UPDATE, 11/5/2012: Final prediction is here.
Hi everyone. Sorry for being incommunicado for the last week, but I’m sure my cohorts filled in admirably while I was unavailable. Oh, never mind. Anyway, I decided to head over to 270towin.com to make my prediction for how the presidential election will go down in November. I wanted to make sure I got this in before Nate Silver starts publishing his projections because once that happens, that pretty much becomes the standard.
Anyway, here’s my map:
I have President Obama winning election with a narrow, but decisive, victory over Mitt Romney, 303-235. This is much closer than it appears. There are 5 states that could go either way:
Florida (29 EV): I give Florida to Romney partly because the state government down there has been very aggressive in “purging” the voter rolls of potential Democratic voters, and because the DOJ doesn’t seem inclined to intervene. But there are other reasons to think this will be a Romney state as well. President Obama is not popular there.
North Carolina (15 EV): This is another state that Obama won in 2008 but that I give to Romney. President Obama’s margin of victory was so small here and he’s in a much weaker position; I just don’t see him pulling off a repeat victory this year.
Ohio (18 EV): This is a must-win for Romney but a state that I think the president will hold on to with a narrow victory. The auto bailout saved a lot of jobs in Ohio and labor has been energized by their successful repeal of Governor Kasich’s union-busting bill last year. An aggregate of polls shows the president with a 6-point lead.
Virginia (13 EV): Another Southern state that Obama won in 2008 and another must-win for the Romney campaign. The aggregate of polls show a 6-point lead for the president here as well and I think this is a state where the women’s vote will heavily favor the president, even more than polls suggest. Governor Bob McDonnell’s vaginal ultrasound bill angered a lot of women who thought this was a settled issue.
Colorado (9 EV): Colorado is important because the president could lose both Ohio and Virginia on my map and still win re-election if he holds on to Colorado. He currently has a 5.2 point lead here according to the aggregate.
Other states that Republicans are going after are Wisconsin, Iowa, and Pennsylvania. I don’t focus on them because if the president loses any one of those, it probably means he has lost Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado as well. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where the president’s popularity has sunk low enough to lose Pennsylvania but holds on to Virginia. That’s not to say that those states are out of reach for Romney. They aren’t, and in fact, a Romney victory would probably include one of those three states, and it is well within the realm of possibility that we will wake up to a map like this on November 7th:
But as of this moment I am predicting an Obama victory of 303-235. We’ll see what Nate Silver starts projecting soon. Maybe inuyesta and snarkologist will grace us with their predictions. I’d also be interested in the predictions of some of our conservative readers as well. Go over to 270towin.com to make your own maps and share them in the comments, please.
