Big Sam Wang

I've been reading a lot on stats lately, particularly as they apply to the presidential race. No surprise that the race is close on all fronts, including EVs, or that the keys are Florida and Ohio. Princeton prof Sam Wang is one of the guys I read (we'll have to put some favorite links on this blog or something). He confirms that Ohio is the absolute key to this election, as evidenced by one probability calculation:

Ohio is critical for victory - but slightly more critical for Bush. This principle can be expressed quantitatively (thanks to Paul Y. at Goldman Sachs for asking this one). Given today's numbers, assuming a Kerry win in Ohio, the probability that Kerry wins the general election is 89% (8:1 odds). Conversely, if Bush wins Ohio, his win probability for the general election is 83% (5:1 odds). The exceptional outcomes are caused by all the alternate scenarios that Electoral College junkies like to speculate about.

Wang is making me feel good about Nevada (and I'll be driving through Ohio and Iowa on my travels too):

Hitting the streets: How much do you affect the election by going somewhere to get out the vote? The way to do this calculation is to see how much the Electoral College win probability is changed by incrementing a state's margin by some fraction F, where F is inversely proportional to the state's voting population. This is because as an individual, you can only get out a finite number of votes.

Today, the best states to go to, in descending order, are: Iowa, Ohio, Nevada, and Florida. Things change a little bit if the margin is different from the estimate (for instance towards Kerry because of the incumbent rule as originated by Guy Molyneux and reviewed by the Mystery Pollster and Mark Shields), but the top four states always include Ohio and Nevada. Why Nevada? Nevada is a near-tossup and has a disproportionately high share of electoral votes.