Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Rix Pix 2008 - General Election

It is finally Election Day (thank God!), and I have already voted. But there is still time before the first bootleg exit poll numbers to give my traditional predictions. Given my dreadful track record on these predictions, I'm tempted to predict a come from behind win for McCain, but I will resist it. So, forthwith:

President Obama ...

53 /45 in the popular vote, and 350 plus electoral votes. I am too lazy to do the state by state tote-up, but a bunch of red states seem set to go for Obama tonight. Conventional wisdom is that the polls tighten at the end, and that the remaining undecideds will break for McCain. But there has been precious little sign of the expected tightening. Obama was sometimes a weak closer in the primaries, but there is even less sign of that. If anything, I would not be surprised if the tsunami builds higher as it hits the shoreline.

Senate ... Dems plus 9, one short of a filibuster-proof margin, but still pretty decisive.

House ... Dems plus 24.


Summary: The ball is in Obama's court to make this a realigning election.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

OK, you're probably pretty close to what the results will turn out to be. I think that voter turnout will be heavy this year. I got up at 6:00 o'clock today, got to the polling place by a quarter of 7:00 (It's just across the street), and I was still only fifth or sixth in line.

Whoever wins, he will be faced with many major problems: the economic crisis; Iraq and Afganistan; as well as all kinds of political, military, and energy-related problems. If our next president screws up (or even just doesn't 'solve' these problems soon enough), the citizenry will turn on him and it will get ugly. Americans are tired of our govenment making a mess out of everything. So, to our next president; good luck!

Ferrell

Anonymous said...

I'll be happy to have a president who remembers we have a constitution and honors it.

Carla said...

Looks like you weren't far out :-)

Tamora Pierce said...

And here we are, with President Obama already moving on his staff picks, and you pretty prescient on your numbers.

With regard to what Ferrell said, Obama's prepared, in some instances for two years, for the shitstorm that will land in his lap on Inauguration Day. As much as anyone is ready, he is. And he has warned the American public, repeatedly, that they won't always like what he does. People will still bitch, because that's what they do, but I think we're going to see a different kind of presidenting from what we're used to. I'm looking forward to it.

Rick said...

I guess I outta answer comments on my own blog, huh?

My powers of prophesy this time were simple - I made very plain vanilla predictions, and the surprise of this election was the lack of surprises. In the short term, I mean - in larger perspective the very idea of North Carolina and Indiana as battleground states is astonishing.

I will have more to say about Obama on the front page - no way will I turn this into a political blog, but this is to put it mildly an exception. But man is this guy's discipline astonishing. I cannot remember a more mistake free campaign.