The simulator is new to 270toWin in 2008, so it is still a work-in-progress for us.  We like the statistics behind it, but need to point out an important issue.
Most national polls of late show the race to be very tight with Obama ever so slightly up; one poll out today (Reuters/Zogby) shows McCain has [...]

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After losing about 98% of the simulations in recent weeks, John McCain is starting to show some signs of life as recent state-level polls have generally moved closer.   This appears to be consistent with some of the national polling that has shown the race tightening in recent weeks.   While national polls are ultimately irrelevant, they [...]

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Recent polls in NH and FL have shown a closer race than polls out a few weeks ago.   A couple polls in NH show only a 2 or 3 point lead for Obama, down from about 10 points.  In Florida, a recent poll shows McCain only up by two points on Obama.   Perhaps the biggest [...]

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A number of polls have come out this week and Senator Obama has opened up a 10 point lead in Iowa and an 8 point lead in Michigan.  Both those polls came from Rasmussen, which also came out with a South Dakota poll that shows that race tightening — Senator McCain leads 44-40.      These polls [...]

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We’ve tweaked our methodology for the simulator a bit, using an average in some states.  Previously, we were basically picking one recent poll for a state and using that.    However, in many states we’re seeing wildly different results over a short period of time.   Since even a slight difference in percentages makes a huge difference [...]

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Many of you have seen our new election simulator.   This tool takes current polling in each state, turns the results into probabilities, and then runs simulated elections based on those probabilities.
Until the middle of last week, the simulator was behaving quite nicely (especially for a site like ours that will get more traffic if the [...]

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