ELECTION NIGHT IN AMERICA 2012 RECAP

I know it’s been about two weeks since Election Night but… What a night.

This is WHY I LOVE Election Night!

After all the polling, predictions, and punditry, we finally get hard numbers and ACTUAL projections are made.

MATH WON!

Here is the electoral map…

And here is Nate Silver’s map.

All that talk of Silver’s data was skewed or the polls oversampled Democrats was a load of bunk. I regularly was on fivethirtyeight.com to the point where I was refreshing the site hourly. Same with the Talking Points Memo and Real Clear Politics maps.

Nate Silver was correct to assume that Ohio would put Obama over the top as the networks at 10:12 PM (CT). However if you list the states in order from biggest Obama win all the way through towards biggest Romney win, Colorado was the tipping point state. Per the national popular vote, Obama won by 2.5 points. Colorado (9 EVs) went for Obama by 4.7 points; next was Virginia (13 EVs) with Obama +3.0.

When they finally called Florida for Obama days after Election Day, I was happy. Math won the 2012 Election.

Speaking of math…

THE RIGHT WING BUBBLE POPS

At 10:12 PM (CT) on 6 November 2012, all the major news networks projected Ohio to go into Barack Obama’s column thus putting him over the 270 Electoral Votes threshold to be re-elected President. There was ONE channel that had their doubts…

Just watch this 18-minute clip from Fox News that highlights Karl Rove’s breakdown as he descends into madness and disbelief…

The conservative media and conservative movement was in disbelief that Romney lost. Anyone see the pictures of the Romney Watch Party in Boston?

According to them, all of their polling showed that Romney was going to win: “The polls were skewed; let’s un-skew them. The media is biased towards Obama…”

Gallup once showed Romney +5. That should have been the first clue that something was off… If Gallup was showing Romney +5 then why were polls in individual states showing it to be a close race? That was my first tell that the Gallup poll was completely off. Candidate +5 should mean at least an Electoral College win of 350+ Electoral Votes (see 2008 Election).

Gallup is still a credible polling outfit, but I think for this election their methodology was a tad off. It wasn’t until Election Day that Gallup finally reflected the realities of the race. It was a close popular vote race that could have resulted in a split result where one candidate wins the Electoral Vote (which matters), but the other candidate wins the popular vote. It would be the second time in 12 years that a Presidential Election would produce that result.

On the Sunday before Election Day, George Will on ABC’s This Week made this prediction:

George Will (paraphrase): “Romney 321, Obama 217 with Minnesota going for Romney on the basis of Minnesota’s marriage referendum that will cause evangelicals to turn out.”

First… the last time Minnesota went for a Republican was 1972 when Nixon won in a landslide over George McGovern (520-17, MA and DC were the only areas McGovern won).

Second… maybe George Will didn’t get the memo that opinions on gays and lesbians in this country have changed in the last decade. Minnesota rejected the marriage referendum that would have super defined marriage as “one man, one woman” by a vote of 51-47.

Third… Minnesota went for Obama 54-44 in 2008. Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R, MN-6) was facing her toughest re-election bid. In 2012, Obama won the state by eight points and Bachmann was re-elected… just barely, 51-49. 4,000 votes was the difference in that race.

Again, George Will: great to go to a baseball game with; terrible at political predictions.

More on this later…

AVALANCHE ON BULLSHIT MOUNTAIN!!

Just watch "The Daily Show" from 7 November 2012 to see the commentary about the Fox News freakout over Obama's win.

BREAKDOWN OF WHO VOTED

2012 ELECTION POTUS	EVs	POPULAR VOTE	POPULAR VOTE %
OBAMA-BIDEN (DEM)	332	63,994,643	50.78
ROMNEY-RYAN (GOP)	206	59,916,183	47.55
OTHERS	0	2,102,237	1.67

*99% reported at the time of publishing

Here is the breakdown of the 2012 Electorate.

2012, GENDER	% ELECTORATE	OBAMA	ROMNEY
MALE	47	45	52
FEMALE	53	55	44

I don’t get it guys… you have daughters, wives, sisters, grandmothers, and nieces and nephews… wait, not nephews. You have a MOTHER. The GOP’s positions regarding women disgusts me not just as a man, but as a human being.

I was raised by a single mother who was a nurse and many of my aunts have careers outside the home. My sister has a daughter. I served under and with women while I was in the Navy. The last two Main Propulsion Assistants (that person was in charge of the two main machinery rooms on a Nimitz class aircraft carrier, generally a lieutenant commander billet) that I served under were women. During the deployment I went on in the first half of 2005, most of the propulsion plant watch officers were women. The women that I served with, some are still in and are now Chief Petty Officers.

Yeah, pay disparity between the genders piss me off and I have two different chromosomes.

In fact… watch this tape of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal ceremony again. Look at the person who is standing in between Vice President Biden and President Obama during the signature process. Red curly hair.

I had the honor and pleasure of meeting her when she came to Dallas in November 2011. Her name is Zoe Dunning, retired Navy Commander and one of the many advocates for DADT Repeal.

I may have been a blue shirt (enlisted sailor E-6 and below) and she was khaki (sailor E-7 and above) but do you notice the common thread? We were both sailors and we care about this country.

Simply put, I give a crap about women’s issues because they are my issues too because I know quite a few women in my life. Carol Hansich was right… “The Personal is POLITICAL.”

Anyways, back to the number crunching…

If you look at the swing states where Obama won:

STATE WOMEN VOTERS	OBAMA – ROMNEY = DIFFERENCE
FLORIDA	Obama +7
OHIO	Obama +11
VIRGINIA	Obama +9
PENNSYLVANIA	Obama +13
IOWA	Obama +19
NEW HAMPSHIRE	Obama +16
WISCONSIN	Obama +15
NEVADA	Obama +16
COLORADO	Obama +3

Women were one of many groups that won this election for Obama.

When it comes to the ladies, to frankly put it GOP, they just aren’t that into you.

Here is another telling statistic about the 2012 Electorate when broken down by race.

2012, RACE	% ELECTORATE	OBAMA	ROMNEY
WHITE	72	39	59
BLACK	13	93	6
HISPANIC	10	71	27

In 2008, the White Vote made up 74% of the electorate and McCain won that vote 55-43. In 2012, it dropped two points but Romney won the White Vote 59-39. One observation I caught from Election Night was Steve Schmidt who was the strategist for the McCain-Palin 2008 Campaign and a current contributor to MSNBC. It was seconds after the 10 PM (CT) poll closings (CA, WA, OR, HI, ID) and he made a statement about the demographics of the 2012 Electorate.

One of things that Chuck Todd talked about earlier, demographically, I think that if the polls are accurate, it’s highly likely that Mitt Romney is going to come in when the night is done with 60… 61% of the white vote. The last candidate who got 60, 61% of the white vote was George Herbert Walker Bush in 1988, 24 years ago, and that got him over 400 Electoral Votes.

And you look at the closeness of the race tonight, Mitt Romney can eke out a victory or if Mitt Romney loses it speaks just in stunning detail how the country has changed demographically and the catastrophe for Republicans with the Latino vote which was over 40% for George W. Bush just eight short years ago.

And now tonight it is going to be in the 20s and even if Mitt Romney is able to win this election tonight, this will be the last election that a Republican can possibly win as a national candidate with these types of numbers in the Latino community, with Women voters, and it’s really going to lead to some important moments of soul searching, I think, within the Republican Party if we’re to be a national party.

When Schmidt made this observation the current Electoral Vote count was Obama 243-188 with Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Colorado in the “Too Close To Call” category. The Electoral Vote count started with Romney taking an early lead, then Obama picked up the likely blue states, then it was tied, and then Romney had a 184-172 lead before 10 PM (CT) poll closings (which strangely sounds like a scenario foretold by Michael Tomasky for “The Daily Beast” in August). Those poll closings gave Obama the lead once and for all.

Later on Schmidt points out that California was a reliably Republican state. From 1948-1988, California sent its Electoral Votes for a Democratic candidate twice: Truman in 1948 and LBJ in 1964. They liked Ike twice (1952 and 1956) and you had the native son factor in Nixon, who was a Senator from the Golden State before being added to the ticket with Eisenhower in 1952.

In Nixon’s presidential runs (1960, 1968, 1972), he won California each of those times. So did Ford in 1976 and former California governor Ronald Reagan in his 1980 and 1984 landslide victories. The last Republican to win California was George H.W. Bush. Since then Democrats have equaled the Republican winning streak from 1968-1988 with a Blue Streak of their own from 1992-2012.

Why has California become a reliable Blue State? Proposition 187 which passed in California in 1994 to establish a state-run citizenship screening system and prohibited undocumented persons from using health care, public education, and other social services provided by the government in the state. The law was later to be found unconstitutional, but the damage had been done as it was viewed by the immigrant community as an attack on them.

The same thing is happening as groups are viewing the Republican Party has come to embrace some radical positions concerning Immigration, Women’s Issues, and LGBT Issues. For instance during the Republican Primary debates that took place several political cycles ago, Romney ran to the (emphasis) RIGHT OF RICK PERRY on Immigration. I am sure that various communities have economic concerns that they agree with the Republican Party on… HOWEVER COMMA… the positions the GOP have taken when it comes to social issues is absolutely offensive to common and decent people.

If the Republican Party is be competitive at the national level again, they need to undergo a serious rebranding and purging of the extreme elements that have infiltrated their party over the last 30 years.

THE LOSING STREAK ENDS

Speaking of social issues…

Gay marriage initiatives were on the ballot in four states: Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, and Washington. Legislatures in Maryland and Washington already passed marriage equality bills, but voters launched a petition drive to put it onto the ballot for the November election. In 2009, Maine put it to a vote and it failed. So there was an effort to try again in 2012. Minnesota’s marriage initiative was aimed at defining marriage as “one man, one woman.” Minnesota already has it stated that marriage between two people of the same gender is not allowed; this initiative would have super banned it.

What happened?

Maryland, Maine, and Washington said YES. Minnesota said NO… and NO is a good thing.

Maryland, Maine, and Washington joined the growing list of states where there are marriage equality laws in place.

This is a reversal of Proposition 8 from four years ago and what happened eight years ago when the Republican Party used this as a boogey man.

Look, I don’t like having the rights of people put up to a popular vote. I think it is an asinine process to do it this way, but whatever… It is part of a multi-pronged attack the way I see it. Proposition 8 might get heard before the Supreme Court. An announcement will be made sometime later this month. Daily Kos has a list of states where Marriage Equality might happen next, so stay tuned to this topic.

IN THE END…

2012 ELECTION POTUS	EVs
OBAMA-BIDEN (DEM)	332
ROMNEY-RYAN (GOP)	206

2012 ELECTION SENATE 113TH CONGRESS	SEATS
DEM	53
IND	2
GOP	45

* Both Independents are caucusing with the Democrats

2012 ELECTION HOUSE 113TH CONGRESS	SEATS
GOP	234
DEM	201

“House of Representatives, Republicans. Senate, Democrats. Presidency, Barack Obama. 2 years, 3 billion dollars… and we are clearly in the same (expletive deleted) place we were when it started.”

– Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, 6 November 2012

Jon Stewart put it bluntly after Obama was re-elected. In the end after all the campaigning and truckloads upon truckloads of money spent... this was a status quo election. We’re probably going to be headed towards more obstruction with a House controlled by the Republicans over the next two years. If there is some relief, yes the Republicans control more seats… but Democratic candidates in all 435 US House races got more votes. In part it is due to redistricting that took place after the 2010 mid-terms and several state legislatures turned more Republican.

I wish the Democrats could have pulled off the upset in the House, but it didn’t happen. Oh well. I’d rather have this political makeup than President-elect Mitt Romney and a Republican controlled Senate (shudders…).

This should be a lesson to Democratic-Progressive-Liberal minded people. When we show up, we win! We need to remember this in 2014 when all 435 seats in the House are up for re-election. We got rid of Tea Baggers Joe “Deadbeat Dad” Walsh and Alan “should’ve gotten a bad conduct discharge from the Army” West. Michele Bachmann was barely re-elected, but she is vulnerable and all the crazy stuff that she said in her failed Presidential run and other times… they are still on youtube.

We also have quite a few Senate seats to defend in 2014. Oh and guess what else happens in 2014, Texas has several statewide elections. We have a gubernatorial AND a US Senate race. I will write up something about the 2014 Texas elections and the upcoming legislative session here shortly. After this post I am taking a brief break from commenting directly about politics. There will be some political posts, but probably not written by me; it’ll probably be a video I find that I think is important.

In closing, there is this about what the re-election of PRESIDENT Barack Obama means. Remember my post Rachel Maddow Mic Drop from the day after the election. Well consider this an addendum. Here is what she said before her speech. This election was about the status quo and we preserved it in the progress that was made under this President and his administration over what will be the last four years this coming 20 January.

We are not going to have a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe versus Wade. There will be no more Antonin Scalias and Samuel Alitos added to this court.

We’re not going to repeal health reform. Nobody is going to kill Medicare and make old people in this generation or any other generation fight it out on the open market to try to get themselves health insurance. We are not going to do that.

We are not going to give a 20 percent tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like food stamps and kid’s insurance to cover the cost of that tax cut.

We’re not make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control under the insurance plan that you’re on.

We are not going to redefine rape.

We are not going to amend the United States Constitution to stop gay people from getting married.

We are not going to double Guantanamo.

We are not eliminating the Department of Energy or the Department of Education or housing at the federal level.

We are not going to spend $2 trillion on the military that the military does not want.

We are not scaling back on student loans, because the country’s new plan is that you should borrow money from your parents.

We are not vetoing the DREAM Act. We are not self-deporting.

We are not letting Detroit go bankrupt. We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January.

We are not going to have, as a president, a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared, gay kid, to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help and there was no apology, not ever.

We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolton. We are not bringing Dick Cheney back. We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq War. We are not going to do it.

We had the chance to do that if we wanted to do that, as a country. 

And we said no, last night, loudly.

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RACHEL MADDOW: MIC DROP

Ohio really did go to President Obama last night. And he really did win. And he really was born in Hawaii. And he really is legitimately President of the United States. Again. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month. And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy. And the polls were not skewed to oversample Democrats. And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad. Nate Silver was doing math. And climate change is real. And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes. And evolution is a thing! And Benghazi was an attack ON us; it was not a scandal BY us. And nobody is taking away anyone's guns. And taxes have not gone up. And the deficit is dropping, actually. And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. And the moon landing was real. And FEMA is not building concentration camps. And UN election observers are not taking over Texas. And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as Communism.

Listen. Last night was a good night for liberals and for Democrats for very obvious reasons. But it was also, possibly, a good night for this country as a whole. Because in this country, we have a two party system in government. And the idea is supposed to be that the two sides both come up with ways to confront and fix the real problems facing our country. They both propose possible solutions to our real problems. And we debate between those possible solutions. And by the process of debate, we pick the best idea. That competition between good ideas, from both sides, about real problems in the real country should result in our country having better choices, better options, than if only one side is really working on the hard stuff. And if the Republican Party, and the conservative movement, and the conservative media is stuck in a vacuum sealed, door locked, spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good, and denying the factual, lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived, as a nation, of the constructive debate between competing, feasible ideas about real problems.

Last night the Republicans got shellacked. And they had no idea it was coming. And we saw them, in real time, in real humiliating time, not believe it even as it was happening to them. And unless they're going to secede, they're going to have to pop the factual bubble they have been so happy living inside, if they do not want to get shellacked again. And that will be a painful process for them, I'm sure, but it will be good for the whole country - left, right, and center. You guys, we're counting on you. Wake up.

There's real problems in the world. There are real knowable facts in the world. Let's accept those and talk about how we might approach our problems differently. Let's move on from there. If the Republican Party, and the conservative movement, and conservative media are forced to do that by the humiliation they were dealt last night, we will all be better off as a nation. And in that spirit, congratulations everybody. Big night.

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ELECTION PREDICTION, ELECTION DAY 2012

	Obama	Toss Ups	Romney
Michael’s Rant	263	69	206
538	315.2	0	222.8
270 To Win	201	146	191
TPM	290	57	191
Real Clear	201	146	191
Real Clear (No Tossups)	303	0	235
Electoral Vote	294	24	220
Huffington Post	271	70	191
NBC	243	89	206
CNN	237	95	206
Fox News, Karl Rove	253	0	285

EASTERN FOUR	EVs	538 odds Obama win %	Poll Tracker	Real Clear
Florida	29	53.1	Romney +1.2	Romney +1.5
North Carolina	15	72.5	Romney +1.2
Virginia	13	81.4	Obama +1.8	Obama +0.3
New Hampshire	4	86.2	Obama +2.8	Obama +2.0

BIG TEN	EVs	538 odds Obama win %	Poll Tracker	Real Clear
Pennsylvania	20	98.8	Obama +3.8	Obama +3.8
Ohio	18	91.8	Obama +2.4	Obama +2.9
Michigan	16	99.5	Obama +4.8	Obama +4.0
Minnesota	10	99.8	Obama +9.1	Obama +5.2
Wisconsin	10	97.2	Obama +5.3	Obama +4.2
Iowa	6	86.0	Obama +2.3	Obama +2.4

WESTERN TWO	EVs	538 odds Obama win %	Poll Tracker	Real Clear
Colorado	9	81.8	Obama +3.1	Obama +1.5
Nevada	6	94.4	Obama +4.7	Obama +2.8

WILD CARD	EVs	538 odds Obama win %	Poll Tracker	Real Clear
Arizona	11	97.9	Romney +7.4	Romney +7.5

This is Election Day. The candidates are scrambling for the last undecided voters in the states of Florida, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Nevada, Virginia, New Hampshire, and…. The big one: OHIO!

President Obama has seen a rebound in his polling numbers since that disastrous Denver debate. Nate Silver’s numbers show Obama’s re-election chances north of 85%, their highest since the Democratic National Convention. A series of swing state polls over the last couple of days show that Obama is the favorite.

Meanwhile, the momentum that Romney had after the first debate appears to have stalled if not completely grinded it to a halt. Even though Romney is reverently campaigning in Ohio, it is reported that his campaign pursued ads in Minnesota and Pennsylvania. Romney even made a campaign appearance in Pennsylvania over the final 48 hours of the campaign.

Me thinks that the Romney campaign knows that they are in trouble in Ohio. If Obama wins Ohio, Mitt Romney better start writing his concession speech because Pennsylvania and Minnesota are long shots for the Republicans.

Again, let’s see what The Whiteboard says…

And it’s not just the Electoral Math, but the odds of Ohio being the deciding state are pretty good. Again, Nate Silver puts Ohio’s chances of being the deciding state at 49.8%. The next deciding state is Virginia with a 12.4% chance of being that state that puts a candidate over the top. Obama’s overall re-election odds are at 92.0%; Obama’s chance of winning Ohio is at 91.8%.

“As Ohio goes, so goes the nation.”

Another thing I find interesting is the disappearance of Rep. Paul Ryan from the campaign trail in October. Ryan was attending Republican fundraisers in Texas and Georgia. The Texas event featured Glenn Beck (there’s a name you haven’t heard of in a while) and former Vice-President Dick Cheney. Texas is not even a swing state…. Yet.

Hey, if you want to go and campaign in states that will not swing the Presidential Election, go on ahead. I think it is just a ploy to try to motivate the Republican base because remember the primary was not decided until late May with Romney’s victory in the (re-scheduled) Texas Primary. And even that had some dubious results… the Iowa Caucus, the rise and fall of the overtaking of the party by Ron Paul supporters which had some spillover into the convention, and the constant changing of positions.

Speaking of Rep. Ryan, the Associated Press put out a story about his plans after the election. Funny that none of them include Vice-President. I think it is important to see what the campaigns are NOT telling us. Both campaigns are saying they are going to win, but the Obama campaign has the Math on their side as shown in the tables and will be explained later on. I’m not going to argue Math (again, that is still my major to this day). With the election so close to concluding, the chances of there being a huge swing towards one candidate is very slim at this point.

Hurricane Sandy was the October Surprise that showed the President as someone who is willing to work with members of the other party in New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) in order to solve the problems facing this country. Mr. Romney is an opportunist; his relief rally was a staged campaign event. His food collection drive was a disaster in that the Red Cross told him “We don’t need food; it just creates more work for us. Tell your supporters to donate money.”

Romney knew that if he didn’t do something while the President was tending to Sandy he was going to lose. At the same time, campaigning while the President was assessing relief efforts would cost him. Talk about a no-win situation.

You can probably tell that I have changed the names of my categories and re-arranged some states. In an election, you have to be willing to evolve your tactics and strategy. The Eastern Four is now Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and New Hampshire. The best chance Romney had of winning a New England state is now all but gone. New Hampshire was looking like it was trending Romney, but after the second and third Presidential debates, those chances are now gone.

Virginia looks like it is back in Obama’s category. North Carolina and Florida might be breaking for Obama. Florida more likely than North Carolina. It all depends on turnout and the Obama campaign has an excellent GOTV effort. Florida is a state to watch due to Governor Rick Scott’s (R) efforts to curb early voting and make it much more difficult to vote. During the brief early voting period in Florida, there have been reports of waits longer than 4 hours. When the time for voting ended on Saturday in Florida at 7, some voters were still in line. The rule is if you are in line when the polls close, you can still vote. All those voters that were still in line were not processed until 1 AM. Efforts were being made to extend Florida’s early voting to Sunday, but Governor Scott said no. I expect Election Day in Florida to be chaos.

And it’s not just in Florida where there are voting issues to watch for: North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, and Ohio also have some issues with voting. Hmmm… why those states… perhaps those are states where the Presidential Election will be decided. There are reports of various Secretaries’ Of State purging the voter rolls and provisional ballots are being thrown out.

Gotta love democracy, am I right?

The next category is the Big Ten. But there are only six states? These are states with colleges in the Big Ten Athletic Conference, which has twelve schools. Why don’t they call themselves the Big Twelve? Because there is a conference called the Big Twelve and it has ten schools. I know, confusing. We’ll talk sports another day; politics is the game here.

Anyways, six states are in the Big Ten category. Romney knows he is in trouble here. Polling in these six states are trending Obama. For starters, Romney’s lie about Jeep moving their factories from Ohio to China is not working. Ohio is doing better than the national unemployment of 7.9% and they follow the auto industry better than some people follow their fantasy football team. In fact Chrysler called Romney out on his lie. If a car salesman is saying you are lying, that’s something.

A pattern I have noticed that Nate Silver’s Ohio Obama odds are close to Obama’s odds nationally. Say it with me again: “As Ohio goes, so goes the nation.”

So… what is Romney to do if Ohio is not in play?

Michigan… oh wait a second: “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”

Iowa, but that has an affinity towards President Obama due to how his campaign in 2008 got started. Plus it only has 6 electoral votes. Romney can win the state, but still lose the Electoral College. Wisconsin, the home state of Paul Ryan, is not looking good.

How about Minnesota? I laughed when George Will of ABC’s This Week said Romney will win Minnesota citing the marriage definition bill that is on the ballot and the presidency on the recent broadcast. Opinions towards LGBTs have changed in the last 10 years; as a matter of fact, Gallup’s polling states that support for gay marriage is now in the majority. Oh and the latest Public Policy Polling information shows Minnesota rejecting the marriage definition bill 52-45.

George Will: probably great to go to a baseball game with, terrible when it comes to predictions.

Pennsylvania? It has 20 electoral votes and a good substitution for Ohio if things don’t go their way…. Problem is that the Romney campaign pulled out of The Keystone State a LONG time ago. You can’t expect to win a state where you suddenly re-start your state’s campaign operations THE WEEKEND BEFORE THE ELECTION!

Also, polling is showing that Obama is favored in the state and Silver shows Obama has a 98.8% chance of winning the state. Since 1992, Republican Presidential candidates have gone to Pennsylvania hours before Election Day. No Republican has won Pennsylvania from 1992 onward. The ploy to put Pennsylvania in play is a tell that the Romney campaign knows their paths to 270 are narrowing.

Winning the Big Ten will put Obama back in the White House.

PREDICTION TIME…

The best way I can describe my prediction is again falling back on Nate Silver’s probability numbers. Many people on the Right have accused him of some bias (and as the article points out, he faced this criticism when he started analyzing Baseball Stats in 2003), but you can’t deny that in 2008 he only missed one state in the Electoral College (I think it was Indiana, did anyone expect that state?) and correctly predicted every Senate Race.

In 2010, Silver correctly predicted that the Republicans would gain 6 new seats in the Senate (they got 7) and claim the House with 54 new seats (it was 60). In addition he was correct in 36 out of 37 gubernatorial races that year, which is a clip of 97.3%. I think in the post-mortem, Silver said that he UNDERPREDICTED the influence the Tea Party had on Congressional races which was why his numbers were lower than expected.

Silver places his emphasis on state polling which is the correct way to determine who is going to win the Presidency. National polls are great, but the problem with them is that you could end up over sampling a certain group of voters. If you focus on voters on the coasts, more than likely it will be skewed to Obama. Conversely, sampling a heavy number of voters in Texas and other southern states would probably skew the poll towards Romney.

Silver recently wrote a post that both exercised caution to his supporters (like myself) AND criticized his detractors. It appears that Silver’s data is proven true by the trends according to Talking Points Memo and Real Clear Politics which takes an aggregate of the polls. Silver in his methodology not only averages the polls, but also weighs the polls and sees when the poll was most recently conducted, which are most important in making these observations.

The way that I come to my conclusion is this. I start with states ≥ 90% chance of a candidate winning, then ≥ 80%, 75%, 70%, 60%, 55%... until I get to > 50%.

Here it is:

	OBAMA	TOSSUP	ROMNEY
≥ 90%	271	76	191
≥ 80%	303	44	191
≥ 75%	303	44	191
≥ 70%	303	29	206
≥ 60%	303	29	206
≥ 55%	303	29	206
> 50%	332	0	206

I was typing this last night when I saw Nate Silver’s numbers showed that Florida is now in the Obama category and Ohio moved into the greater than 90% category.  If you go in descending order of probabilities, after you get through the 100% likely states, then Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Oregon which are in the greater than 95% range, Nevada is at 94.4%. Obama is at 253 electoral votes. Next is Ohio with its probability of 91.8%.

253 + 18 = 271. And 271 > 270, therefore Obama is re-elected President of the United States of America.

Proof over.

I really want to put Florida on our side… but I can’t. Too much craziness there. I think it is going for us. If it does, call it a nice surprise.

I had a feeling about 303 before I started making this prediction and I am sticking with it.

ELECTION 2012, PRESIDENT (PREDICTION)	EVs
Obama	303
Romney	235

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