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Monopoly Politics 2004: 
Even Less Competition Than in 2002

Initial Release November 8, 2002
Updated September 15, 2004

On November 6, 2002 -- one day after the mid-term congressional elections -- we issued our initial projections in more than 350 races for elections in November 2004. We used the same methodology that had a 99.9% accuracy rate in projecting winners in more than 1,200 races from 1996-2002. In March 2004, we updated these projections, based on the following factors: newly open seats (where an incumbent would not be running for re-election); Texas congressional district line changes; and updated data on 2000 presidential results by congressional district (in 2002 we had made estimates in 50 districts for which this data had not been available).  Since then we have only made additional changes based on newly-created open seats, party shifts (two Democratic incumbents have changed parties) and special election results (Democrats won two special elections).  Our final number of projected winners is 351.

The 2004 Monopoly Politics projections are now available in html format. Our complete spreadsheet can be downloaded as a 1.7MB Microsoft Excel file or as a 500K zip file.  If you choose to view this file as an Excel workbook, please right-click and save the file to your hard drive.  If, in Excel, you have difficulties using the spreadsheet, go to "Window" and then "Unfreeze Panes" so you can scroll down the page.  This spreadsheet contains all the data used to make projections along with the actual projection model and allows the users to modify a variety of parameters to observe their impact on the accuracy of the projections.

The 2002 elections were strikingly uncompetitive:

2002 Election Results
Range Number of races
Landslide wins (>=20% margin) 356
Comfortable wins (>=10) 41
Tight (<10% margin) 38
Total Races 435

Here are our Monopoly Politics projections for 2002 and 2004 as of April 29, 2004. Without a major partisan surge for one party, expect the 2004 elections to be even less competitive. Also, note the increase from 2002 to 2004 in the  number of projected landslides victories.

2002 and 2004 Monopoly Politics Projections
Number of Projections
Range 2002 2004
Landslide (>=20% margin) 196 211
Comfortable (>=10) 101 107
Tight (<10% margin) 38 33
Total Projection 335 351

Competitive

83

70

Vulnerable

17 14

Total No Projection

100 84

We downloaded a map of the 2002 House election results from the New York Times website.

Finally, you can read a glossary of terms used in the Monopoly Politics 2004 projections, a User's Guide and a description of the algorithm used. 


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