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Open Thread: Predictions

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Welcome to election eve, Caférs. We've discussed, chatted, debated, and berated. Now we want your predictions on the following:

Presidential Elections:
-Margin in the popular vote
-Electoral college number

Senate Elections:
-Final seat total in the senate, final seat total in the house

So, for example, Obama/McCain wins by x% in the popular, and gets xyz electoral college votes. Democrats/Republicans win x number of seats in the senate, and the house.

We want to know what you're thinking. Join us.


26 Comments

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Obama wins w/ a 4% lead in the popular vote and 291 electoral votes.

Dems get to 58 seats in the Senate.

I don't know anything about the House, but it sounds like we'll pick up 5 or 10 seats.


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I'll give it a go:

Obama by ten to fifteen points in the popular vote, winning 430 electoral votes, including Georgia, Texas and Montana as well as all the "battleground" states. This is predicated on a 70+ percent turnout. Much lower than that and we are in for a rough night.

I say a 60 seat majority in the Senate, though that will be close. Haven't been following the House races as I live in DC and have a hard enough time getting excited for senate races.

I will add this, though, if a better republican running for the senate in Virginia, Mark Warner would be having a hard time because as far as I can see, his campaign has been lackluster at best.

Of course, I have been predicting the American voter to wake up for years and have been disappointed before, most recently in 2006 when only 43% turned out to vote. Don't even get me started on the ten-percent average turnout for primary elections when the name says all we need to know about their relative importance to the process. We should calling the General Election the Secondary Election in order to change the context a bit.

We have a voter ignorance and apathy problem in this country that will take multiple elections and a concerted education effort to fix for good.

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My prediction: Obama wins popular vote by 4.7%; gets 311 Electoral votes.

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Nader by a landslide

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Are you insane? Cynthia McKinney is going to wipe the floor with that pretender.

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Barr vs. Nadar will be decided by the House.

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My prediction is here:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/djacobs/2008/11/my-prediction.php

Basically, I think Nate Silver is absurdly optimistic and a lot of McCain supports are hiding their true colors from the polls. But thanks to North Dakota, Obama wins by a handful of votes.

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Dude, you're map is weird if you think Obama wins Ohio but not PA. Ohio is way more conservative than PA. And in any case, you give Obama the win by sliding ND over. That just doesn't seem plausible to me.

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We have the socialist Obama right where we want him.

We will take back all of the electoral votes. We will take back all the senatorial seats. We will create the permanent Republican majority envisioned by the Prophet Gingrich.

We will leave your women weeping inconsolably.

Everything you know is wrong.

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Obama by 5-7% and ~380 electoral votes.

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Obama wins popular vote by 4%
Obama wins 353 EVs (Kerry states plus NV, NM, CO, IA, VA, NC, OH, FL).

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Obama in popular vote by 3%
Electoral College - 380
He wins in Fl, NC, NM and possibly montana.
Blame pasted squarely on Ms. Palin for the loss by the msm et. al.

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Obama popular vote +5.4%.

Electoral college = 375.

Senate, Dems + 2 Independents = 58, with Georgia yet to be decided in a runoff. (Do you go ahead and throw Joe LIEberman under the bus, then?)

House, Dems 251 (least confidence in that number).

-- ARG


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So, I was a little conservative on the popular vote MOV, which is almost 6% now.

And I'm going to fall one state short (Missouri) of my EV prediction (assuming NC comes through for Obama -- way to go, Indiana!).

I still have hope for my Senate prediction. I'm counting on Oregon and Minnesota coming through. (Don't have much hope for the outcome of the Georgia runoff, but I didn't predict a win there, just a runoff!)

I was way too conservative on the House number, it seems. (Didn't research that very much.) My greatest disappointment is that in my own district, IL-10, Dan Seals again fell short of beating incumbent Republican Mark Kirk. Dammit.

-- ARG

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EV
Obama 353
The Deformities 185

Popular Vote
Obama 52
McPiglin 45
Other 3

Senate Dems pick up: CO,NM,VA,NH,NC,AK = 56-44 (Mentum dumped please G-D)


House - Dems pick up 27 seats

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Sam Wang


As of November 3, 12:01PM EST:

Obama: 364 * McCain: 174 * Meta-margin: Obama +6.68%

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Obama wins 51% of the popular vote.

Somewhere between 338 to 353 EVs, with a high probability of 344. If you're scoring at home, my 344 map looks like this:

All the Kerry states plus Virginia, Florida, NC, CO, NM, NV, Iowa, and one of Missouri or Indiana.

I think there's an outside chance of getting to 375 if Obama wins Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri.

344 may be a little optimistic with NC in there, but I think it's doable, especially given the early voting numbers out of the state.

As for the Senate, I just want Al Franken to win. That would make my life.

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Obama 349 McCain 189. Obama wins all Kerry States plus CO, NM, NV, MO, IA, OH, VA and FL.

52% of the vote

Dems fail to reach 60 in the Senate.

Don't know enough about the House, but I predict Michelle "investigate Anti American members of Congress" Bachmann wins in a squeaker. You go girl!


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Electoral Votes:
McCain: 195, Obama 348
Senate Republicans 41, Democrats 58 plus Sanders and Lieberman
House of Representatives Rep: 172, Dems 263

Dems pick up 28 seats in the House


Percentage in presidential campaign:
McCain: 45.4% Obama 53.6%

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Here's an unpopular prediction
McCain 272 electoral votes
Obama by 2 million popular votes
Dems pic up 22 in House, two in Senate.

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First, I think we have to distinguish an HONEST election from election fraud. In a (reasonably -- as there is always SOME cheating) HONEST election, I think that Obama could be projected at about ~53% of the vote, possibly much higher as progressives feel INspirited and the RW DISpirited, in most of the country. That would mean a win of 7% or more.

In that scenario, the electoral college would be a blowout, with Obama receiving surely over 300 and quite possibly as high as ~350. I think it overoptimistic that so many on this thread PREDICT OVER 350 electoral votes, often many more, as that would imply Obama winning almost every single state that is seriously in play. Dick Morris argues with some merit that undecideds would likely break for McCain, but other factors than the logic he puts forward (election is a referendum on Obama) could at least make MOST undecideds, but hardly an overwhelming majority, break for Obama. Predictions of a 15% victory and over 400 electoral votes are off the radar screen.

On the other hand, there is the question of how successful the GOP will be at stealing the election. Note that they would have to steal multiple states, and not just one big one as in 00 and 04. This I don't think is likely, but it is possible, depending on to what degree they can exact obedience. It's pretty clear that, once stolen, the process will not AT ANY LEVEL hold the thieves or thieving party seriously accountable. Even with the degree of cheating that I expect will happen, I think Obama will STILL garner a majority of the votes and a strong majority of the electoral college -- winning the election by more than one even large "contested" state.

In the senate, the possibility of the Democrats getting 60 (in which case it would be up to the most RW of the Democrats caucusing, like Lieberman, to sustain filibusters) looms larger and larger. The smart money is predicting that the Dems come out with 58 or 59, but I see as high as 61 as a possibility, albeit an outside one.

In the House, the large majority already enjoyed by the Democratic Party will expand significantly, by at least another 27 seats, possibly many more. But the limits of what a likely Democratic Administration can do will be set by the possibilities of a filibuster in the senate, and a likely VERY activist RW SCOTUS for years to come

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Obama wins 55-44-1

57 Sentate democrats

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In the spirit of those TV poker shows, I'm going for the high-low here.

High:
Obama 55% - 41% (4% to 3rd-party candidates)
Democrats 60 Senators

Low:
Obama 51% - 47% (2% to 3rd parties)
Democrats 57 Senators

If I'm right with either scenario, I'll split the pot with my closest competitor. ;)

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On its face the question as framed is rather silly. Polling companies that have been in business for decades trying to answer exactly that question cannot get closer than +/ 5%. Why should anyone expect seat-of-the-pants amateurs to be MORE precise than that? This game of guessing the exact percentage has all the sophistication of guessing the numbers of jelly beans in a Halloween party jar.

Nonetheless, here are a few aspects I think are interesting:

1. According the average poll numbers on the closest linked website, www.electoral-vote.com, Obama as of the day before the election has a 7% advantage in popular votes. And, this sort of margin extends across so many swing states that a McCain upset is unimaginable unless the poll numbers are off more than 7%. Could they be?

2. I don't have the stats handy, but the margin predicted for Kerry in '04 was smaller (2-4%?) but positive, and the pollers pretty much all got it wrong. On average therefore, they would have be wrong in the same direction, and to a greater extent this time, in order for McCain to win. Both preconditions seem not terribly likely. More probably the pollsters have (a) tweaked their systems to give slightly higher Republican %s in order as to avoid repeating the '04 mistake, and (b) probably tried a bit harder than usual to make at least a few slight improvements to their accuracy so as, again, to reduce the chances of another wrong call, as in 2004.

3. It is possible, however, that voters' preferences are harder to measure than they were four years ago. In that case, even improved pollsters might still miss their moving target by more than before.

4. Two ways in which this might occur:
a) if the "undecideds" as a group behave considerably differently than four years ago
b) if the representativeness of the polls has suffered since '04 because of a change in the behavior of those who usually don't vote. (Recall that this was a key reason for the pollsters' fumble last time: pseudo-Christian bigots, etc. coming out of the woodwork in much greater numbers than expected.)

5. In both cases, however, it seems doubtful that such "greater difficulty of measurement" could tip things in McCain's favor. Again, think of what has changed since 2004: a) the incompetence, crass hypocrisy, and sheer arrogant foolishness of the Cheney-Bush and the Republican lemmings clinging to them, has become more apparent to all but the dumbest of the "Joe Plumbers". So those undecided Joes are more, not less, likely than before to register a complaint by voting for the non-incumbent party b) By all accounts Obama is better than Kerry and McCain not as good as Bush-Cheney-Rove in mobilizing non-voters. Another "uncertainty" factor that seems more likely to break Obama's way than McCain's.

I am also skeptical of the "hidden racism" factor argument. For that to be operative, white undecideds and non-voters would need to be more racist than the decided voters -otherwise they just swell the ranks without changing the % split. I don't see much evidence of such a differential distribution of closet racism. Ditto for voter fraud. An outrage to be decried, but not decisive unless there the fraud in toto is (a) heavily skewed toward one candidate and (b) more substantial than the (non-fraudulent) margin of victory. Highly dubious on both counts, and I figure that the chances of a Florida 2000 situation will be extremely miniscule in 2008.

6. Bottom line: Obama will probably win by something like the average 7% predicted OR BETTER.
Roll your favorite dice on the electoral vote, but I think he'll probably get nearly all the states he is expected to, and about his fair share of the upsets and toss-ups. A true landslide (20%) seems quite unlikely, but doing considerably better than Bush did last time is going to help reduce the sense of shame felt by many Americans at this embarrassingly inept and thick-skulled administration. Some of the shame reduction will result from Bush voters and non-voters of 2004 voting Obama in 2008. The shift the other way will probably be much less.

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Ptroub, are you sure Kerry was leading in 2004? I remember him being behind. People thought he would win because the undecideds were supposed to break for the challenger, not because he was actually leading.

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Alan C. I think you are right. It was the Exit Polls that erroneously predicted a Kerry victory. The real before-election polls correctly predicted that Bush would come out ahead. My rationale needs reworking, but I stick by the conclusion (Obama nationally by 7% or more) and we will soon see the actual results.

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