This is why many of us were saying there was no way Obama was going to lose - you could subtract 8.5% of his vote from every state and he still would have won (despite losing the popular vote): http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/obamas-electoral-cushion.html Obama's Electoral Cushion Throughout this election cycle, there was some debate about whether either candidate had a structural advantage in the Electoral College, with our model generally insisting that Barack Obama was more likely to win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote rather than the other way around. Obviously, this became something of a moot point once the vote began rolling in on Tuesday and it became clear that Obama was going to win decisively. But nevertheless, there is evidence that if the race had tightened significantly, Obama had an electoral cushion of between 2-3 points. Specifically, while Obama won the national popular vote by 6.5 points, he accumulated 269 electoral votes -- guaranteeing him at least an electoral tie -- between 22 states and the District of Columbia which he won by 9.3 points or more. And he went over the top to 278 electoral votes with Colorado, which he won by 8.6 points. In other words, if you had subtracted 9.3 points from Barack Obama's margin in every state, he would still have tied the Electoral College -- even while losing the popular vote by almost 3 points. And if you had subtracted 8.6 points, he would have won the Electoral College outright, while losing the popular vote by 2.1 points. McCain's strategy of in effect conceding Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, while trying to compete in states like Pennsylvania and Iowa where Obama was already comfortably over 50 percent in almost all pre-election polls, was in retrospect a complete disaster.
For all those interested, here are the newspaper front pages across the globe after the election. http://obama2008.s3.amazonaws.com/headlines.html
I can't believe Obama is already sitting down with an unpopular, aggressive world leader without preconditions. okay, okay, I stole that one
some interesting background -- via TPM -- This, from the Associated Press, is just fascinating: In other words, early and absentee voting put Obama over the top in this key Bush state. Keep in mind that the Obama campaign was very aggressive in pushing supporters to vote early, with Obama or his wife Michelle, or Joe Biden, or other surrogates pushing the message at virtually every rally. Chalk this up as just another way that the Obama campaign revolutionized modern campaigns -- from now on, no serious presidential campaign will dare not attempt a sophisticated early-voting strategy. And it's yet another reminder, as if you needed one, of just how well-planned and executed the Obama campaign really was.
Early voting is no longer the domain of Republican voters. From now on, it's a tool to ensure lower-income citizens get their voice heard. Within a few years, I expect all states to enact early-voting.
What's fascinating to me is, according to the above numbers (percentages), by my estimation, the number of Floridians in this presidential election voted on Election Day were only 5% more than those who voted early or in absentee. Is that plausible?
It's absolutely possible. In 2004, more than 50% of Texans voted early (as well as some other states). It was 36% in Florida, but many more voted early this time: http://elections.gmu.edu/early_vote_2008.html
After day 2 of the recount, it is 1,211,358 to 1,211,222. Coleman's lead is down to 136 votes. Over 42% of the ballots have been recounted. So far, Coleman is challenging 374 ballots; Franken 360. http://www.startribune.com/
Could it get any crazier? What if Franken pulls this out? It'll come down to the Georgia runoff! I just wish liked Franken. (I don't) The only consolation is that Coleman is even worse, in my opinion.
McCain's last round of desperado robocalls in Florida telling people Obama was going to turn America into Cuba 2.0 probably helped to push him over the top on November 4th.
