Yes, we're still 4 months out, but it's no fun making projections on just a few states a week before the election. So based on Batman's post in another thread, I thought it would be fun to do an electoral college prediction. To keep it simple, simply tally up your Obama EC votes, and then calculate McCain from there. (Or do it vice-versa) For simplicity, Let's give Obama the following states: CA, CT, DC, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, ME, NJ, NY, RI, VT, WA McCain gets: AR, AL, AK, AZ, ID, KS, KY, LA, NE, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, WV, WY That puts us at Obama 183, McCain 135. If you want to switch up any of the above, you can see electoral vote amounts here: http://www.electoral-vote.com Take Obama's 183 and add any of the following states you think Obama will win; or take McCain's 135 and add all the states you think he will win. Colorado - 9 Florida - 27 Georgia - 15 Indiana - 11 Iowa - 7 Michigan - 20 Minnesota - 10 Mississippi - 6 Missouri - 11 Montana - 3 Nebraska (*) - 1 Nevada - 5 New Mexico - 5 New Hampshire - 4 North Carolina - 15 North Dakota - 3 Ohio - 20 Oregon - 7 Pennsylvania - 21 Virginia - 13 Wisconsin - 10 That will give you a total. Subtract from 538 to get the other candidate's total (270 wins the election). On Nebraska, McCain will win the 2 statewide votes, but they can split congressional districts. There's been some discussion that Obama could win one district, giving him 1 of the 5 EV's. The other 4 are pretty solid McCain, so I gave him 4 in the initial count and just left one vote for grabs in the list above. My prediction. Obama wins: Colorado - 9 Iowa - 7 Michigan - 20 Minnesota - 10 Montana - 3 Nebraska (*) - 1 Nevada - 5 New Mexico - 5 New Hampshire - 4 Ohio - 20 Oregon - 7 Pennsylvania - 21 Virginia - 13 Wisconsin - 10 Total: 318 Obama - 220 McCain I predict a 52-48 popular vote spread.
You did this much better than me, but we were posting at the same time. I live for this stuff. My prediction's coming up in a minute.
My prediction. Obama wins: Colorado - 9 Iowa - 7 Michigan - 20 Minnesota - 10 Montana - 3 Nevada - 5 New Mexico - 5 New Hampshire - 4 North Carolina - 15 Oregon - 7 Pennsylvania - 21 Virginia - 13 Wisconsin - 10 Total: 307 Obama - 231 McCain But I feel very good about AK, IN and GA too. (I don't know how you left AK out of the battlegrounds given the polls there, their fierce independent streak and their affection for Libertarians.) My ceding OH to McCain here is nothing but superstition. Regardless of all the evidence to the contrary, I just believe Ohio will always let me down. Believe it or not, I feel cautiously (and totally naively) optimistic about Texas too. I know it's stupid but I just can't help it. It's sort of like the way I continue to believe The Rockets can win it all every year until they're mathematically eliminated. I'm not making any predictions on the popular vote. That's just too tricky to call.
Actually I'm kind of thinking the same thing..Generally liberals in Texas have no reason to get up and vote.. but a ton of people in tx are super motivated by obama, just check his rally #s. He sold out reunion arena in dallas And Texas has a fairly large black and hispanic population. ( Just a hunch that hispanics are going for Obama this time around ). If Obama rocks the population centers that 8% mccain lead could really be wiped out.
I was quite positive that GHWB would beat Bill Clinton because he had won a war. (how can you lose the election when you won the war?) So I've disqualified myself from predictin' presidential elections.The popular vote seems too close to call...but in this democratic republic it the goofy electoral college count that counts.
Your optimism is comendable but the only way Obama wins TX is if conservative believe there is nothing for them to go to the polls for because McCain isn't a true conservative......won't happen.
Absolutely - two reasons: 1. There's very little historical evidence to suggest that VP candidates shift their home state. 2. Most polls show Obama with a double-digit lead there. You'd have to have 10% of people who like Obama deciding to vote McCain because of his VP. I think the only way a VP candidate potentially influences a state is if it's one of those states that's expected to be within 1-2%. Maybe that gives the Ohio or Virginia VP choices a leg up, but that's about it, I think.
Yeah - I was using an old spreadsheet some friends had put together back in early June. At the time, AK didn't look to be in play at all. Oops!
I think Obama wins: Colorado - 9 Michigan - 20 New Mexico - 5 Ohio - 20 Oregon - 7 Pennsylvania - 21 Wisconsin - 10 For 275 Electoral Votes. McCain gets 263, despite defeating Obama 49-48 in the popular vote totals. Angry Democrats from 2000 suddenly start singing the praises of the Electoral College system.
Do you have McCain winning Iowa, Minnesota and New Hampshire? I'd say he has a better shot in any of those three states than in OH or MI.
This would be entertaining to see! It would work both ways - Dems arguing that it's legit, and Republicans arguing that it was unfair. And it would be great fun to see the hypocrisy of it all. As someone who does hate the electoral college system (but doesn't blame it for Gore's loss), it might finally provide the impetus on both sides to try to get rid of it, but doubtful. I really liked what California tried to pass a few years ago (not sure if it passed) that their system would change to be proportional if at least 30 other states did the same or something like that. No individual state wants to go proportional because it reduces their influence, but it makes sense if everyone would do it. And, with that solution, you don't have to change the Constitution, which makes it far easier to implement.
I don't care who benefits from the current system. I hate it and I'll never support the electoral system. That doesn't mean I would question the legitimacy of an Obama victory in weslinder's scenario (though I find it impossible to believe his scenario would come true - McCain winning IA and MN??? No way.) or the reverse though. I don't like the way a lot of the primary system is set up either, but the rules are the rules. Until we change them, whoever wins according to the rules is the winner. Like Major, I didn't blame the electoral system for Bush-Gore. I blamed the mess in Florida, the result of which was that we actually have no idea who won the electoral vote because we have no idea who won the popular vote in FL. That, to me, is the most insane thing of all. Even if the SC hadn't cut the recount short, we wouldn't know the true results because, as it turned out, they were simply unknowable. It's 2008 and we still don't have any sort of reliable system for making sure every vote counts. And touch screen voting made it even harder to determine. That doesn't make any sense to me at all.
This is something I really don't understand. As a nation, we figured out how to make a bomb that can blow up a city, send people to the moon, build a global network of computers, etc, etc. Yet, we're not capable of putting a bunch of people in a booth, one at a time, giving them choices, and accurating tallying the choice they make? Who on earth came up with the bizarre wheel system used in Texas early voting? Or the butterfly ballot? If you're going to make an electronic voting system, just have choices "A" "B" "C" and have people push one of a few big huge buttons. And make it highlight that choice and make people confirm? Then print out an paper record of it that stays in the machine. Why is it so difficult?
