Electoral-Vote.com (formally Electoral Vote Predictor) is a website created by computer scientist Andrew S. Tanenbaum. In the periods leading up to U.S. federal elections, the site's primary content is poll analysis to project election outcomes. Since the 2016 elections, the site also has featured daily commentary on political news stories. The site was created during the lead-up to the 2004 U.S. Presidential election to predict the winner. The site tries to improve on national polls usually reported in the media, by instead analyzing the most recent polls on the state level, thus simulating the process by which Electoral College votes are determined in the actual election. Updated throughout the campaign, visitors can see who is "ahead" at any time. Instead of the site lying fallow between election cycles the way it did before, starting in 2015 the site provides daily commentary continuously. On weekends the website focuses more on interacting with readers, with Tanenbaum and Bates answering reader questions on Saturdays and posting a mailbag of reader letters on Sundays. Several political commenters, such as Chris Weigant, have noted the helpfulness of the website in aggregating polls state by state in order to predict the outcomes of elections. Staff Through most of the 2004 campaign, Andrew Tanenbaum went by the alias "the Votemaster", keeping his identity a secret. Tanenbaum is a civil libertarian, a member of Democrats Abroad (he is a long-time resident of the Netherlands) and generally supports Democratic candidates for office. He revealed his identity on November 1, 2004, as well as stating his reasons and qualifications for running the website. In 2015, Tanenbaum was joined by Christopher Bates, who contributes to the site under the name Zenger, chosen in honor of John Peter Zenger. Their respective contributions are differentiated by (V) and (Z). History 2004 Presidential election The site began operating on May 24, 2004 with a simple map and a few links to other pages. During the months leading up to the 2004 U.S. Presidential election, the site was updated daily to reflect new state polls. The site was the most popular election site in the country, in the top 1,000 Web sites in the world, and in the top 10 blogs in the world. In November 2004, the website had more than 650,000 hits per day. The main page consisted of a map of the United States with the individual states colored varying shades of