A Link Shared

Why I don’t share more links and devote entire blog entries to them, I don’t know – after all, a lot of Bloggers generally have some really good, useful links to share. Well, I thought I’d break from tradition with this entry and share a link that I actually found a month ago, but never got around to sharing with my readers of this blog.

The link I’m about to praise is called “Bush or Kerry: the Electoral College Map.” It’s definitely a very appropriate link considering the fact that the presidential election is now less than a month away.

The page you’ll discover if you click on the link is a very handy guide to the latest presidential polls in every state. Turns out that those “if the presidential election were held tomorrow” polls from every individual state are being collected and collected into a convenient guide that shows just exactly how the presidential race is shaping up in every state.

The website also lists which states will most definitely be won by Kerry – Massachusetts leads by the largest margin right now – and which states will unquestionably be won by Bush – Utah currently has the highest margin here. Along with this, a listing of all the states that are undecided, or “up for grabs,” is also on the page. This list has had the tendency to fluctuate quite a bit over the last month, as the latest poll results from each and every state come in.

Probably the best feature, however, of the website is the interactive poll tracker. This pop-up, interactive map illustrates which states are likely Kerry’s, which states are likely Bush’s, and which states are undecided. Put your mouse over any state, and you'll get the latest poll results showing how much of an advantage each candidate has there, as well as the voting record of the state for the past four presidential elections.

Another neat thing the map allows a person to do is create their own election scenarios. Click on any state and watch it turn pretty colors. A state can be made a red state, a blue state, or even, if so willing, a white state. Have fun seeing which states need to be won in order for Kerry one of the candidates to win presidency. Once you play this simulation, you’ll probably never forget that 270 electoral votes are necessary to win the election.

Now, before you go clicking off to the site, I should mention a tiny little detail. Since it is located at the Los Angeles Times’ website, you’ll need to be a registered member of the Tribune Media Network to actually view the website I’m talking about. If, however, you’ve already registered with latimes.com or any other Tribune newspaper website, like chicagotribune.com or newsday.com, you won’t need to register another account.

Although I recommend registering for an account since it grants access to the full slate of articles from the newspaper – and let’s not forget the Tribune Company’s newspapers are pretty reputable sources of information – if there’s absolutely no way that registering is going to be an option, I have found a free version of a website that offers essentially the same information. It’s from msnbc.com and can be found by clicking here.

In addition, I also see that CNN has a game where the goal is to correctly pick which states will be won by Kerry and which ones by Bush. The winner gets some sort of special prize. Maybe the knowledge gained at the latimes.com website could be used in trying to pick which candidate will win each state.