2008 Electoral College Prediction
With just two days left until most Americans vote, we are getting in the final round of polling for individual states, and its time for predictions to be made. There are still a somewhat surprising number of undecideds, but I believe that things are stable enough for me to issue a final prediction, and that prediction is that Barack Obama will be elected President with at least 291 electoral votes, with an upper estimate of 311. That leaves John McCain with either 227 or 247 votes. I do not believe that Obama will win a massive, 350+ vote landslide as polls at one point showed he might, nor do I believe that John McCain will be able to recover the ground he has lost to be able to claim victory.
Here is what I believe the map will look like Wednesday morning:
Barack Obama should hold all of the 2004 Blue states, and pick up New Mexico, Iowa, Colorado, Virginia, and Nevada. Ohio remains a toss up, though, unlike past elections, I do not believe holding Ohio will be enough to save the Republican nominee.
Senate: Democrats advance to 56, but fall short of the needed 60. Lieberman may very well change his affiliation.
November 2nd, 2008 at 11:46 am
Many pundits are predicting a close race. I hope people who would normally vote for McCain will get out in vote and not believe that Obama is going to win so why bother.
I am in a solid red state. Though I am not a fan of Palin, I would feel a little more secure with McCain providing he does not pass away in the next 4 years.
November 2nd, 2008 at 11:51 am
It could very well be a close race. In fact, I believe it will be similar to 1976, with Obama winning by 5 or less percentage points, but probably hitting 300 EVs
November 2nd, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Good riddance to the McNasty/Palin ticket. McCain is getting exactly what he deserves. Too bad we aren’t, though!
We can do better, and hopefully in 2012 Romney will be victorious. Jindal is also a very impressive individual. (Anyone but Palin or Huckabee, please.)
Did anyone see this video of Palin being pranked? It sums up very nicely exactly what is wrong with Palin, which is - she’s as dumb as a box of rocks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMV0LKlVj8I
She thinks she’s speaking to a head of state and the first thing she says is “We love you!”. It goes downhill after than, very downhill.
November 2nd, 2008 at 6:19 pm
http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/farrakhan_obama_islam/2008/11/01/146685.html?s=al&promo_code=6F79-1
OUR NEXT PRESIDENT ?
November 2nd, 2008 at 7:43 pm
If you listen to anybody on TV or read the papers, their take is its about 99.9% chance obama wins and wins big. Yet, the some radio folks and a few spots on the web still think mccain has a shot. I like your map but i’d throw PA, VA, and NV to join Ohio in the purple group, if mccain wins 3 of those, he wins the white house…stranger things have happened.
November 2nd, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Romney stumping for McCain, not looking ahead
November 2, 2008 07:43 PM
By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff (boston.com)
MARION, Iowa — Wherever he goes in the campaign’s final days, Mitt Romney dismisses the pleas of supporters like Carmen Halverson, a white-haired Republican activist with a big Romney button pinned to her red corduroy blazer.
“We want you to run again,” she said today as he pulled her in for a hug at the local McCain headquarters in this town near Cedar Rapids.
“Oh, no,” Romney said with a practiced smile, patting her on the arm. “We’re going to get John McCain elected, and then we’re going to get him reelected, that’s what we’re going to do.”
Romney has spent the last three days racing across the country, dispatched on a private Learjet by the McCain campaign to rally Republican ground troops and speak with local reporters in nine swing states, from Nevada to New Hampshire. It is an extension of the work the former Massachusetts governor has been doing since he lost the nomination to the Arizona senator in February — headlining fund-raisers for McCain, Republican groups, and more than three dozen congressional candidates; donating more than $400,000 through his political action committee to McCain and other candidates; and serving as one of McCain’s most active surrogates.
At each stop over the weekend, he warned that Barack Obama and congressional Democrats would further damage the country’s economy with higher taxes, while McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, would strengthen it by hewing to Republican principles of lower taxes, lower spending and a strong military.
“Barack Obama said he was only going to raise taxes on people earning over $250,000, then he slipped up and said $200,000, and then Joe Biden slipped up and said $150,000, and then I understand Governor Richardson slipped up and said yesterday $120,000,” he told a boisterous crowd of about 300 outside Denver on Saturday night. “Do I hear $80,000? Do I hear $70,000?”
Many of his supporters were eager to hear about his future political plans, but Romney would not engage in the speculation. “I’m not thinking about that,” he said, asked about the possibility he might try again in four years if McCain loses tomorrow. “I’m thinking about what’s going to happen to the country.”
This is partly good manners and partly, it seems, a genuine respect for the truth in the old cliche that timing is everything. He marvels at how the big campaign issues have changed over the last two years: immigration, Iraq, and now the economy.
Some of his supporters sigh at what might have been if the economic crisis had happened a year ago, or if Romney had been McCain’s vice presidential choice.
“I’ve had a lot of people tell me they wish they had another name on the ticket,” Tim Palmer, 47, a supporter from Cedar Rapids, told Romney as he drove his small entourage to lunch at a barbecue joint.
Palmer said later he hopes Romney will run again. “His economic toolbox is stronger than anyone’s I can imagine.”
But even if McCain loses Tuesday, the possibility of Romney running again has become more complicated now that Palin has emerged as a rival. Though polls show she is a drag on the Republican ticket, the Alaska governor has energized the Republican base, and even some of his strongest supporters say they have been charmed.
At Mr. Biggs Family Fun Center in deeply conservative Colorado Springs, Colo., where Romney beat McCain by 40 percentage points in the Republican caucus, hundreds of people turned out to hear him campaign for McCain in the middle of a beautiful Saturday afternoon. People cheered wildly when he walked out on stage and seemed to hang on his every word.
But the room was awash in Palin signs and stickers. Debbi Maser, who was selling political buttons in the back of the room, said while she’d sold only two Romney buttons, seven varieties of Palin buttons were going fast. “Everybody loves Palin,” she said with a smile.
Her husband Jim Maser said he is a huge fan of Romney’s and voted for him in the caucus, but he’s now gunning for a Palin run in 2012 if the ticket doesn’t win tomorrow.
“Sarah Palin — she’s one of us,” he said. “Not that Mitt isn’t, but to me, Palin has intangible characteristics that [Ronald] Reagan had.”
Some supporters beg Romney to serve in a McCain cabinet — perhaps as treasury secretary. But Romney puts them off, too; his father served unhappily as head of Housing and Urban Development in the Nixon administration, and he has no desire to follow in his footsteps.
Instead, Romney says he hopes to find a way to work from the outside, perhaps by working with think tanks, going on the lecture circuit, and writing opinion articles, on the issues he cares about such as reforming Medicare.
“I’d love to get my hands into it, I really would,” he said in an interview.
He says he won’t decide until after the election, but next week, he is going on a Caribbean cruise, sponsored by National Review magazine, where conservative thinkers will gather to talk about the party’s future.
November 2nd, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Mitt Romney’s bittersweet return to Colorado
1:02 AM Sun, Nov 02, 2008
Dave Levintha
http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/11/mitt-romneys-bittersweet-retur.html
GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. — Mitt Romney, the former Republican presidential candidate and once-Massachusetts governor, offered hardy words of support for ex-rival and GOP nominee John McCain at a nighttime rally here Saturday.
In February, Republicans in Colorado handed Mr. Romney a Super Tuesday primary victory over Mr. McCain. The win would be little consolation, however, as Mr. McCain began to surge in the polls, Mr. Romney soon dropping out of the race.
But when Mr. Romney jumped up on the flatbed of a pickup truck Saturday to address the crowd gathered around in a parking lot, the several hundred people gathered cheered wildly.
One man yelled, “We miss you!”
“I missed you, too,” Mr. Romney shouted back through a megaphone.
(*I particularly liked the following COMMENT.)
Posted by Brent @ 8:57 PM Sun, Nov 02, 2008
I am a “(evangelical religious bigots primarily)” 25 year old male and was all for Romney in the Primary. I was also hoping he would be the VP. Clearly I was let down; however I can’t wait for him to come back in 2012.
Please please please do not put the evangelical base down which will turn people away from Romney. There are things I think that can be done, and I think evangelicals are going to be strongly for Mitt next go around.
The tide is changing, especially when I heard Focus on the Family recognizing the LDS for their work on proposition 8. That would never have happened before. Dobson, Hannity, Rush, all these guys will be pro-Romney in 2008 and what Dobson does, many evangelicals are quick to follow.
Heck, I am an evangelical and was for the guy before everyone else was. I heard him speak in 2004 and told a friend “he will be the next president (after bush).” Well I was wrong, but hopefully I am only a little off.
November 2nd, 2008 at 10:28 pm
Article and VIDEO of Mitt campaigning in Colorado Springs, CO:
http://www.koaa.com/aaaa_featured_stories/x1589514864/Romney-campaigns-for-McCain-in-Colorado-Springs
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:15 am
2 the point.
I’ll believe it when I see it. I know MOST were not like the Huckles fan base. But enough preachers in Iowa were, to tell their flocks they would burn in Hell for voting for a Mormon. I know the tide is turning. But I don’t think it won’t be without resistence. What we need is for someone like dobson, warren and others in ‘leadership’ to say that the LDS ARE christian, so the others can move on.
We’ve got this next 4 years to get our act together. To vote for someone based solely on where they park themselves on Sunday is wrong. Which is pretty much the support Palin has.
November 3rd, 2008 at 9:45 am
Obamanomics
by Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski (Townhall.com)
Monday Nov 3, 2008
Last week’s revelation - in Barack Obama’s own words - that he believes the U.S. Supreme Court should redistribute income to bring about “economic justice” in this country is the final piece of the puzzle that reveals what he believes about the role of government in our lives. Taken with his other statements about wealth, taxes and spending, it reveals a radical-left view of government like this country has never seen.
In 2001, on WBEZ radio in Chicago, then-state senator Obama gave a radio interview. Calling it “redistributive change,” Mr. Obama advocated the courts redistributing income as a civil rights issue. He acknowledged the Founders designed limits on judicial power that they considered “essential,” and then went on to say he could develop a legal justification for the courts to abandon those limits and redistribute wealth.
In that same interview, Mr. Obama said he was not optimistic about the Court redistributing income, not because the Court shouldn’t, just because the process of income redistribution would be difficult for the Supreme Court to manage. However, he continued, it could be done more effectively through legislation or administrative action.
In other words, Mr. Obama doesn’t at all object to federal courts redistributing income, because “economic justice” should be part of advancing civil rights.
These statements are the last piece of a puzzle people have been trying to decipher for two years: What does Mr. Obama really believe? These statements, combined with his other statements over the past few months, finally give voters a coherent picture of Mr. Obama’s views.
Earlier this year, Charlie Gibson asked Mr. Obama if he would still raise capital gains tax if it would not bring in additional revenue and instead adversely affect millions of Americans. Mr. Obama responded he would still do it out of “fairness.” Even if the tax would hurt the economy, losing millions of jobs and squeezing working families, Mr. Obama will do it because in his mind it’s “fair.”
That statement is consistent with Mr. Obama explaining to Joe the Plumber, “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” It’s in those moments when he’s not giving canned speeches from a teleprompter, examined in advance for alarming statements, that Mr. Obama reveals what he truly thinks. By his own words, he will use government and higher taxes to “spread the wealth around.” This means he’ll take it from those he decides have too much, and give it to others he decides should have more.
Add to that Mr. Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden. When asked about higher taxes, Mr. Biden said it was patriotic to pay higher taxes without complaint. Later asked if Mr. Obama’s statements made him a Marxist, Mr. Biden ridiculed the question and the reporter asking it.
Then Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden ridiculed Joe the Plumber by name at his campaign rallies, starting the very next day. Evidently that is how Mr. Obama will deal with people who disagree with him. He went to Joe the Plumber’s neighborhood, walked down his street and in front of his house. As a voter, Joe decided to ask Mr. Obama a question. Now Mr. Obama’s unscripted answer has caused him trouble, and so Joe the Plumber has been attacked by Mr. Obama and his minions for daring to question Mr. Obama in public.
A government that can take your money and redistribute income will not tolerate any criticism from the people or the press. They should simply stand quiet as an all-wise government decides how much money they should have.
And now we know he wants to appoint Supreme Court justices, with lifetime appointments, who will do the same.
This is Obamanomics. While previous American presidents based their tax policies on what would bring in the most to government coffers and help the economy, Mr. Obama says he will base tax policy on what he decides is “fair.” According to Mr. Obama, he will decide what taxes are “fair” and what distribution of wealth and income achieve “economic justice” through “redistributive change.”
That’s just a fancy phrase for “spread the wealth around,” which is exactly what Mr. Obama will do unless he’s stopped at the ballot box on Election Day.
November 5th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Obama Supporters Celebrate with Soviet Flag
in front of the White House