And the winner is ... first ask the astrophysicist
If the election were held today, John McCain would beat Barack Obama -- but Hillary Clinton would draw more voters than either one, according to a New York Times opinion piece that uses a new method of statistical polling analysis.
Using this analysis, Obama would carry New Mexico, the article says.
These conclusions are drawn by the opinion piece's author, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Tyson extrapolated research done by two fellow astrophysicists who correctly predicted the winners in 49 states during the 2004 presidential election, and he applied it to the 2008 race.
Tyson says the methodology used by J. Richard Gott III, a professor at Princeton, and Wes Colley, a researcher at the University of Alabama in Huntsville -- neither of whom is a political scientist -- has been accepted for publication in the journal Mathematical and Computer Modelling.
In the article, Tyson says:
This method provides a far more accurate assessment of public opinion than most people’s politically informed commentary. In the 2004 presidential election between John Kerry and George W. Bush, many political analysts said the race was too close to call. But when Professor Gott and Dr. Colley applied the median method in 2004, they correctly predicted the winner in 49 states, missing only Hawaii.
Tyson says he followed "the simple rules established by Professor Gott and Dr. Colley: in states in which a poll has not been taken, you give that state to the party that won it in 2004. You do the same for states where the median poll is a tie."
His conclusion:
If the general election were held today, Mr. Obama would win 252 electoral votes as the Democratic nominee, while Mrs. Clinton would win 295. In other words, Barack Obama is losing to John McCain, and Hillary Clinton is beating him.
Tyson is clear that his analysis does not predict who will will in November.
But, he says, "it describes the present better than any other known method does."
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