538.com map

[Erc]

I love 538's wonderful sensitivity...last week or so, Obama was given a >70% chance to win.  Now it's back to 52%, when nothing fundamental has really changed in the race.

[Erc]

I love 538's wonderful sensitivity...last week or so, Obama was given a >70% chance to win.  Now it's back to 52%, when nothing fundamental has really changed in the race.

538 doesn't care about the "fundamentals" of the race.  It's just designed to reflect whatever the current polling says.  The polling has shifted noticeably in McCain's direction, so 538 is going to reflect that.  The "percentage chance of winning" isn't really a forward projection of what's going to happen (in the same sense as, say, Intrade).  It's just a computation of the probability of each candidate winning if the voting were to line up with the current poll results, and their respective uncertainties.

Yeah, they're running a model, fed by poll data, through thousands of permutations. This is the percentage of permutations having Obama winning. Not reallyhis "percentage chance of winning", that's a misnomer.

Good to know.  Have never really sorted out what exactly 538 claims to do .

So, what exactly do these regression maps mean?

[Erc]

Good to know.  Have never really sorted out what exactly 538 claims to do .

So, what exactly do these regression maps mean?

What exactly is a regression model?

Regression Q&A 

So, just to clear this up....given the polling data he gets (national & statewide), he fits this model of his to that data...and the 'regression map' gives the prediction of that regression model?  Pretty cool.