FiveThirtyEight... electoral projections

FiveThirtyEight: Electoral Projections Done Right.

If your passion is elections (USA), polls, or statistics, then this site will most likely interest you!

Here’s an example of what the folks behind the site do…

"The basic process for computing our Presidential projections consists of six steps:
1. Polling Average: Aggregate polling data, and weight it according to our reliability scores.
2. Trend Adjustment: Adjust the polling data for current trends.
3. Regression: Analyze demographic data in each state by means of regression analysis.
4. Snapshot: Combine the polling data with the regression analysis to produce an electoral snapshot. This is our estimate of what would happen if the election were held today.
5. Projection: Translate the snapshot into a projection of what will happen in November, by allocating out undecided voters and applying a discount to current polling leads based on historical trends.
6. Simulation: Simulate our results 10,000 times based on the results of the projection to account for the uncertainty in our estimates. The end result is a robust probabilistic assessment of what will happen in each state as well as in the nation as a whole."

You will see maps, charts, graphs, and commentary as you check out today’s polls, pollster ratings, Senate polls and projections, and electoral history. This site will be interesting to follow during the next ten days.

Photo: http://flickr.com/photos/sskennel/381727973/
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

GOOGLE ELECTIONS VIDEO SEARCH

Would you like a quick, easy way for your students to hear the presidential candidates talk about various issues? Check out a new gadget from Google. It’s called the Google Elections Video Search.

You enter a term to search. I tried education, of course. Then choose whether you want to see and hear all politicians or McCain or Obama. A list of videos from YouTube’s political channels is then available for you to choose. Each one has a title, how long ago it occurred, how long the clip is, and how many times your search term is used. When you look at the video, you can see yellow annotations where your term is used in the video timeline. Videos are ranked by frequency of search term, date, and source.

How does this work? Google Elections Video Search uses speech recognition software to create transcripts of the videos. Google’s blog states that some of the transcripts may not be 100% correct, but that Google is working to make the transcripts more accurate. The blog also points out that

Candidates can control the videos that appear in the gadget by managing the content they upload to YouTube.

You can choose the Google Elections Video Search as a gadget to install on an iGoogle page. To learn more about this gadget, go to http://www.google.com/educators/videosearch.html.

Electing the President in the USA

In the USA we talk about "one person, one vote"... yet that is not how the president of the country is chosen. And sometimes that's a bit difficult to explain.

CommonCraft--the company that produces the excellent "in plain English" videos--has created a video to do the explaining.

Check it out!

U.S. Presidential Candidates Audio and Video Resources

With Super Tuesday (just around the corner!) and other primaries leading to the general election in November, some information about the individuals campaigning for the office of president of the United States of America may be useful for lesson plans or for personal inspection at this point.

Due to current technology, resources available today include videos, podcasts, interviews, and other information from the Internet. LearnOutLoud.com has a collection of audio and video resources about the presidential candidates… and the resources are free. In addition, LearnOutLoud.com has lesson plans that we may use with these resources.

You will find resources for the candidates still remaining in the race and some, also, for a few of the candidates who have already dropped out.

Information for the following Republican candidates is included:
Rudolph Giuliani
Mike Huckabee
John McCain
Ron Paul and
Mitt Romney.






Information for the following Democratic candidates is included:
Hillary Rodham Clinton
John Edwards
Dennis Kucinich and
Barack Obama.

LearnOutLoud.com is a site that specializes in audio and video learning. They have more than 15,000 educational audio books, mp3 downloads, podcasts, and videos. They sell audio books on CD, cassette, and by download. They also have more than 500 free audio and video titles. Their directory includes audio books, lectures, speeches, sermons, and interviews.

TheRepublicanGOP.jpg
Image: http://flickr.com/photos/irrational_cat/98217102/
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

DemocraticPartySymbol.jpg
Image: http://flickr.com/photos/bootbearwdc/290148191/
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en