Ever wanted to be a political pundit and call the shots on how the presidential election will play out? Ever wanted to “get behind the numbers” and understand why certain states are leaning this way or that? With the launch of our new and improved General Election Political Dashboard, you too can be the next James Carville. We’re excited about the launch and why not? More than 50% of voters now get their election news and information online — and more of them from Yahoo! News than anywhere else!

For the General Election, we’ve kept all of the cool features from the Primary Political Dashboard –- plus some new bells and whistles sure to enthrall the political junkie in all of us. At a glance, users still can see national and state poll averages and market predictions on the presidential prospects for Barack Obama and John McCain. Also, users can check out a new form of polling… candidate search results and popular search terms for each candidate. (It’s no surprise the most commonly search words for Barack Obama in recent days has been Joe Biden, but Jill Biden also has seen a big spike.) Users then can quickly scroll over each state to get a snapshot on how candidates are doing, or they can click on specific state to get key local headlines, state-wide searches, and voter demographic breakdowns. They also can click on the candidate images to pull up bios and campaign fund-raising totals. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

The new dashboard also includes a bevy of “Most Blogged About” election topics –- the first time BuzzTracker has been integrated into a Yahoo! News tool (stay tuned for more) — and gives users the chance to check out not only high-level blogs from a national standpoint, but also blogs from individual states. Who knew New Hampshire had so many bloggers writing about the election?

The “Create Your Scenario” tool allows anyone to make a call on every state based on the dashboard content and publish that content using a permalink in an email or blog. Essentially, we’ve put the power of the political pundits in your hands. Will Ohio go to Obama or McCain? Will Florida go blue or stay red? Take a stab at the electoral college and see how the numbers add up (remember: 270 electoral votes are needed to win the White House.) For inspiration, you can view celebrity scenarios (check out Arianna Huffington’s picks) and current and past election results. You can also compare your results to others to see where differences reside!

This Presidential Election truly marks a turning point — where distribution of information and content is no longer controlled by a few networks but rather can be created, consumed, and mashed up by the voters themselves. The Political Dashboard has been developed with you, the voter, in mind.

Have fun and enjoy the new features as we head into final few months of this historic election.

Alan Warms
Vice President and General Manager, Yahoo! News, Tech and Education

Did you know that when Oprah Winfrey joined Barack Obama on the campaign trail last week, his Yahoo! Buzz rating (based on the volume of people who searched for variations of his name) shot up by more than 40 percent? Or that a much wider margin of voters are literally putting their money on Giuliani as the Republican candidate than are supporting him in the polls?

That’s the kind of insight we thought Yahoo! users would find interesting when evaluating this year’s election. It’s why we launched the “political dashboard,” a site that offers some interesting trends of the moment, as well as a state-by-state and candidate-by-candidate data analysis to give even the most hardcore political junkies their campaign fix.

It’s a part of our Election 2008 news site, and gives you a comparative snapshot of the most important campaign data, ranging from aggregate poll data, fundraising information, and even “prediction market” statistics from Intrade (an Irish-based website that uses a stock market-like approach to let users predict the election’s outcome). The dashboard gives a national overview, as well as a state-by-state analysis of both who’s winning and who’s voting. And it’s all updated daily. This type of analysis allows you to track for yourself who’s rising (or falling) as the polls, and ultimately the votes, come in. For now, it’s focused on the presidential candidates, but we also plan to add in local election data as those races heat up in the states.

Of course, we’ve also included the Yahoo! Buzz metrics, which may be the most interesting data point in our minds. This is the first time search data has been presented alongside traditional campaign metrics — something no other major news site can offer.

Check it out for yourself, and let us know what you think.

Alan Warms
General Manager, Yahoo! News