2006 Election Maps Mashups

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.'"

OR...

Or there is still Electoral-Vote.com [electoral-vote.com] from Mr Tanenbaum himself. Z.

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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

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Check again [electoral-vote.com]. The house races are there, and the current projection is 229 Democrats, 205 Republicans, 1 Tie.

Re:OR...

Neither site notes the Libertarian candidate for Tom Delay's district, TX-22
http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2006/Info/hothous e.html#TX [electoral-vote.com]
They note one of the (several) Republican write-ins, but ignore someone who is actually on the ballot.
Part of the whole red-blue trend that ignores other possibilities.

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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 r

So John Fitzpatric, how much is a slashvertisement

Mr. Founder of hotpads.com.

http://www.inman.com/InmanINF/mris/story.aspx?ID=5 0080 [inman.com]

Re:So John Fitzpatric, how much is a slashvertisem

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 clas

Re:So John Fitzpatric, how much is a slashvertisem

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

well

hopefully this motivates some of the lazier ones among us to actually crawl out of their holes and vote, instead of just complaining.

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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:

backwards

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.

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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

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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

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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

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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 be

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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

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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 wh

Wikipedia

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]

For Slashdotters who haven't been paying attention

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.

Re:For Slashdotters who haven't been paying attent

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?

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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

Re:For Slashdotters who haven't been paying attent

So.. if it turns out differently, will you say that the analysts are wrong or the votes?

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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.

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The large sucking sound you hear is the irony of your post flying right over your head.

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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 impress

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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 th

Yeah, but just remember

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]

Re:For Slashdotters who haven't been paying attent

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 th

Re:For Slashdotters who haven't been paying attent

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?)

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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

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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 fum

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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

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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 ast

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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

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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,

How funny

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.

Wrong

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 innefect

Diebold to the rescue!

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!

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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

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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.

Re:As a foreigner who wants the Dems back, just 1

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

Meh

I want to see the maps that the politicans use when they are gerrymandering the districts.

time for a new tag...

stopsayingmashup - tag saved.

It's like ebonics for Web 2.0 people.

What I really want to see...

What I really want to see is a map of where campaign money comes from overlayed on a map of where taxdollars go...

If we're suspicious of the media

Shouldn't we be suspicious of Google for getting involved so directly in politics?

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Please do not feed the trolls.

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Re:YOU AND YOUR PARTY WILL LOSE SLASHFAGS

What party is that exactly?

Judging by current polls, I think be believes all you Slashfags are Republican!

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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.

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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 aft

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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. T