Ten Great 2012 Election Resources for Voters and Journalists

Screenshot: New York Times Election Map

2012 Election Resources for Voters and Journalists:

Open Secrets

1. OpenSecrets.org - A project of the Center for Responsive Politics, Open Secrets archives public FEC records on campaign fundraising and expenditures into an easily navigable and user-friendly election resource for voters interested in knowing where each candidate's money is coming from. Open Secrets helps voters "follow the money."

Google Election Center

2. Google 2012 Election Center - The Internet giant's information and voter resource hub is among the most comprehensive and up-to-date 2012 election resources.

Nate Silver's Political Calculus

3. FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus - Nate Silver, the famed sports and elections statistician, reports on, interprets, and aggregates election polls, offering an election forecasts blog and up-to-date interactive maps of Silver's election results projections. Leaving the spin and hype at the door, Silver focuses on the hard data and rigorous analysis based on sound assumptions to create accurate projections.

NYT 2008 Election Results Map

4. New York Times 2008 Election Results Map - This powerful interactive map of presidential election results lets users click on any state to zoom in and view election results for every county in the United States. Use a simple scroll tool on the left to view even more past presidential election results on the interactive map going all the way back to 1992. Other 2012 election resources project what voters are going to do next. This one shows what voters have done in the past.

Intrade

5. Intrade - Intrade is an online betting exchange and prediction market in which participants purchase options to bet on the outcome of non-sports-related future events that are easily defined and verified. Because the outcomes of political elections fit these criteria, they are a major market on InTrade, and its predictive powers have proven uncanny-- often more accurate than many pollsters and analysts, such as in the 2004 presidential election in which the markets accurately picked the eventual winner for every single state.

RealClearPolitics

6. RealClearPolitics - This widely-featured website comprehensively aggregates news, commentary, and polls from other 2012 election resources into a single, easy-to-use website.

iSideWith

7. iSideWith.com - This website, founded and operated independently of any investors, shareholders, advertisers, political party, or interest group by two entrepreneurs with two very different views of politics, iSideWith aims to help voters set aside party and personality to see which of six 2012 presidential candidates they really side with based on the issues alone. Take the short, but incredibly dynamic quiz to find out which presidential candidate you really side with on the issues.

Ballotpedia

8. Ballotpedia - Many of the best 2012 election resources focus on "up-ballot" candidates and issues like the US presidential candidates. Ballotpedia is a non-profit, non-partisan, open-source encyclopedia of information and resources to help voters educate themselves on the "down-ballot" state candidates and voter initiatives that typically receive less attention in the news and other election resources.

270toWin

9. 270toWin - This very cool (and for the politics-obsessed, very addictive) interactive map allows users to play out different potential electoral college outcomes for the 2012 presidential election.