Election 2008: Electoral College Road Map and Lesson Plans

September 22nd, 2008 By: Diane Trim in Articles, Teachers' Corner

My new favorite site for in-depth politics is from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato. Sabato calls his site the Crystal Ball and bills itself as the Web’s most accurate political analysis. I’m not qualified to judge that, but I do think the site would be useful in a classroom.

Electoral College Road Map. The best bit on Sabato’s Crystal Ball is the Electoral College Road Map. You’ll find it when you click on President ’08 on the homepage. The Road Map goes beyond the traditional red and blue states and shows each state’s support of the candidates in pinks and baby blues, too. A state that is solid for Obama will appear dark blue. A state that will likely throw its electoral votes for McCain is pink. Striped states (white and pink or white and baby blue) are those that just lean toward one candidate or the other. True undecided states are yellow.

Below the map, Sabato analyzes each kind of state: the solid and likely supporters, the leaning states, and the undecided states. It’s in-depth, wonky stuff, but the map would make for a great classroom discussion about electoral college math and the possible scenarios that will take one of the candidates to the White House.

Classroom Activities. Sabato has a link to classroom activities that includes some materials from the University of Virginia’s Youth Leadership Initiative (these are the folks that run the YLI Mock Election (check back on September 29 for an article about their service).

If I were to pick just one of the lesson plans, I’d go with the lesson about the Electoral College: Capturing the White House in ‘08: The Battle for the Swing States. You’ll have a hard time finding the cartoon the lesson refers to, but do a search for “The Battle Begins” editorial cartoon and you’ll find cartoonist David Horsey’s work listed near the top. The rest of the lesson’s materials are listed at the end of the lesson plan.

The plan includes a discussion of what makes a swing state and a hands-on computer activity where students interact with Sabato’s Electoral College Road Map to answer questions about swing states, political strategy, and possible election outcomes.

To cap off the unit, students can view political advertisements in the optional resources section and create parody TV ads for candidates.

Other Crystal Ball Resources. In addition to the ’08 presidential race the Crystal Ball also looks at current Senate, House, and gubernatorial races. Each of these sections includes a U.S. map and information about races in each state as well as the implications of the outcomes.

Tags: election, politics, social studies, Website