Flying Pink Unicorns

How were my predictions?

Let's go prediction by prediction and see how I did:

1) Electoral college:

I predicted that Obama would win 364 electoral votes. BINGO. Assuming that North Carolina is in the end called for the democrats, as appears highly likely (The Raleigh newspaper has already done so), I will have hit the electoral college numbers exactly.

I predicted, "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."

I thus got every state correct except for reversing Missouri and Indiana. I knew these states would be extremely close (as did everyone else), so in terms of getting the states right I had a great night.

After predicting President Gore and President Kerry, I'm living proof that a stopped clock is right twice a day.

2) Popular vote: I predicted that "Obama will win the popular vote 53.8-45.2, or by 8.6 points."

As of this writing, and votes are still coming in, Obama won the popular vote 53-46. So I was quite close. However, there are, as of now, far fewer total votes than were expected, leading me to think that a lot of votes yet to be counted. The coming days will tell if that is true, or if instead nearly all the votes have been counted.

3) I predicted, "Obama will receive 75.9 million votes(!!!), and McCain 63.3 million (still more than Bush received in 2004!)."

I'll have to wait a week or more to be sure, but this looks way, way off. As of now, 9:50 p.m. the day after election day, Obama has 63.9 million votes and McCain has 56.4 million. Oops.

4) Senate seats: I predicted that the dems would pick up 8 Senate seats. Nope. As of now the democrats have picked up only 5. Oregon my end up with the democrats, and Georgia may end up in a runoff, so its too early to tell, but 8 seems very unlikely, and even 7 is unlikely. Its looking like 6.

5) House seats: I predicted the democrats would pick up 25 seats. That looks good right now. It'll actually be a month until we know the precise number, but as of this moment the democrats have picked up 20, and 21 or so looks like a good final number. So this one worked out.

I'll have a few more posts in coming days discussing why/how Obama won, how little the map really changed, and a few other things.