Election Math

[SoDesuKa]

Are there degrees of indeterminacy? The election is still very indeterminate at this point. Nobody can be said to be "winning" . . . especially not by 11 points. What nonsense. Time and Newsweek have an interest in reporting sensational news - it sells magazines.

The presidential election will be decided state by state, as it always is. I've accepted electoral-vote.com's division of the country into three categories, "locked-in Kerry states" with 211 electoral votes, "locked-in Bush states" with 182 electoral votes, and "up for grabs states" with 145 electoral votes.

Of these 145 electoral votes, Kerry needs 59, and Bush needs 88.* States leaning toward Kerry total 36 electoral votes, and those leaning toward Bush total 93. Two states, Iowa and Colorado, are dead even and total 16 electoral votes.

Up-for-grabs states are actually indeterminate at this point. It is not realistic to call them for either candidate at this point, with two months of hard campaigning to go.

Adding the "leaning" states to the "locked-in" states (which actually aren't locked in) results in a total of 275 electoral votes for Bush and 247 electoral votes for Kerry.

Of course, you can't add indeterminate figures without getting an indeterminate result. For instance, if Missouri and Arkansas go to Kerry instead of Bush, Kerry wins. How are Missouri and Arkansas (among others) going to vote? At this point, nobody knows.

The figures for these calculations came from http://www.electoral-vote.com/

*88 + 59 = 147, not 145. The one vote margin is counted twice, once for each candidate.