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Final electoral chart now online

November 20th, 2008 Paul Crowley

I’d anticipated making this post within days of the election, but while the winner was known as soon as they called California, the result in Missouri has only been called in the last couple of days following a tight recount. In the end the state went to John McCain, a blow to the pride of the former “bellwether state” which has gone to the winner in every Presidential election in the last century except this one and 1956. So we are now ready to present the final chart for the 2008 US Presidential elections, including scattergrams that show how this year compares to 2004, and how the final results compare to the final projections from Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com that we used through the night. Incidentally, Silver accurately predicted the winner in every state but one, Indiana, which went to Obama by less than a 1% margin.

This was useful on election night, but it was a lot less useful than I had hoped, because what I didn’t take into account is that states are “called” for one side or another long before any estimates of the final voting percentages are available. Next time around I shall re-design it to take that into account. For now, time to get busy on something to watch during the next UK general election!

Entry Filed under: Politics