For all you election junkies out there, I found some more election maps. I think I've already mentioned the one on Washingtonpost.com, but there's also one on NPR and the New York Times website, all easily found by googling election map NPR or New York Times, or what have you. I admit, grudgingly, that the New York Times is my favorite of this lot (it's a hard pill to swallow to admit the NYT does something better than the Washington Post, especially related to politics). All three are interactive, so you can click on states and see recent polling results, etc.

I also discovered http://www.270towin.com/ (referring of course to the number of electoral votes needed). It's got a hypnotizing simulation feature where it'll run through all the possible results based on probabilities determined by the latest polls. So, for a state like Arizona that's definitely voting McCain, it'll always predict that it'll be red, but if he's 55% likely to win Nevada, he'll win Nevada in 55% of the simulations. You can press the "run again" button under the map over and over to see how it'll all play out. This has a very similar feel to that scene at the end of War Games when Joshua is learning about global thermonuclear war and runs thousands of scenarios, all of which end in a stalemate. Feels like that. Especially when, disturbingly, the scenario occasionally plays out to each candidate getting 269.

It also has a view of the electoral college all the way back to 1789. Nancy and I were lamenting about how torturously close this election has been, and it's really interesting to go back and see that, before 2000 the races were more or less fairly one sided (or, the results turned out that way, I'm sure in the thick of it it didn't feel one-sided). I mean, George McGovern got 17 electoral votes! Truman and Dewey wasn't even that close, as far as the numbers, Truman getting 303 and Dewey with 189. There was another squeaky close election like the 2000 election in 1876, Hayes 185 v. Tilden 184. If I'm being honest I'll admit I didn't know there had ever been a President Hayes. In 1800 Aaron Burr v. TJ was exactly tied. Anyone know how they decided who would be pres? Was it because Burr had killed Hamilton, or was that ok back then? I'm asking because that 269 v. 269 result on the simulator has me a little spooked, I'd like to know what the back-up plan is.