Feel free to make you election predictions in the comments. What will be the electoral vote count? What will the popular vote percentages be? How many Senate or House pickups will there be? Any ballot proposition predictions?
CNN allows you to make your own map (some other sites freeze up).
Slate has spreadsheets you can use to track your picks as well for a weighted contest (extra points for picking battleground states correctly, etc.).
Five Thirty Eight's projections show the most common results are 311, 338, 378, 353, and 291 for Obama.
FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver has a very good piece in Newsweek on what to watch for in the election returns.
The yellow states on CNN's map plus Pennsylvania and Nevada are those that have or will likely see the most voter suppression or dirty tricks. Democracy Now and Brad Blog have more details.
The number of true battleground states varies from source to source, but we'll go with these 15 (the CNN map lists abbreviations if you need them):
AZ-
CO-
IN-
FL-
GA-
MO-
MT-
NC-
ND-
NH-
NM-
NV-
OH-
PA-
VA-
Some people would add AR, ME and WV to that list. Add anything you like. In any case, feel free to make any predictions in the thread. Mine are in the comments below.
(I'll probably spend more time over at the Blue Herald version of this post, but feel free to leave comments here, if you prefer.)
I'm thinking Obama will get 349, with this breakdown:
ReplyDeleteAZ-McCain
CO-Obama
IN- McCain
FL-Obama
GA-McCain
MO- Obama
MT-McCain
NC-McCain
ND-McCain
NH-Obama
NM-Obama
NV- Obama
OH-Obama
PA-Obama
VA- Obama
But I can see Missouri and North Carolina switching, which would mean 353 for Obama. It looks like the most electoral votes Obama could get would be 406, and the most McCain could conceivably get is 278, but that's very, very unlikely for McCain. McCain's got about a 2% possibility to win according to FiveThirtyEight, and if you play with the interactive map, you'll quickly see why. He'd have to run the table on the toss-up states, and flip a solid Obama state. As Nate Silver's pointed out, Obama has a better chance of getting Arizona than McCain does of flipping Pennsylvania. I don't see Obama getting less than 273, and I'll be a bit surprised if he gets over 370. But enough races are close that the exact count is hard to predict. I am concerned about dirty tricks, down ticket elections, and ballot propositions. But let's get out that vote!