the bad and the ugly (you judge which!):
This site has pulled together a fantastic dashboard to monitor the election. Not only does it have all the key metrics, above, but it also has the latest Tweets, recent blog posts and recent news.
The simulator “is NOT a prediction of the outcome of the election. It merely takes representative state polls (or averages of multiple polls where appropriate) and answers the question: IF the election were today, what is the range of likely outcomes?”
FiveThityEight methodology differs from other poll compilations: 1. They assign each poll a weighting based on that pollster’s historical track record, sample size, and recentness. 2. They include a regression estimate based on the demographics in each state among their ‘polls’. 3. They use an inferential process to compute a rolling trendline that allows us to adjust results in states that have not been polled recently. 4. They simulate the election 10,000 times for each site update in order to provide a probabilistic assessment of electoral outcomes.
A nice example of volume of news references, displayed in a dynamic way.
