Recovering from Tuesday

I'll have a full round of post-election analysis soon (though catching up on sleep has become priority A, finally), but in the meantime, I give you this:

After twenty months it's finally over.

and this:

Marist Poll: Matchups for the 2012 Presidential Election

Final Numbers - November 4 (!!!)

Oh... hi Godot:









You can read these as well as I can by now. The only thing I want to point out: FiveThirtyEight, only 1.9% for McCain? Come on. The problem with FiveThirtyEight's model, as I've said before, is that it doesn't account for a some big screwup--systematic problems with the polls, unusual turnout patterns, etc. If we were certain that the polls accurately reflected the sentiments of the voters in a predictably variable way, then sure, I'd take 1.9%--and this is what their model does. But I'd add a few more percentage points on the chance that the polls are wrong across the board--which they've often been before (see NH, last January). So I'm not ready to break out the champagne just yet.

That said... there will be some on hand tonight. You know, just in case.

Now stop reading and go vote! See you on the other side...

Today's Numbers - November 3

The "Can it really be?" last day edition:









Maybe if McCain had another week or two, he might have a chance, but even with a bit of state-level tightening there's no way he can overcome Obama's lead by tomorrow unless all the polls are way off. That's what the win percentage numbers are factored around.

Then again, John McCain is speaking on TV in the background, and he's still talking about Joe the Plumber. I have no idea what the hell he is doing. If you want to see why the campaign is where it is, listen to Obama speak and then listen to McCain. Obama's become a stronger, more forceful speaker in the last days of the campaign. Even when he stumbles--like telling a crowd in Jacksonville this morning that "the McCain camp is running a lot of ads here in Ohio"--he manages to recover in a way that makes the audiences love him more. But more than that, he's refined a clear, consistent message, and it works.

McCain, though, is all over the place. His words often don't make sense. He bounces from topic to topic. He has no message--he just throws out attack after attack, without any substance. In the background, he just made some crack in Virginia about Obama being more liberal than "some guy from Vermont who used to call himself a Socialist". I'm pretty sure he was referencing Bernie Sanders, but the silence in the audience was deafening. And what's more--there's no plan, no policy. It's a discomforting mix of platitudes and misleading attacks, all slogans and out-of-context quotes. This is NOT how a successful campaign is run.

I'm feeling fairly confident, but there's still that 10% chance that McCain could pull it off. After watching the campaign, almost two long years, I don't want to think what it would say about our country if McCain won. The fundamentals are ripe for a Democrat to win, and Obama has run an amazing campaign, while John McCain has tripped over himself the whole way. If McCain did put it off, the only explanation I could muster? That it's all about race. I'm not just talking Bradley-Wilder or overt "I ain't voting for no n---er" racism. I'm talking all the questions about Obama's religion, his patriotism, his associations--all these things are really just code for his otherness, his race. The accusations leveled against him over the past year would be laughable if said about a white man, but they work with him because many people are looking for a less overtly racist reason to express the discomfort they feel about a black man being president. Nobody questions Sarah Palin's religion, even though she's openly said that the Iraq war is really a "task from God", and told people they had to support her plan for an oil pipeline because it was "God's will". Nobody questions the patriotism of those who mislead the country into a war that's irreparably damaged our economy and our military, and cost thousands upon thousands of lives. Nobody loses sleep over the associations of Republicans who coddled Saddam Hussein in the 80s and who launched bin Laden's career. Nobody pays much attention to these accusations, which have far more basis in fact and far greater implications for the actual future of the country, but somehow such accusations are credible in Obama's case? I call bullshit.

And if somehow this works tomorrow? All I can say is, God help us. And I'm not even religious.

My Predictions

At the risk of jinxing everything, here are my predictions:




Reasoning behind my predictions for swing states:

• Colorado: McCain hasn't led here since mid-September. High numbers of Hispanics also work in Obama's favor, as do the promising early voting numbers. I've been over the voter rolls in this state personally, and even with the talk of illegal voter purges and the like, there's no evidence that this systematically helps either side. So I'm confident about this one.
  
  
• Florida: I was worried about Florida, but I think Charlie Crist gave the state to Obama when he issued an executive order extending early voting hours.
  
  
• Georgia: It would be nice to win Georgia, but I think it's a little out of reach this year unless it's a complete blowout. More likely, Obama to within 4-5% but still loses. The early voting figures, however promising they are, don't show enough of a difference to shake off Georgia's red, red roots.
  
  
• Indiana: Obama was never supposed to win Indiana, and I don't really think this is the year for it. He'll have very high support in Indianapolis and Gary, but the rest of the state (typical rural Midwest) is going to be heavily McCain. Bush killed Kerry here in 2004, and it might come close but McCain will probably hold on.
  
  
• Missouri: Like Georgia, another nice idea, but unlikely for Obama. Because he didn't come close in the polls until lately, Obama never set up the kind of ground game that he has in Virginia and Ohio, so we shouldn't expect any extra bump from that. And Missouri has never been part of a winning Obama strategy to begin with, since it's unlikely he would get it without getting Ohio, Pennsylvania, and plenty of other states to put him over the top first. So there (rightly) hasn't been a whole ton of effort expended here, and it'll probably stay with McCain.
  
  
• Montana: Obama might have had a chance here with some effort, but what's the point? Montana's 3 EV were never going to be critical, and it's not on the way to anywhere else that matters, so campaigning here would've been a waste of time. In a few years it could trend blue on its own (with the help of Brian Schweitzer), but leave that up to the locals.
  
  
• Nevada: Obama's people came in force during primary season, and never really left. On paper, it's slightly less favorable to him than Colorado, but I think Obama's lead is solid given McCain's lack of effort here recently.
  
  
• North Carolina: Though I'd initially placed this in the "Maybe Next Year" category, the massive early voting changed my mind. Not only is the voting heavy (as of this morning, 2.57 million early votes; there were 3.55 million TOTAL votes in 2004), but it skews heavily Dem (52D/30R/18I). Blacks are also showing up at disproportionately high levels (26.5% of early voters vs. 22.3% of population), so that's another encouraging sign for Obama. It'll be close, but I think he can pull this off.
  
  
• North Dakota: See "Montana".
  
  
• Ohio: This goes against all my instincts--the bitterness of having worked there in 2004 still lingers strongly--but the poll numbers are consistent and the ground game is strong for Obama. This is the call I agonized about most, and I may end up kicking myself for it. (I am, after all, a Red Sox fan, and thus believe that all it takes is one person to f--- it up for everyone else.)
  
  
• Pennsylvania: Bush lost here in 2000 and 2004, and the conditions have only gotten worse for Republicans since then. The only hope for McCain has been racism, and it's more likely than not that the racism in rural Pennsylvania will be offset by the increased turnout in urban Philly and Pittsburgh. Sorry Republicans, your white whale escapes again.
  
  
• Virginia: Obama's been working for this one all along, and he's earned it. Add to that changing demographics, recent Dem success in the Governor's office and the Senate, and heavy early voting, and this should be a sure thing.
  

Disagree? Leave your thoughts in the comments forum below.

Election Night Preview

As promised, your what-to-watch-for guide to Tuesday night. Page 2 includes a list of states with electoral vote counts and poll closing times, to make it easy for you to follow along at home. Enjoy!

Today's Numbers - November 1

The definitely-not-endorsed-by-Dick-Cheney edition:









I think at this point, the numbers are the numbers. The national polls have been essentially stable for the past four days now. Obama's win percentage margin has been between +70 and +80 for nearly three weeks. And while it looks like there's been some movement on the electoral vote trackers, the differences we've seen over the past three or four weeks have been mainly single states (generally Indiana and Missouri) flipping back and forth based on one poll or another. Averaging over different trackers makes it look like there's more going on, but that's just the same results filtering through at different times in different ways. This race is very stable right now, and with 20% of the country having already voted (probably more like 30% by the time all the early votes are in), and the first poll closings less than 72 hours away, don't expect much to change between now and then.

What to expect, then: If the polls are right or close to right, Obama wins in a landslide, by more than a hundred electoral votes. If the polls are way off across the board, McCain has a chance. But if the polls are off, I would predict them to be off in Obama's favor, because his massive get-out-the-vote operation looks to bring a lot of new voters to the polls who are often excluded from traditional "Likely Voter" models.

Tomorrow I'll update the numbers if anything changes, but otherwise I'll be here with my what-to-watch-for guide to election night, as well as my own predictions based on polls, demographics, early voting trends, and plucky intuition.