Predict the electoral vote of the US Presidential Election

other prediction: pennsylvania will be SOLID blue -- kerry wins it by at least 5%.

We get Ohio and New Mexico but lose Wisconsin and Florida (but it will later be found that we actually won it although never officially)

Madness.

Average of last 10 polls in WI:
Bush: 47.4%
Kerry: 46.76

With the incumbency effect, supposedly, numbers like this look good for Kerry; but I think it's kind've overly optimistic to assume it will occur.

my reasoning: from what i understand, missouri is a bit like ohio economy-wise (lots of downsized, unemployed folks) and attitude-wise (conservative values but economic populist). i really think that kerry can get MO (esp. w/ a nudge from st. louis and kansas city), esp. in light of dubya's "let 'em eat community college!" remarks wr2 jobs and outsourcing last night.

arizona: a bit of a stretch -- but the state has a LOT of elderly (who may be pissed off about being jerked over by bushco re Medicare) and hispanics.

re PA: though having nader knocked off the ballot is a BIG help (and IMHO guarantees a kerry win), i think that kerry would've won it even if nader were on the ballot. between (a) LOTS of iraq casualties have been from PA; and (b) a quite possibly BIG GOTV drive in Philadelphia.

I would cautiously predict myself that Kerry will win just enough states... why on earth would Bush take Wisconsin, by the way? He lost it in 2000; with his record, it would quite beggar belief... and it's hardly geographically a Republican 'heartland'. Though I suppose it did give rise to Joseph McCarthy.

i never read my New Yorkers any more - will have to dig it out

because why?

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=V22QCQFXNMYUCCRBAE0CFFA?type=topNews&storyID=6512724

I'm pessimistic. I've always thought Bush will win, I haven't seen much to change my opinion.

What happens with Maine, by the way? 3-1 or 4-0 Kerry? It could make a difference, I suppose.

I was forgetting about the Mandee Factor in CO. I'm now calling it for Kerry. (But then there's my anti-abortion aunt in PA...)

(But I do work in Boulder)

Amanda, it was good that you said you were listening to Lloyd Cole. Which Lloyd?

Mike, I didn't know about your aunt. Trinidad and Tobago?

And PF, I was listening to "Don't Get Weird on Me Babe"

"George W. Bush will be the toast of history."

I wouldn't be so confident in that word choice.

now, if we can bring in all several hundred thousand newly-registered voters, there we go...

I have my doubts because the only other big race this year is our Senate race which Blanche has in the bag. There's a gay marriage proposal on the ballot that will attract Bushies to the polling place like flies to manure.

You never know, though.

Iowa - Missouri
Michigan - Ohio, Wisconsin
Minnesota - Wisconsin, Iowa
Ohio - West Virginia
Nevada - Arizona
New Mexico - Colorado, Arizona
Pennsylvania - Ohio, West Virginia, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland

Only because of Nader!

In Kerry's favor, Nader will not be on the ballot and there are at least 20,000 more newly registered Democrats than Republicans. The economy here has been sh*t. Opposition to the Iraq War was more widespread and better organized in Oregon than many other states. This helps to energize Kerry's base far beyond what Gore could achieve.

In Bush's favor, there is a heavily-backed Chistian-right ballot measure to restrict gay marriage that might pump up the RR turnout. Plus, there will be an unknown number of terrorized voters who will feel more comfortable with a Repubi-Daddy to cling to during the middle of a war.

My gut feeling is that Kerry will take Oregon by between 2% and 3%.

this is the thinking here in missouri too. in st. louis we can't keep signs in HQ because demand is so high.

The good news is that this guy doesn't have a shot in hell of winning.

I have to say that I've had this feeling more or less since they found Saddam. I'm not sure how this whole Mary Cheney thing will end up playing out. Something tells me the feigned outrage from the right will end up playing really really badly to the middleroad "undecided," though that "something" could just be my disgust for their disgust. Plus two-and-a-half weeks equals roughly 43,295 more pre-election "events" getting media attention.

I should note that "under-the-radar campaigns" mean different things depending on the party - for Democrats, it's voter registration; for Republicans, it's voter suppression.

The real tossups are OH, FL, WI, IA, PA, NV, NH and NM

The states Bush can get only if he moves the national needle are MN, MI, ME and maybe NJ

The states Kerry can get only if he moves the national needle are CO, WV and AZ

This is basically how I see things, except I think that, in the absence of a national needle move, the last four tossups above are already or will very soon be in the second category, locked down as Bush or Kerry states .

i hope to god the bastard loses.

newsweek has him up 6.

...among likely voters, a result they immediately disavowed, given that it showed Bush leading with women and Kerry leading with men. Bush is up by 1 among registered voters in their poll.

kerry is getting desperate,

;-)

reporters kept asking so they could make television ad

LOL

coors will also win

http://www.inventionfactory.com/history/RHAbridg/bb.jpg

and to think i'd missed keith's giardiasic political analysis. it's been so accurate in the past.

Andy McCarthy on why the Mary Cheney thing is the GOP 'overplaying the hand'

Jonathan Adler on how Bush's claim to never having made mistakes is being used against him ad-wise

And my personal favorite, an endorsement that Mark Krikorian baldly says is 'not one the White House is likely to trumpet.' It begins "Why I'm voting for this clown" and proceeds to argue bluntly why the author is content to vote GOP while not hiding his contempt for Bush at all, calling him "a spoiled rich kid who wasted his youth partying with his frat-boy buddies and then woke up one morning and decided to become president. I pointed out that his domestic policy has been disastrous and his foreign policy idiotic."

A lovely paragraph:

The question that matters is not who occupies the one job at the top of the executive branch. It's who occupies the thousands of other jobs. If re- elected, Bush is much more likely to name judges who respect the Constitution and believe in limited government -- though he himself certainly doesn't. He is likely to spend less on social programs than Kerry -- though not much less.

You can fight your corner, Keith, without kowtowing to the feeb who is making a lot of your assumptions look ridiculous. You have a shit candidate you're only backing for the reasons this guy says, except at least this guy says it.

double-you tee eff question mark

and was the singer-guitarist for the band Sonic Youthton

At this point the only voters going for Bush who I will respect are those like the fellow who wrote the 'clown' piece that essentially say "he's useless and obviously so but Kerry I think would do worse." Anyone heaping praise on Bush is quite frankly blowing smoke up their own ass.

Rasmussen's nationwide tracker has been calling it a tie or a 1-2pt Bush lead for about a week now; the numbers in the battlegrounds are better for Kerry than they have been for weeks and they're even giving him a slight lead in WI after reporting it Bushwards for ages. FL has drifted back to 'toss-up' status. They've still got that alarming K49-44B poll up for NY from mid-Sept - I presume this has widened in line with the rest of the east coast.

Hilariously confusing stats of the day: Washington Post gives Bush a 54% approval rating (+ incumbent factor = home and dry) while NYT/CBS pegs that figure at 44% (he's dead in the water). Oh, and the Washington Post gives Kerry a 4pt lead in the marginals.

The polls I like least - Gallup and the newsmagazines.

Electoral Vote Winner:
Popular Vote Winner:
House Control:
Senate Control:
Who wins Florida?
Suprise Republican victory:
Suprise Democratic victory:
Scandal State:
Media Blunder State:
Biggest Nader Factor State:
Libertarian Factor State:
Likelihood of capturing Osama?:
Likelihood of US Attacked Factor?:

Ditto, ratings.

Media Blunder State: meaning initially called wrong on Election night? Wisconsin

I'm pretty optimistic for Kerry, but I also think that the sudden influx of lefty radio in Denver (Air America and KGNU from Boulder)has skewed my perceptions a bit. I have been sorta shocked by seeing a number of Kerry/Edwards stickers on F150s and SUVs down here in Arapahoe and Jefferson Counties.

For sign pilferer, politicians aren't only ones falling flat on their face
By Lynn Bartels, Rocky Mountain News
October 19, 2004

A Lakewood Republican stealing campaign signs late one night got nabbed when he ran across a low- hanging driveway chain, fell face first onto a pilfered sign and the concrete and knocked himself unconscious...

Kerry 291

Bush 247

I hope we, I mean, you, are not whistling in the oncoming ongoing dark.

PF: I do sometimes feeling we're grasping at straws (like the paragraph in Momus's link upthread which details a study showing how Undecideds in most elections plump for the challenger by a big margin).

The Pennsylvanian Republicans on News 24 last night were surprisingly meek and equivocal - "It's gonna be close" - whereas their Dem counterparts were positively bullish. It does boil down to the GOP's famed ability to rely on their core vote actually voting vs the Dems' wealth of new supporters who may or may not turn up.

Proof that ILXors do indeed live in an overtly optimistic world of their own:

http://www.electionguide04.com/straw_poll_october.adp

I lurk AOL message boards frequently to amuse myself. And the appalling lack of basic reading/writing comprehension skills reminds me just how unique ILX as an intelligent online community as well as how AOL Users are, sad to say, closer to the typical American when it comes to education, knowledge of world affairs, and political insight. It's also fun to just read them since they're like an exact foil of ILX.

We're going to get battered next weekend and all.

That's what is says on her e-mails.

I'm so sick of state's rights.

Last night, Minneapolis. Kerry is the slightly ochre dot in the middle.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041108&s=editors

by the way, kerry in a landslide. just watch.

I think that I saw this episode of "Hawaii 5-O" just the other night.

Electoral Vote Winner: Kerry
Popular Vote Winner: Kerry
House Control: GOP (the REAL question: how soon before the children begin drafting the impeachment papers wr2 President Kerry?)
Senate Control: tie (pending chaffee's decision wr2 jumping ship) -- which means that w/ VP Edwards, it's Democratic
Who wins Florida? Bush (Jeb = George Wallace, v. 2004)
Suprise Republican victory: Wisconsin (it's joe mccarthy's old stomping grounds, and where bill rehnquist was born)
Suprise Democratic victory: North Carolina (i'm w/ cinniblount here)
Scandal State: Ohio
Media Blunder State: Pennsylvania (it'll be safely Kerry)
Biggest Nader Factor State: either Florida or Maine
Libertarian Factor State: Arizona
Likelihood of capturing Osama?: none
Likelihood of US Attacked Factor?: this year halloween falls on a weekend/ridge will tell us al-qaeda's gonna be trick-or-treatin'

A fiver sez that Tom Ridge will announce next week that "AL QUEDA WILL BE PUTTING RAZOR BLADES IN THE CANDY FOR AMERICA'S CHILDREN: Terror threat raised to Code Orange & Black" or somesuch

On the other hand, if Bush is defeated, his entire presidency will acquire the aspect of an aberration, a mistake that has been corrected, and the American people will be able to say: We never accepted Bushism. We rejected the brutality, the propaganda, the misbegotten wars, the imperial arrogance. And we never, ever chose George W. Bush to be President of the United States.

I'm holding out hope for Arkansas, though.

....well, AIN'T they?

looks like we now live in the age of instanteous smart-ass politically response sites...

Bush-Cheney yardsigns outnumber Kerry-Edwards 3 to 1 in metro Central Arkansas. Our state Democratic party says that they're not concentrating on yardsigns so much this year as they are on getting out the vote and databasing.

We shall see.

i still think bush is gonna win this election. i hate to say it, but i feel like the fix is in. and i'm more than happy to be proven wrong.

PJM: How much is that doggy in the swing state?
Ohio schoolchildren: WOOF WOOF!
PJM: The one with the waggly tail!

It is a satire on vote-rigging amongst the naturally pro-Kerry canine electorate.

Trumph of the Will 2004!

And I got the Hawaii thing explained for me too.

FL: Kerry O.36%
OH: Kerry 1.8%
WI: Bush 0.666% (haha)
NM: Bush 1.5%
IA: Bush 2.5%
MN: Kerry 1.25%

So you see, if, as most major media outlets are still doing, you say something like "It's a tie but Bush appears to have the edge" based on national numbers or whatever, you're chock full of shit.

FL: Bush 1.38
OH: Bush 0.73
WI: Bush 1.22
NM: Kerry 1.98
IA: Bush 1.72
MN: Kerry 2.9 (heavily influenced by unlikely zogby numbers)
MN w/o Zogby: Bush 0.75

So the most Kerry would have to make up (in IA) is 1.72%, which is not too shabby.

Fuck I wish the election would just be over so I could concentrate on school work instead of compulsively doing shit like this.

(apologies if this has already been posted)

(There's a lot that he doesn't know, but I'm trying to stay on-topic here.)

I expect some voter intimidation/challenging and some outright fraud to tip the scales in Bush's favour but I also suspect the strength of Kerry support is being consistently underestimated (see 2000 and Gore trailing by 3-6pts in the tracking polls during the final week). How the Bin Laden tape will play to the waverers is anybody's guess.

I'm still saying Kerry by ten.

So, given that there are more wildcards this time around than last time, I think the chances are better than ever that the poll results will be off by the stated "margin of error". Personally, I expect the swing will go to Kerry. Bush is sounding increasingly shrill and nervous on the stump. The candidates have private polls that they believe in more than the public polls we read.

The polls suggest that Kerry will not win in NV, CO, WV, AR, MO, VA or AZ, but I could see him winning any or all of these on the basis of the ground game and the underpolled/underweighted (young/new voters, hispanics, native americans, cellphone-users and absentee voters). I think similar phenomena keep IA and NM in Kerry's column.

1. Nader factor - there's less of him.
2. Voter apathy - there's less of it.
3. Electoral fraud - there won't be any less of it but we're watching like hawks.
4. Bush lead in the final week - there's hardly any of it.

Oh, and the Redskins lost at some sport I don't fully understand.

Kerry 303
Bush 235?

Green Bay 28, Washington 14

let's hear for superstitions!

Well let's hope they actually vote!

Kerry, they reckon, can afford to lose any of the following combinations of states: FL/IA/NM, FL/WI/NH, OH/WI/IA/NH, OH/PA, WI/MN/PA. If it's FL/OH though, it's no go.

to make tomorrow even more interesting I am making the following markets up to US-$ 20 a point

Kerry 275 - 280
Bush 260 - 265

IF YOU CARE TO BET CHECK IN WITH ME FIRST AS MARKETS MIGHT SHIFT

Last night on the news: Kerry camp upbeat; Dubay camp 'outwardly confident - yet inwardly worried'. I liked that too.

Kerry - 276
Bush - 262

(I also sold Bush at 266 for $4 a point, so I have a monetary stake in this as well.)

Kerry is doing better than Gore had done in the polls of 2000, and if he can anything like replicate Gore's surge in getting the vote out, he should at least manage to win the popular vote, however narrowly (if Bush's organisation was at the 2000 level, one would say this would be a very easy call to make...).

And the key thing in the big picture seems to be:

Both candidates are doing better in certain states than the 2000 Gore/Bush standings. But Bush's improved leads are likely to be in the more Republican southern states, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and the more conservative Western states (Idaho etc.), with the odd surprise improvement: New Jersey, Hawaii, Pennsylvannia (which will all go Kerry anyway no doubt). Kerry is clearly doing much better in Ohio than Gore, and with the trend in polls going his direction, I think we'll see Michigan and Minnesota become reasonably comfortable victories. He is going to do much better in New England than Gore; increasing the victories in Maine and Vermont and taking New Hampshire in all probability... and on the West Coast, Oregon seems to be a much more comfortable win than in 2000. There'll also be some closer margins (though likely Bush wins) in Colorado and Arizona...

The two I'm not sure about are New Mexico and Florida (and I would still not call Ohio yet for Kerry, as tricks are afoot, and the polls aren't quite showing him with consistent 1-3 point wins, are they?)... why would Bush be doing better in NM than in 2000? Kerry seemed to be walking this state earlier in the campaign.

And does anyone remember what the polling numbers were like in Florida in 2000 days before the election itself?

In the event of a tie, the Dems best bet is to "shed" votes in the house to a third canidate.

What are we going to ... *do*?

lolz so much rong in this thred.

It's true that almost everyone on the thread predicted a Kerry victory, which we didn't get. Clearly the thread looks full of tragic miscalculation somehow.

But I think it's useful to see how many people - a majority of ilxors here, and they were drawing on many ongoing polls and opinions - thought, right to the end, that Kerry was likely to win. They didn't think his campaign was pathetic, or doomed, or that he was obviously a useless candidate, or that after xyz event he didn't have a chance.

I think it's useful to have that confirmed, because so much BS is retrospectively spun saying those things. 'Kerry's sluggish camp never overcame the swift boat fiasco'; 'as a NE liberal, Kerry never had a chance'; 'Kerry was always clearly a loser'. If any of these things were true, then this thread would not have looked the way it did.

I have read that there may have been very significant electoral fraud, in Ohio? - I think Suzy said so too. I think that, whichever way an election goes, we have to take in the possibility that many votes have not been properly counted, either through incompetence or confusion or corruption. If this is true, then it makes the calibration of opinion, popularity --> votes etc more problematic. This is true of the UK too, where electoral fraud seems a major problem.

Was the 2004 election stolen? by Robert F. Kennedy Jr
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen

Thank you, Mordy. I read something like this in a bookstore in NYC.

[After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004(12) -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.(13) (See Ohio's Missing Votes) In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.(14) And that doesn’t even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.(15)]

The question that always arises for me is -- if this is true (certainly some will say it isn't), then doesn't it make a nonsense of the whole previous year + of campaigning, fundraising, arguing, debating etc? Why not just call the 2008 election off now and give it to McCain?

[On the evening of the vote, reporters at each of the major networks were briefed by pollsters at 7:54 p.m. Kerry, they were informed, had an insurmountable lead and would win by a rout: at least 309 electoral votes to Bush's 174, with fifty-five too close to call.(28) In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair went to bed contemplating his relationship with President-elect Kerry.(29)]

Well, in part because you can only pull off this kind of fraud if it's reasonably close. Also, because hope is not entirely snuffed out, yet.

lolz so much rong in this thred.

I, for one, was completely otm.

Those farm signs were killer.