I tried to post this as a response to someone else’s comment, but I kept getting a WordPress error, so I thought I would post it to my blog at least.  SMDeane, this one’s for you!

Excellent points about some election sites!  I’m an NPR junkie, and I poke around their site quite a bit.  While I certainly read their articles, one of my favorite toys to play with is their interactive, Web 2.0-ey map here: http://www.npr.org/news/specials/election2008/2008-election-map.html#/president-nprOvM/

It provides a pretty map with different states marked red, blue, yellow or shades thereof, with access to the polls and the ability for the savvy viewer to make changes to their version of the map to determine electoral counts and potential election turnouts.  I think it’s great fun.  Clicking on the states also allows you to see recent articles focusing on the election in that state, and there are options to look at the last two presidential elections and see similar information.

Real Clear Politics (RCP) also has a similar map that gives great access to the polling numbers they use to make their predictions: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/maps/obama_vs_mccain/?map=5

One interesting thing in comparing the two maps is that NPR has Virginia as a “Toss Up” state, while RCP has Virginia as “Leaning Obama”.  Interesting to see how the same statistics are interpreted by different people.