Featured, National - by Ned Resnikoff on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 6:00 - 10 Comments - 60 views
Pushback compadre and friend of the blog Daniel Strauss had a special request: he wanted me to use 270towin.com to show what I think the electoral map will look like next Tuesday. Now, normally, I’m hesitant to make predictions, but I’ve got money riding on this: Charlie’s putting up his map later, and we’ve got a $5 bet going on who can get closest to the actual electoral vote totals.
Besides, irresponsible speculation is half the fun of punditry! Check out my prediction, and some more fun maps, below the fold.
First up, for contrast, here’s the 2004 electoral map:
Blech. Remember how not fun that was? Well, here’s the default map for 2008. The swing states that I’ll be playing around with are the the tan ones.
Notice anything funny about that one? A couple interesting things to note.
1.) All of the 270towin.com-designated swing states this time around are states that Bush won in 2004.
2.) New Mexico and Virginia, both of which Bush won in 2004, aren’t even considered swing states. They’re both solidly blue now.
3.) And the worst news of all for McCain: Check out the bars in the lower left-hand corner. McCain could win every single 270towin.com-designated swing state and he would still narrowly lose. By my crude observations, any hope of winning he has relies on winning all of those swing states and flipping a state like Virginia back to red. That is, to say the least, sort of unlikely.
Anyway, onto the prognosticating! I gave Nevada, Colorado, Ohio, and Florida to Obama. McCain got Indiana and Missouri–even though Obama’s ahead right now in the latter, I decided not to get my hopes up. Same with North Carolina, though I wavered back and forth on that one for a while.
And, just for the hell of it, I decided to make one wildcard prediction: based on this trendline, I flipped North Dakota from red to blue, even though 270towin.com doesn’t count that one as a swing state. Not like that matters a great deal, though; it’s only three electoral votes.
Anyway, here’s the map, and my official prediction:
Obama: 341, McCain: 197. Your move, Charlie.
10 Comments
Dude, you’re the one who told me I was being too optimistic.
It very well could, but I’m working under the assumption that things are going to tighten up at least a little bit.
Neal Shechter
Good analysis, Ned! You’re map is exactly the same as the one i fruitlessly scribbled in class today. Though I think North Carolina will be within 10000 votes and Florida and Missouri will be within 1-2%.
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Is it weird that all this red and blue is making me want some Stephen Colbert Americone?
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I still think North Carolina could go blue.