8 November 2016

Useful Election Day Information

Major newspapers are turning off their paywalls. Among them, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Foreign Policy magazine’s paywall is off. Other publications will turn off their paywalls, but I do not know whether newspapers in Montana will.

Slate is providing real-time estimates of vote tallies. Slate is using Votecastr information. Be sure the attach wide error bars to these data, especially early in the day.

Electoral college information and history. I recommend:

• The Electoral College: How It Works in Contemporary Presidential Elections, by Thomas Neale of the Congressional Research Service. April, 2016.


• The Electoral College, by William Kimberling, Federal Election Commission, May, 1992.


• Presidential Election Inequality, by FairVote. Last modified in 2016.

Historical turnout in Montana. Although turnout data are available on the Montana Secretary of State's website, my spreadsheet for 1920–2016 contains data on the voting eligible population that's not available at SecST. Two other Flathead Memo spreadsheets you might find useful:

• Registration and absentee ballots. Includes a comparison with 2012.


• Election for Governor, 2012 and 2016. Includes an estimate of county level vote totals for 2016 if the only change from 2012 is the registration total for the county.

Election returns for Montana will be posted on the SecST website once the polls close at 2000 this evening.