Anyone who’s asked me in recent history would know that it’s my opinion that the minor fluctuations in popular vote numbers that we see in the polls don’t matter one bit. It’s all up to the electoral college at this point, so why don’t people show what the estimated electoral vote and eventual outcome of the election would be if it took place today? Finally there is a site that does just that called (quite imaginatively), the Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004. Not only does it exist, but it’s written by a rather notable computer scientist, Andrew Tanenbaum, who will probably have been the author of a couple of my textbooks before I get out of school. He provides his sources in the form of excel spreadsheets and more data than you could ever need. If you roll your mouse over the states, you get not only the current poll that he’s using for that state, but the source for that poll as well as the result from the 2000 election. He also pledges to stay up all election night and update the site in real time. Fun stuff.

As it sits right now, according to the polls, Kerry would have 298 Electoral Votes and Bush would have 231. Bush supporters shouldn’t get all up in arms and Kerry supporters shouldn’t get cocky, as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico, and Florida are all in a statistical dead heat between Bush and Kerry. If you’re a third party supporter, I’d have to say it looks not so good. Ohio, Colorado, and Virginia ( a combined 50 Electoral College votes) all went to Bush in 2000, while Pennsylvania and New Mexico ( 26 Electoral College Votes ) went to Gore. Both Bush and Gore had 48.8% of the vote in Florida (27 Electoral Votes) for 2000, and I’m sure we all remember what happened there.

Below is a snapshot of the map taken when I looked at it (NOTE: This map doesn’t have statistics when you hover your mouse over it, only the map on the EV predictor does that). You’ll note if we voted by land mass Bush would have a landslide victory, or even a slight victory by popular vote, but thanks to the Electoral system, none of that really matters. Case in point: Gore did win the popular vote in 2000, but he’s still the one who ended up riding the pine come January 20th. Especially interesting is this graph, which shows how the Electoral Votes have been divided as well as relevant events that have happened going all the way back to June.