Flying Pink Unicorns

Final predictions post.

I have made various posts predicting the outcome of the presidential and congressional elections. This post is an attempt to organize them all. Virtually none of my predictions have changed.

To sum up, I predict that Obama will win the popular vote 53.8-45.2, or 8.6 points. I predict Obama will receive 75.9 million votes(!!!), and McCain 63.3 million (still more than Bush received in 2004!). I predict Obama will win 364 electoral votes, way more than the 270 needed to win. The election should be called early, as California and its 55 electoral votes are a sure thing for Obama and thus there's no need to wait for them to call the election. As I said in my post of October 19, I predict the Democrats will pick up 8 Senate seats. I have no basis for a house prediction, but since everyone else is doing it, I predict the democrats will pick up 25 seats (up from 20 in my October 19 post). So Obama gets 364 electoral votes, democrats gain 8 Senate seats, leaving them with 59 (counting Joe Lieberman), and democrats gain 25 seats, giving them a 260-174 majority.

Obama will win every state Kerry won, plus Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina (by a whisker), Missouri (by a smaller whisker), Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. My last prediction had Obama winning 375 electoral votes. The only state on which I've changed my mind is Indiana, which now looks somewhat red.

In a huge night, Obama wins some or all of Indiana, Georgia, North Dakota, Montana, and maybe even Arizona. All these states matter for is the margin of victory.

The only Kerry state which might be close is Pennsylvania. Obama will win it, but the margin is very uncertain-- he could win by 3-5, he could win by 10. I have no idea.

Shortly after the election I will draft up a post seeing how my predictions worked out. I note again that I was wrong in 2000 about president, wrong in 2004, and consistently wrong during the primaries. Predicting the future is hard. Still, I've paid a ton of attention to this race, and I think I've been able to add some value.

On June 14th, I predicted an 8-point (or more) Obama victory, and went over a bunch of swing states, and made predictions. I completely missed Indiana's new status as a swing state, but did properly discuss a bunch of others. After the election, I'm going to go back to the June 14th post, and see how I did, almost 5 months out.