I just realized that you need to be registered on The Baltimore Sun's website to view the article. In case you don't want to register, I've pasted the full text below. (With my part highlighted in bold text)
---------------------------------------------
Map junkies feed needs at Web sites
By Dan Thanh Dang, Sun Staff
Originally published November 1, 2004

Chris Heywood started off slowly: just once a day at first, then maybe two or three times. Now, he's at the point where sometimes he has to have one more hit before he goes to sleep.

Add the Alexandria attorney to the growing ranks of map-heads, people who just have to click -- and click and click again -- on Web sites that feature frequently updated Electoral College maps showing which states are solid or leaning toward President Bush or Sen. John Kerry.

As Election Day nears, some Web sites are reporting millions of hits a day as people seek the latest forecasts on which candidate is gathering the 270 electoral votes needed to become president. With most of the sites using the now accepted color codings -- blue for Kerry, red for Bush, and lighter versions of those colors for states that are leaning -- the maps provide snapshots for those who obsessively track the race.

"Obsession is such a strong word," Heywood, a Bush supporter, demurs. He admits, though, that he doesn't have to look at the maps anymore: He can recite which states are solidly red or blue and which are still up in the air. He can even reel off several different scenarios in which states will likely go red for his candidate.

"You can play with the numbers in your head," he says. "I guess it takes a sick mind to sit around doing that."

Join the club.

Political junkies have been glued to their computers in offices and at home fretting over the neck-and-neck race, checking the newest polls, and clicking the refresh button for any color changes on the maps. They well remember the last election, when Democrat Al Gore won the popular but not the Electoral College vote.

Some click on the maps just for fun, others out of sheer hope. Some check to ease their mind, others to strategize on probable outcomes -- if Pennsylvania, but not Ohio; if Michigan, but not Florida...

"I check every day, maybe twice a day, just to see how they're doing in the swing states," says Elizabeth Marvin, a graduate student in political science at the University of Maryland College Park and a Kerry supporter. "I think it's a way to prepare yourself in case things don't go your way. You know, for instance, Pennsylvania is iffy, so we might not get Pennsylvania, so I'm only half-invested in that state."

Electoral mapping isn't new, of course. The practice gained a fan base during the 2000 campaign when network TV and other news organizations used red and blue maps to track the votes. No one will soon forget lone Florida standing pale the morning after, against the backdrop of a nation that otherwise was either red or blue.

What is new is that voters no longer have to be a political insider or friend of a pollster to know what's going on. The maps have gone mass market and interactive. Today, anyone can click on Slate.com, realclear politics.com, rasmussenre ports.com or any of the other Web sites featuring electoral maps based on the latest polls and analyses to figure it out themselves.

As campaigns have adopted more online strategies and Internet use has exploded over the last four years, experts say the public's appetite for finding news on its own has grown. And the tools now available to help them track the election have become more sophisticated.

Who needs NBC election analyst Tim Russert and his quaint little white board?

"Those maps are popular because everyone is looking for the signs which will tell us which way the election is going," says Robert Erikson, a professor at Columbia University who studies American political behavior and elections. "No one knows, but we all want to know."

Tom Bevan discovered that.

Bevan, a co-founder of realclearpolitics.com, said the one-stop-political-shop Web site was getting 1.5 million page views a day two weeks ago. Since then, Bevan has had to add five new servers to keep up with the increasing traffic.

"We're probably doing anywhere from 3 to 5 million page hits a day," Bevan says. "That's a rough guess, but I can say that people who were visiting us once or twice a day are now visiting us four or five times a day."

A Web site from the Gallup Organization approached 100 million page hits for the month of October, a spokesman said.

Slate's electoral map is one of the Internet magazine's most popular pages, said William Saletan, its chief political correspondent and election analyst.

"People are addicted," Saletan says. "We get e-mail from readers complaining that we haven't posted a new map in the last six hours.

"I have friends -- who are not completely apolitical, but they're not part of the echo chamber -- who tell me they're checking every hour," he says.

Brooklyn, N.Y., resident and Kerry supporter Phil A. isn't checking every hour but is definitely on map watch to quell his pre-election nerves.

"When I look at these polls, if Bush is ahead by a couple points, I am reassured by the fact that maybe newly registered voters will turn the tide," A. says. "I don't think these polls account for newly registered voters ... I'm not entirely sure how much stock I should put in them, but it's all I've got to go on right now."

Experts say voters should use caution if they're going to use the maps as a divine oracle.

All over the board

At any given hour, four different Web site maps could have wildly different predictions. On Friday, the Los Angeles Times map had Bush ahead with 181 votes to Kerry's 153, with 204 votes up for grabs. Slate, meanwhile, was predicting a Kerry victory with 272 votes to Bush's 266, while both Gallup and elec toral-vote.com had Bush running far ahead of his challenger.

That basically means that any partisan can find a map to back up his or her predilection and ignore the rest.

"This is the moral equivalent of playing rotisserie sports," Slate's Saletan says. "I don't want to begrudge people their fantasy games, but it's a little weird. There's the real election and then there's your imaginary election where you're playing with the states."

Also, map followers should remember that the colors of the day are based on polls -- which vary in quality and reliability. For a better overview of the election, more than one map should be consulted, especially since some are based solely on opinions sent in from readers and some don't take into account margins of error.

But the biggest concern about the maps, experts say, is that voters in solid red or blue states that have already been declared safe for either candidate might not go to the polls if they think their vote doesn't matter.

Sandeep Kathuria, a Tulsa, Okla., attorney who is running a guess-the-electoral-vote contest among his friends, says he doubts that's a problem. He and his friend, Heywood, check the maps and the polls and then take them with a grain of salt. Both will vote Tuesday regardless of what the maps say about their states.

"I can't really say I have a lot of confidence in the day-to-day results because it changes too quickly," says Kathuria. "It's hard for me to say who is going to win, but I do follow those sites. I'm a political junkie."

But the maps are not entirely useless, experts say, because they do remind voters of the importance of the Electoral College, which is how presidents are elected. The maps also help inform voters of where campaign resources are being spent.

"I think the prevalence of electoral maps stems in part from the 2000 elections when it hit home for everyone the importance of the electoral votes and how campaigns shaped their strategies," says Sunshine Hillygus, an assistant professor at Harvard University who studies voting behavior. "I think the people who visit these sites are people who are already interested in the campaign. Political junkies. These maps are just nice little checks to keep up with national polls."

What the maps can't do, experts say, is sway the ever-elusive undecideds.

"Undecideds don't have a lot of interest in politics," says James Gimpel, a government professor at College Park. "They're not paying close attention. So they're not visiting these Web sites or checking out these maps. It may come down to some whimsical judgment for them. Perhaps they'll consult a family member or friend the day before the election. The only people who are going out of their way to check these maps are people who are already well-informed.

"They just want to see if their team wins."