Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

2006 Election Maps Mashups

Posted by kdawson on Tue Oct 24, 2006 01:49 PM
from the red-and-the-blue dept.
Government Businesses Google The Internet United States Politics
John Fitzpatrick writes, "Search Engine Watch has an article on the launch this week of map-based search tools to follow the 2006 Congressional elections, from both Google Earth and the map-based real estate site HotPads.com. The Google Earth Blog notes the release of two election-oriented layers outlining the borders of the congressional districts and linking to Google News articles related to the different races. And HotPads is offering the 2006 Election Edition. From their blog: 'The 435 congressional districts are outlined on HotPads Maps, with red and blue designating the party affiliation of the districts' current Representatives. By clicking on the districts' "I" buttons..., users can view quick facts about the districts including the current Representatives and the candidates in November's contests. By clicking on the quick facts bubble, users can get more detailed information [from] Wikipedia articles with detailed information about the candidates and the close races.'"
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

2006 Election Maps Mashups 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • OR... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zwack (27039) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @01:59PM (#16564810) Homepage Journal
    Or there is still Electoral-Vote.com [electoral-vote.com] from Mr Tanenbaum himself. Z.
    • I like to visit My Election Analysis [myelectionanalysis.com] for good frequently updated predictions. It's a bit of a cross between a blog and Electoral-Vote.com
      • I'm not sure that he could adjust his "misprediction". What he is doing is taking multiple independent polls for each race (House and Senate) and using them as a predictor. Last time, there were many polls, including exit polls, that showed a different result than the final result. This raises the question of election fraud, but with so many electronic machines being used (and the lack of a guaranteed recount on them) it is hard to say. For more information look at this link...

        http://usliberals.about.co [about.com]

  • So John Fitzpatric, how much is a slashvertisement (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Crowhead (577505) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @02:00PM (#16564832)
    Mr. Founder of hotpads.com.

    http://www.inman.com/InmanINF/mris/story.aspx?ID=5 0080 [inman.com]
    • In the interests of equal time, since Mr Fitzpatric gets free advertising, I quote from the article parent mentioned: The founders say they view their main competitors as major pay-to-list sites such as Apartments.com and ForRent.com, along with other classified listing sites such as Craigslist.org.
    • Does it matter? Is this info still of interest to you or maybe other slashdotters? Sometimes you have to promote your own products... and sometimes it's a win-win for everyone.

      As for me, I never pay attention to who submitted an article, and usually not to the summary either -- it's immaterial. Either the article stands on its own merits, or it doesn't.
  • hopefully this motivates some of the lazier ones among us to actually crawl out of their holes and vote, instead of just complaining.
    • I wish I had mod points so I could give you either a +1 Hilarious or +1 Naive.


      This won't do anything since the people who are normally too lazy to get off their fat asses and vote won't be visiting such sites anyway.

      Besides, to quote Bill Vaughan:

      A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.

      Judging by the way things are, that's not too far from the truth.

    • backwards (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Quadraginta (902985) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @02:55PM (#16565852)
      God forbid. The last thing I want is some lazy doofus voting and cancelling out the effect of my carefully-researched, painstakingly thought-out vote.

      I say make it much harder to vote. Make people crawl a hundred yards over broken glass on Sunday night at 4 AM in a driving rainstorm to vote. Then only those of us really fucking serious about the whole business will be making the decisions.
      • I suspect that's why the country is in such a shambles now. Only the dedicated - the extremists - vote, and the bulk of the country, the middle of the road people politically (well, middile of the US road, which is still to the right of roads in the rest of the world) don't have their moderating effect.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Quadraginta (902985)
          Then you suspect wrong. First of all, turnout in the last national election was 57% of the voting-age population. 57% of the population can't be classified as "extremists" without perverting the definition of "extreme."

          Secondly, the most recent national-level election history has been one of sharp and sudden swings, e.g. from Carter to Reagan/Bush to Clinton and on to Dubya, not to mention the '94 Republican tidal wave, and possibly the Democratic resurgence this year. That makes no sense at all if only

      • I say make it much harder to vote. Make people crawl a hundred yards over broken glass on Sunday night at 4 AM in a driving rainstorm to vote. Then only those of us really fucking serious about the whole business will be making the decisions.

        Yes, I've often thought we really should limit voters to the crazy, single-minded subset of the population.

        -Grey [wellingtongrey.net]

        • So you're implying better decisions are made by those who aren't concerned enough about the outcome to be (in my words) "serious" or (in your words) "crazy [and] single-minded"?

          Hmm. So if I decide how your income is spent, and vice versa, we'll both be better off? Interesting logic.

          • So you're implying better decisions are made by those who aren't concerned enough about the outcome to be (in my words) "serious" or (in your words) "crazy [and] single-minded"? Hmm. So if I decide how your income is spent, and vice versa, we'll both be better off? Interesting logic

            No, those who aren't concerned won't show up to vote. Crawling over a hundred yards of broken glass would bring out the crazy.

            -Grey [wellingtongrey.net]

            • Ah. Let me introduce a new word into the discussion, then: hyperbole [reference.com].

              The bit about crawling over broken glass was mere rhetorical flourish. The serious statement is the bit before that, where I said I think it's absurd to try to get to the polls those who aren't concerned enough to vote when it's as easy as it is. The Republic is better off if such lazy and unconcerned folks don't vote. Do you disagree?

  • Wikipedia (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gambit3 (463693) on Tuesday October 24 2006, @02:15PM (#16565122) Homepage Journal
    Whoa..

    You had me until the "facts from Wikipedia" part.

    Anyone remember the last Wikipedia Presidential election fiasco where both candidate's pages had to be frozen because of vandalism? How then would anyone be able to trust the "facts" about the candidates they would read from Wikipedia?

    --
    Go Where Web Thinkers Gather [webcogito.com]
  • Democrats will take the 435-member House of Representatives back by a likely margin of 5-15 seats. There are almost no serious analysts who disagree on this point. Once Dems take back the House, they will have subpeona power and will begin investigating the Administration's leadup to war, etc. In the first 100 hours of Dem control in the House, future House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that she plans to hike the federal minimum wage for the first time in almost 10 years, establish (real) restrictions on lobbying, enact the 9/11 comission reccomendations that the Administration refuses to enact 5 years later, increase federal funding for stem cell research with a veto-proof majority, and lower the amount of money that seniors have to pay for prescription drugs. Obviously all this stuff has to get through the Senate and be signed by the Presidednt into law however.

    In the 100-seate Senate, things are likely to tighten up considerably (Republicans currently hold a majority of 55 so Democrats need to pick up 6 seats to take it back). The only really competative races to watch in the Senate are:
    Montana (whre Democratic challenger Jon Tester leads Republican incumbent Conrad burns- whose Jack Abramoff ties are weighing him down),
    Tennessee (where Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is retiring, leaving an open seat for Dem Harold Ford Jr and Republican Bob Corker to fight over- this race is mostly tied),
    Missouri (where Republican incumbent Jim Talent is virtually tied with Dem challenger Claire McCaskill, who has made this race about increasing the minimum wage and stem cell research- two issues that heavily favor Dems),
    Rhode Island (where moderate Republican incumbent Lincoln Chafee is struggling to win re-election over strong Dem challenger Sheldon Whitehouse, who leads him in the polls in this solid "blue" state),
    Pennsylvania (where Republican incumbent Rick Santorum is seen universally as the most endangered incumbent in the country, trailing behind Democratic challenger Bob Casey for months now),
    Virginia (where Republican incumbent George Allen leads Democratic challenger Jim Webb, but only after Allen's dropped considerably due to racism allegations surrounding the caught-on-video use of the slur 'macaca'),
    and Ohio (where Republicans statewide are in trouble due to a series of statewide scandals involving the GOP).

    Republicans are looking to pick up the Washington state seat, which they won't, and the Maryland seat, which they also will not (most analysts agree on this). The only possibility for a Republican pickup is really New Jersey (Dem incumbent Bob Menendez vs Republican challenger Tom Kean Jr- corruption is an issue on both sides of this race), where polls indicate that Menendez is leading slightly.
    • Democrats will take the 435-member House of Representatives back by a likely margin of 5-15 seats. There are almost no serious analysts who disagree on this point.

      I wonder why we need to have the election, then?
      • Quadraginta wrote:

        Democrats will take the 435-member House of Representatives back by a likely margin of 5-15 seats. There are almost no serious analysts who disagree on this point.

        I wonder why we need to have the election, then?

        Well the theory used to be that elections were more accurate than polls. Now I guess it's just a tradition.

        If you want to keep an eye on the latest poll results, I recommend Andrew Tanembaum's site: Electoral Vote [electoral-vote.com]

    • So.. if it turns out differently, will you say that the analysts are wrong or the votes?
      • zippthorne wrote:
        So.. if it turns out differently, will you say that the analysts are wrong or the votes?
        You mean you guys are planning on rigging the election again? Getting started early, preparing the ground, I see.
        • The large sucking sound you hear is the irony of your post flying right over your head.
          • monkeydo (173558) wrote:
            The large sucking sound you hear is the irony of your post flying right over your head.
            Ooh! He said irony! He wins!

            But you lose points for lifting a phrase from an old Ross Perot campaign. You might give people the impression you're a political flack or something.


    • Democrats will take the 435-member House of Representatives back by a likely margin of 5-15 seats. ...
      Republicans are looking to pick up the Washington state seat, which they won't, and the Maryland seat, which they also will not (most analysts agree on this)

      Have no fear, Diebold is here!

    • Democrats will be democrats, and they tend to be their own worst enemy...

      Unless, of course, the Democrats, being Democrats, somehow fuck it up. [newyorkmetro.com]
    • I am a conservative (always vote Republican) and let me say that I hope you are right. This is going to sound like a troll but it really isn't. I'm serious because, as a conservative, I want to see the Democrats hurt themselves. I think that would be the perfect set up for the Republicans in 2008. Let the Dems have control of the House by a small margin. With a small margin, they won't be able to do any serious damage to the country (again - I am conservative and that's my bias). They will investigat
      • No one takes the truthies seriously.


        And anyone who thinks the Democrats are going to become fire-breathing lefties overnight is compeltely insane. They're a bunch of pet rocks -- it's just that at this point pet rocks would be preferably to people stomping on the gas, driving the country toward a cliff.

        Can I ask you, in all seriousness why you're still happy with the Republicans? I mean, I can understand why you would feel that an attack on this country merits a strong military response -- but that's not what we're involved in at the moment is it? We're stomping around in a quagmire for obscure reasons that have nothing to do with the 9/11 attack or Al Qaeda, correct?

        Or to take another point, I can understand why a conservative would worry about fiscal responsibility... but we don't have fiscal responsibility, do we? How about that deficit, eh?

        By the way, I've been meaning to ask some Repubican or other... do you think you guys could return some of the money Enron stole for you? Seriously, how do you feel about your party recieving stolen goods?

        (And what kind of "conservative" has such contempt for the Magna Carta, not to mention the Constitution? Aren't they time-tested enough? How can you just shrug off what's being done to central fabric of our country?)

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Keebler71 (520908)
          Can I ask you, in all seriousness why you're still happy with the Republicans? I mean, I can understand why you would feel that an attack on this country merits a strong military response -- but that's not what we're involved in at the moment is it? We're stomping around in a quagmire for obscure reasons that have nothing to do with the 9/11 attack or Al Qaeda, correct?

          It's a quagmire to be sure, but I, and many conservatives believe that it was still the right call. I believe that it was the right call,

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by NMerriam (15122)
        It's funny, I was thrilled when Bush won in 2004. Because it was clear to anyone paying attention that Iraq was so ineptly planned that nobody would be able to turn around by that point. Bush had to stay in power so they couldn't blame someone else for fumbling their ball. And no matter who is in control of Congress, Bush is still the Commander in Chief right through the 2008 election.

        The albatross of Iraq is going to be dangling around the Republican Party's neck for as long as amputees and bodybags are co

      • I agree with you in principle, but in practice, I'm not so sure. Politicians have a habit of taking credit where it is not due, and most people are too ignorant to know the difference.

        If you follow the progress in Iraq, which most people don't, you know that Iraqi police and armed forces are on target to be mostly self-sufficient by our 2008 election. Democrats would be able to point to their taking over the House as the turning point, and it won't matter much that their policies had nothing to do with

        • kbielefe wrote:
          If you follow the progress in Iraq, which most people don't, you know that Iraqi police and armed forces are on target to be mostly self-sufficient by our 2008 election.
          And may I inquire what the source of information is for this astonishing statement? No, wait, let me guess...

        • They don't listen to their own arguments about the mistakes made. They say Bush didn't send enough troops and that he doesn't pay enough attention to social concerns in Iraq. ...
          The logical response to that argument is to send more troops and commit more resources to reconstruction so we can get out of there faster, but democrats only take that kind of bold gamble on West Wing episodes. In real life, they're not optimistic enough to believe it might work.

          Just because more troops would have helped in 2003

      • No serious political observer, conservative or liberal, believes that the US was complicit in 9/11, so your bizarre attempt to assert that Democrats would be looking for this is at best problematic. However, nearly everyone believes that Bush did, indeed, lie about the intelligence on WMDs. Putting these two together is an attempt to tain the second idea with the lunacy of the first. This is what America is like under the far-right neo-Republicans: if we can't make a valid argument, at least we can make a d

      • It seems like all the republicans are running around voicing your same sentiment. Interestingly, it is the same sentiment that I heard from the dems when the republicans gained control of the house so many years ago.
    • The republicans will keep control of the house and senate.

      The exit polls will be wildly divergent from the actual tallies in all states with Republican govenors.

      There will vote fraud on the part of Democrats as well, but it will be unorganized and innefectual.

      The Republican-dominated house and senate will pass voter protection laws designed to make sure this happens again in 2008.

    • Democrats will take the 435-member House of Representatives back by a likely margin of 5-15 seats

      Well, we certainly can't let that happen!

      • Shut the fuck up, hippy.

        Nothing I said was partisan to the least extend. I merely said what Democrats were planning to do once they took back the House. The "First 100 hour" plan has been reported in the press, and there are no serious analysts (either partisan or non-partisan) who believe that Republicans will hold on to control of the House of Representatives this year. If you don't think they will, then you either haven't been paying attention or are in denial. I only gave the bare facts on the Senate
        • Nothing I said was partisan to the least extend. I merely said what Democrats were planning to do
          It was in your tone. He could tell you were thinking Bad Thoughts.

      • arcite wrote:

        Will Democrats turn out on voting day this time? Or will they be slackers like they have been for the last 6 years??? I have read several articles saying that the real secret weapon of the republicans and Rove is their 'get out the vote' in the final 72hours.

        Will the Democrats be able to combat this, this time around? Or will they continue their sorry losing streak?

        You hear all sorts of things, but what I hear is that the Democrats may not have actually been losing anything but the o

  • I want to see the maps that the politicans use when they are gerrymandering the districts.
  • stopsayingmashup - tag saved.

    It's like ebonics for Web 2.0 people.

  • What I really want to see is a map of where campaign money comes from overlayed on a map of where taxdollars go...
  • Shouldn't we be suspicious of Google for getting involved so directly in politics?
    • And if you're in Utah's 2nd, please vote for Bob Brister [bristerforcongress.org]. He has many of the same views as your Bob Bowman. He supports familial unions for all people, ending the drug war, instant-runoff voting, getting out of Iraq, etc.
    • Well, you got modded off-topic (and I probably will as well) but as a fellow Floridian I wish you and your candidate Godspeed. It looks like from our paper today that Davis is gaining somewhat in the Gov's race. It will be interesting to what happens after the debates tonight (statewide on all PBS channels if you haven't heard). BTW - I am a third generation, lifelong Republican and there is one single local Republican candidate that I am supporting this year. Other than him, I'm voting Blue across the
    • Now if they would only build a layer showing the various reality TV show locations and stars' houses.... 'cause that is about all the general population cares about anyways.

      I'd prefer for the people who don't care how the election comes out to NOT vote. That makes the votes of the people who DO care and ARE paying attention more effective.

      This is actually important for proper functioning of the elections: Their REAL purpose is to predict the outcome of a hypothetical civil war on each issue, accurately en

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.