Election Eve, obligatory prediction post

Election Eve, obligatory prediction post

November 4, 2008, 12:08 am
Filed under: Uncategorized

So, I guess, being a “blogger” on election eve, it is my humble duty to provide you with my predictions for tomorrows election outcome.  Let me just first say, we’re gonna win.  The question now is by how much, and where.  I did a couple of different scenarios, and I’m not even sure as I write this how it will all shake down, but it’s not all that surprising (at least to me) that I have no idea what I’m going to write as I write it…

So here goes…

First of all, lets look at what a bare bones victory would look like.  I think at the very minimum, Obama’s path of least resistance to a win would be all the states that John Kerry won, plus NM, IA, and CO or VA, yielding 273 or 277 Electoral Votes, respectively (a little too close for comfort).  If we don’t see VA, OH, FL, or NC go blue early in the night (or, worst case, PA), we could have a more stressful evening than I’d like.  However, I don’t think either of those barebones scenarios will happen, because I think he will do better than that.  I’d say if he has a bad night tomorrow, for god knows what reason (Bradley Effect?), it would look like this:

 

Kerry states plus IA, NM, CO, VA, NV

Ok, not too shabby – so a bad night would be 291 EVs.  What would a ridiculously blown-out, GOP-goes-into-the-wilderness-never-to-be-seen-again-in-a-generation, landslide victory look like?

 

Kerry + a lot = embarrassment

Thats 401 EVs, and while it would be really freakin sweet to see those EVs hit the 400 mark, I also don’t think that’s going to happen.  Georgia, Montana, West Virginia, and North Dakota remain somewhat longshot, and Missouri and Indiana still lean towards McCain.  He has a decent chance of picking off a couple of these on ground game alone, perhaps his best chance could be Georgia, where early voting has been completely off the charts, especially in the African-American community.  Missouri has a history of being a bellwether state, and has been red for the majority of the election, but is trending back to blue of late.  Perhaps the folks of Missouri want to retain their bellwether status, and, sensing an Obama victory, may just vote for him to keep the namesake.  Indiana has also been on the cusp as of late, and could follow suit if the numbers continue to exceed expectations.  

So with all that in mind, I present my final prediction:

 

Kerry States + IA, NM, CO, NV, VA, OH, FL, and NC

I probably should take NC off the list, but having volunteered in the state, I cannot.  So there you go, 353 Electoral Votes.  

I also think we could see upwards of 140 million votes cast, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if we get over 150 (in 2004, 125 mil were cast).

If you are watching the news tomorrow night as the returns come in, the story will not be how Obama wins – it will be about the Senate seats, where we have a longshot chance of coming away with a 60-seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.  Flipping VA, CO, AK, NH, OR and NC brings us to 58 seats.  Minnesota remains a complete dark-horse because of a tight race between former comedian Al Franken and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman because of a third party candidate, Barkeley, who is polling in the low double digits.  It’s likely that a lot of that support will peel off to Franken and Coleman, but no one really has a clue how it will break down.  Personally, I’m a huge fan of Franken’s from before he decided to run for Senate – he used to host a really smart and funny radio show on Air America that I listened to religiously, so I sincerely hope he wins this seat, which would bring us to 59.  The 60th seat will be very tough, and will likely come from GA (on the heels of an Obama victory there… possibly), KY (where taking out Minority Leader Mitch McConnell would be downright cathartic to the party, and devastating to the GOP leadership), and MS (where a tight race is keeping Musgrove in the running against sneaky 1-year appointed incumbent Wicker).  I think the best chance of these three would be a Martin victory over Saxby Chambliss in Georgia, on the heels of an epic turnout, especially by the African-American demographic.  However, the interesting part of this race is that in GA, if a candidate doesn’t get above 50%, a runoff election will occur in a month or so.  With a third party candidate and a close race, if Chambliss can’t close the deal, all eyes (and a shitload of cash and appearances from President-elect Obama) will be on Georgia for the next month, and Martin has a good chance in the runoff.

God I hope Liddy Dole loses.

Sixty seats would be nice, but the truth is, there are a couple of pretty moderate Republican Senators like Dick Lugar, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Spector who probably won’t be filibustering an Obama agenda anyway, so we should be OK regardless.

Also, I expect Dems to pick up about 25 or so seats in the House, which would give us a strong majority in that chamber as well.  Neither should have enough to automatically overturn a veto, but honestly, who cares about that – I don’t think either chamber is going to be picking a fight with Obama anytime soon.

So there it is, in all its magnificent glory.

If you can take the day off work tomorrow and volunteer, that would be awesome.  If not, just make sure you vote.  But either way, enjoy our day of democracy, and raise a toast to (fingers crossed) President-Elect Obama tomorrow night.

Finally, if you are in Durham, rain or shine darkness, head downtown for what promises to be a pretty sweet election night party.  There will be a big screen TV projection at the intersection of Corcoran and Parish, across from Blue Coffee, and god knows what else going on down there.  I just also heard a rumor that there will be media crews there filming for the national feeds to CNN and ABC – you know, like during the debates and primaries and such where they’d look in on whats going on in Ohio or some guys living room or whatever – yea that’d be us.

Woo!  Yes we can!  Lets do it!

2 Comments

2 Comments so far
Leave a comment

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI