One thing that’s definitely different about this election than all those before is the amount of data we all have access to.
Here are some of the more clever and interesting resources for the data junkies out there:
- Amazon’s Election Map based on what customers are buying: http://www.amazon.com/election2008
- Real Clear Politics Polling Aggregation and Graphing: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html
- FactCheck.org “Wire” provides really fast, unbiased fact checks of all claims as they hit the public: http://wire.factcheck.org/
- VoteSmart.org Voting records/Legislation records: e.g. Barack Obama’s profile http://www.votesmart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=9490
- THOMAS from Library of Congress has pretty much all the goods coming out of congress (legislation texts, treaties, reports): http://thomas.loc.gov/
- US Treasury Economic info: http://www.ustreas.gov/economic-plan/
- Government Accountability Office: http://www.gao.gov/
If I have more time, i’ll round up all the local and regional info. Some of the resources above have that. Most states and major cities have extensive websites with voter guides and historical data.
No excuse for not knowing the facts.
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