How I follow the election

As you may know, I love the internet. Its greatest gift to mankind is the ability to share information and that makes it one of the most useful instruments in democracy's toolbox. The problem is how to sort through and filter out the crap. If you only read fringe-lunatic blogs or Faux New's website then you'd probably be better off living in a dictatorship. So today, I'm writing about a few of the websites I check out to stay on top of the election.

Real Clear Politics - www.realclearpolitics.com
I use this site mainly for its "poll of polls". Polls have their flaws (and issues are more important), but if you are trying to gauge how the election is going a poll is very effective. Because polls can be variable, Real Clear Politics averages out all the polls to create their RCP Average poll. And they do this not just at the national level but the state level, too. This allows them to make a prediction on the electoral college too, which is really what matters. Here is their cool Electoral College Map. You can choose to view it with or without the "toss-up" states.

Intrade Prediction Markets - www.intrade.com
Intrade is a prediction market website. Basically, people can buy stock in the likely hood of an event happening. If it does happen, then you receive the full value of the stock you have and if it doesn't happen you get $0. The price of the stock fluctuates depending on how likely people believe the event will happen. As the demand for an outcome increases, the price to buy that stock increases too.

So take the current presidential election. If you predict the winner correctly you will get $10. To buy a share in Barack Obama it will cost you about $5.70 right now. To buy a share in John McCain costs about $4.10. Other candidates, like Hillary, make up the other $0.20.

So basically, people who are betting their own money think there is a 57% chance Obama will be prez, and a 41% chance McCain will win. Here is a chart of Obama's prices.

The cool thing about intrade is that they have markets for all sorts of events, such as:

• will the US fall into a depression
• will a movie gross over $100 million dollars
• will Virgin Galatic send paying customers into space orbit by 2011

The Economist www.economist.com
While I do get the print edition as well, the website has the same content. The Economist is one of my three most trusted media news sources (with The News Hour w/ Jim Lehrer and NPR). A lot of the content on the web is free, and a full online subscription is a lot cheaper than the print version so I'd highly recommend you check it out. The only problem with the online version is you can't take it in with you to the bathroom - I do NOT take my laptop in there!

WarriorsWorld Politics Forum - www.forums.warriorsworld.net/politics
I actually don't recommend you visit it. It takes some getting used to and you have to have thick skin. It definitely has a liberal bias (it's the bay area!) but I find a lot of great links to other info and a healthy amount of debate. If you prefer not to venture into its cold, dangerous waters then just keep coming back to this blog, I post lots of interesting things that I find on WarriorsWorld. For instance, here is a fascnating article from the Washington Post about McCain's trip back to DC after he suspended his campaign and what went down when all the leaders met.

That's all I've got for now. If anything else interesting pops up I'll let you know. If you have any sites you'd recommend please post a comment about it.