Quinnipiac releases latest swing state polling numbers.
As the general presidential election begins, swing states will start to receive more attention from the candidates and national media. This week, our highlighted site focuses on the latest polling data of three major swing states from Quinnipiac University.
Quinnipiac conducted a survey from April 25 – May 1 of registered voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. These three states were targeted as no candidate since 1960 has won the White House without winning at least two of them.
When asked: “Turning to this year’s general election for president, if the election for President were being held today, and the candidates were Barack Obama the Democrat and Mitt Romney the Republican, for whom would you vote?”
Clearly the race is just beginning to heat up as both Florida and Ohio are within the statistical margin of error. Look for the candidates to start spending significant time and money in both of these states as well as a number of other swing states.
Check out the site for complete polling data including favorability ratings, voter opinions on the economy and which candidate for Vice President voters would most like to see Mitt Romney choose. You can also download crosstabs and demographic summaries for each poll and parse the data as deeply as you would like.
Here is a website that lets you learn more about the presidential campaigns.
Back in September 2010, we highlighted a website called The Museum of the Moving Image: The Living Room Candidate. It featured a history of presidential campaign television commercials since the time of President Dwight Eisenhower.
In honor of the 2012 presidential race, I’ve found another great site with even more historical information about presidential campaigns. Our Highlighted Site of the Week is 4President.org.
According to their site: “Learn about each election by downloading a candidates issues brochure, reading campaign announcement and acceptance speeches, viewing campaign logos, and analyzing popular vote and electoral college data.”
Starting with the Kennedy/Nixon race in 1960, 4President.org offers speeches from the candidates announcing their candidacy for president and their acceptance speeches for their party’s nomination at the conventions. You can view the campaign buttons, bumper stickers, and even television advertisements. For the campaigns from 1996 forward, you can even see their old campaign websites!
Have fun with this site and have a beautiful weekend.
A new, more user-friendly site for federal campaign finance disclosure data.
Our Highlighted Site of the Week is the Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) new Campaign Finance Disclosure Portal. The site was announced just yesterday and offers powerful resources allowing the visitor to access campaign finance data sets and perform advanced segmentation. The types of information included are independent expenditures; bundled contributions; candidate and committee summaries; receipts, disbursements, and a cash summary for PACs and National Party committees; leadership PAC and sponsor data; and much more.
According to the FEC’s news release: “The Commission announced the release of a new campaign finance disclosure portal that will simplify access to the wide range of data available on the agency’s website. The disclosure portal provides a single point of entry to federal campaign finance data.”
Information can be accessed through interactive maps, easily readable charts, or by searching with a name or keyword. Data sets can also be downloaded as XSD, XML, or CSV files in order to perform your own analysis or data mashup.
The FEC promises the Campaign Finance Disclosure Portal will be regularly updated throughout the election cycle. With both the site and its Disclosure Data Blog, you can subscribe to its feed via RSS so that you can keep up with any updates.
With a dose fun and healthy skepticism, Lobby Comply takes a look into the future:
This week instead of one site, we are highlighting a host of sites. Every presidential election brings with it the desire to predict an outcome. Here are the forecasts of a few pundits (and otherwise):
For the “tried and true”
If you like a voice of experience, take a look at James Zogby’s “Predicting the Presidential Election: 2012” in the Huffington Post. His article presents the finding of American University professor Allan Lichtman, who has correctly predicted the outcome of every election from 1984 through 2008. His vote is on Obama.
USA Today published “Can social media predict election outcomes?” by Scott Martin and Jon Swartz, who take a look at Facebook and Twitter conversations as election indicators.
The Meltwater Group gives us this word cloud showing us how much buzz the candidates are generating in social media from “We the People – Social Media Voices on Election 2012.”
PRMarketing.com posted “Predicting the 2012 President” by James Rognon, where he predicts Lady Gaga would win if we look solely at social media connections.
Electoralmap.net’s 2012 Electoral Map Forecast says it uses “data from the Intrade prediction market, where individuals place wagers on the outcome of the 2012 Presidential election in each state.”
Who knows, perhaps someday a super-computer will come along with a super algorithm that can – with extreme accuracy – predict the outcome of an upcoming election and we could dispense with all of the campaign ad spending and debates, etc. Until that time, enjoy these sites as they cast their predictions.
Keeping a tally of the delegates needed to win the Republican nomination in the 2012 presidential campaign.
With all of the attention placed on the Republican primaries and caucuses – especially with Super Tuesday happening this week – our Highlighted Site of the Week is a trio of delegate tracker sites.
Politico has a great Delegate Tracker page that can help you make sense of where each of the candidates stands in gaining the biggest portion of the 2,286 delegates needed to win the nomination at the GOP National Convention.
I personally like the GOP Delegate Tracker on The Wall Street Journal’s Election 2012 site. It has a bar graph with the candidates, an interactive map of the states, and even an interactive timeline.
There is, of course, always The New York Times. They have their Republican Delegate Count page and their State-by-State Primary Results page. As part of the NYTimes Election 2012 online resources, you can easily navigate to reviews of the debates and summaries of campaign finance information for each candidate.
The Office of the Clerk’s “Historical Highlights” site
For this week’s Highlighted Site, we turn to the Historical Highlights page of the United States House of Representatives’ Office of the Clerk. What I saw there rattled my ideas about electronic voting. When would you guess the first proposal was offered for electronic voting in Congress? I was way off. Take a look!
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On display are Tina Fey’s SNL Sarah Palin red suit and glasses, a microphone used by Franklin D. Roosevelt to deliver his famous “fireside chats,” handwritten notes taken by John F. Kennedy during a 1960 presidential debate with Richard Nixon, and much more.
According to their site: “The Newseum’s new election-year exhibit, ‘Every Four Years: Presidential Campaigns and the Press,’ explores how media coverage of presidential campaigns has evolved from William McKinley’s 1896 front porch campaign to Barack Obama’s 2008 Internet campaign, as candidates and reporters tangle over issues, images and control of the story.”
It’s history is fascinating! According to the site: “On September 14, 1814, U.S. soldiers at Baltimore’s Fort McHenry raised a huge American flag to celebrate a crucial victory over British forces during the War of 1812. The sight of those ‘broad stripes and bright stars’ inspired Francis Scott Key to write a song that eventually became the United States national anthem. Key’s words gave new significance to a national symbol and started a tradition through which generations of Americans have invested the flag with their own meanings and memories.”
The National Museum of American History’s site is wonderfully interactive. You can collect stars to complete the flag by taking a quiz about the history of the War of 1812.
There is an interactive flag page where you can view details documenting the damage the flag has sustained and the various attempts to restore it over the years.
Sing along with the lyrics to the National Anthem on the O Say Can You Sing? page and watch a video of the winner of the National Anthem Singing Contest from 2009.
On the Share Your Story page, you have the opportunity to tell everyone what the flag means to you.
Today’s Highlighted Site of the Week takes us to a library and museum in Canton, Ohio!
The National First Ladies’ Library website is a treasure of information about the fascinating lives of the wives of our nation’s presidents. The website is the online presence for a museum that resides in two buildings in Canton, Ohio: the former City National Bank Building and the Ida Saxton McKinley Historic Home.
According to the site: “As the first and only facility of its kind, the National First Ladies’ Library serves as a unique national resource for patrons from school children to serious scholars. As a national archive devoted to educating people about the contributions of First Ladies and other notable women in history, the Library’s holdings fill an informational void that has long frustrated academicians and armchair history buffs alike.”
The National First Ladies’ Library website offers online videos, their library catalog, and all kinds of educational material for teachers and students.
If you wish to find fun trivia, you will love the Fascinating Facts page. Here are a few of the firsts that you’ll find: Martha Washington was the first to be given the title “lady” by the press. John Quincy Adams’ wife, Louisa, was the only first lady born in a foreign country (England). John Tyler’s first wife was a stroke victim and the first president’s wife to die in the White House. William Howard Taft’s wife was the first first lady to own and drive a car, and Warren G. Harding’s wife was first first lady to vote and fly in an airplane!
If it is pictures you want, try the Huffington Post’s “First Ladies in College” photo slideshow. How about this for a teaser: “Do you know where ‘Lou’ Hoover went to college? Curious to see Lucretia Garfield in her younger years? What are the names of Grace Coolidge’s two pet raccoons? Did Julia Grant have permanently crossed eyes? Look no further than HuffPost College’s ‘First Ladies In College’ slideshow!”
There are the polls and there are the projections, but with the YouTube politics Channel, you can find out which campaign videos are creating the most buzz on the internet.
Are you curious which presidential candidates are receiving the most video views and channel subscriptions on YouTube? According to the site, the current tally of video views is as follows: Mitt Romney is king-of-the-hill with 500,330 views, followed by Newt Gingrich at 402, 467, and President Obama is in third place with 389,634 views.
You can view the statistics for today, for the past week, the past month, or for all time. Have fun with this great tool.
“Campaign finance information is now available via easy to use maps of the USA for both Presidential and House and Senate elections through the most recent reporting period.”
With just a mouse-over you can view the amount of contributions by state, and with just a bit more work you can search the amount received by each candidate, and the amount given by a donor’s name.
For the presidential races, you can drill down in each state for data down to the zip code level. For the candidates in the congressional elections, you can view the campaign finance information by the congressional district of each state.
How can we keep track of the many speaking engagements and campaign events held the by 2012 presidential candidates? It’s easy – PBS NewsHour has done all of the work for us!
Our Highlighted Site of the Week this week is PBS NewsHour’s 2012 Political Calendar. Did you know that today Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich addresses the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Charleston, South Carolina? Former Massachusets Gov. Mitt Romney is visiting his campaign headquarters in Greenville, South Carolina, too. Also, Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is holding a town hall in Lexington, South Carlina at 11 AM. And certainly not to be forgotten, Texas Rep. Ron Paul is making a campaign stop at the Charleston International Airportat 11:15.
According to the site: “Our politics calendar tracks the whereabouts of all the 2012 presidential candidates as well as other key events. Check back early and often for updates. All events are listed in Eastern Time. Please credit PBS NewsHour and link to this page if you are using events from this calendar.”
Have fun with this page and have a terrific weekend everyone!
The exhibit that shows the Washington, D.C. that could have been.
What if the nation’s capitol had been built with a giant bronze chicken on top of it? What if the Washington Monument had been built with a giant statue of the first president standing atop? How about a Lincoln Memorial built as a giant pyramid?
This week’s Highlighted Site of the Week is the National Building Museum’s Unbuilt Washington, the official site for the exhibit that shows you “what might have been” in our nation’s capital.
The proposed pyramid-style Lincoln Memorial.
According to the site: “Unbuilt Washington reveals the Washington that could have been by presenting architectural and urban design projects that were proposed but, for widely varied reasons, never executed. … The physical character of Washington, D.C., that we take for granted today is the unique result of countless decisions, debates, successes, failures, reconsiderations, missed opportunities, and lucky breaks. To tourists and residents alike, the city’s greatest landmarks may seem so appropriate, so correct—it is hard to imagine that they could have turned out completely differently. But nothing in the built environment of Washington [or in any other city, for that matter] is predestined.”
You will find an interactive Google map for the sites of the would-be sites and memorials described in Unbuilt Washington.
Don’t miss the exhibit, which runs from November 19, 2011 – May 28, 2012. Here is the National Building Museum’s Twitter feed and Facebook.
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As the general presidential election begins, swing states will start to receive more attention from the candidates and national media. This week, our highlighted site focuses on the latest polling data of three major swing states from Quinnipiac University.
Back in September 2010, we highlighted a website called The Museum of the Moving Image: The Living Room Candidate. It featured a history of presidential campaign television commercials since the time of President Dwight Eisenhower.
Starting with the Kennedy/Nixon race in 1960, 4President.org offers speeches from the candidates announcing their candidacy for president and their acceptance speeches for their party’s nomination at the conventions. You can view the campaign buttons, bumper stickers, and even television advertisements. For the campaigns from 1996 forward, you can even see their old campaign websites!
Our Highlighted Site of the Week is the Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) new Campaign Finance Disclosure Portal. The site was announced just yesterday and offers powerful resources allowing the visitor to access campaign finance data sets and perform advanced segmentation. The types of information included are independent expenditures; bundled contributions; candidate and committee summaries; receipts, disbursements, and a cash summary for PACs and National Party committees; leadership PAC and sponsor data; and much more.
This week instead of one site, we are highlighting a host of sites. Every presidential election brings with it the desire to predict an outcome. Here are the forecasts of a few pundits (and otherwise):
on the Republican primaries and caucuses – especially with Super Tuesday happening this week – our Highlighted Site of the Week is a trio of delegate tracker sites.
For this week’s Highlighted Site, we turn to the Historical Highlights page of the United States House of Representatives’ Office of the Clerk. What I saw there rattled my ideas about electronic voting. When would you guess the first proposal was offered for electronic voting in Congress? I was way off. Take a look!
State and Federal Communications produces a weekly summary of national news, offering more than 80 articles per week focused on ethics, lobbying, and campaign finance. 
Our Highlighted Site of the Week is The Newseum, a news and journalism interactive museum in Washington, D.C. On Level 6, the Newseum opened a new exhibit last Friday called Every Four Years: Presidential Campaigns and the Press.
This week’s Highlighted Site is the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and its Star Spangled Banner Exhibit. Take a look at the gallery where our treasured flag has been housed since 2008.
There is an interactive flag page where you can view details documenting the damage the flag has sustained and the various attempts to restore it over the years.
The National First Ladies’ Library website is a treasure of information about the fascinating lives of the wives of our nation’s presidents. The website is the online presence for a museum that resides in two buildings in Canton, Ohio: the former City National Bank Building and the Ida Saxton McKinley Historic Home.
The National First Ladies’ Library website offers online videos, their library catalog, and all kinds of educational material for teachers and students.
Today’s Highlighted Site of the Week is YouTube’s Politics Channel.
Our Highlighted Site of the Week is the Federal Election Commission’s 2012 Campaign Finance Maps page. You can play with interactive maps of the states for information about the 2012 Presidential Candidates, or the House and Senate elections.
Our Highlighted Site of the Week this week is PBS NewsHour’s 2012 Political Calendar. Did you know that today Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich addresses the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Charleston, South Carolina? Former Massachusets Gov. Mitt Romney is visiting his campaign headquarters in Greenville, South Carolina, too. Also, Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is holding a town hall in Lexington, South Carlina at 11 AM. And certainly not to be forgotten, Texas Rep. Ron Paul is making a campaign stop at the Charleston International Airportat 11:15.
What if the nation’s capitol had been built with a giant bronze chicken on top of it? What if the Washington Monument had been built with a giant statue of the first president standing atop? How about a Lincoln Memorial built as a giant pyramid?
