My predictions - terribly unscientific and relatively brief

The election is maddening, and I can't wait for it to be over. I'm going to post up my prediction that got me to 269-269... son of a bitch! And then also my Senate count.

Swing States (as stated by RCP):

• Virginia - McCain +2
• North Carolina - McCain +4
• Florida - McCain +2
• Missouri - McCain +1
• Indiana - McCain +1
• Georgia - McCain +5
• Montana - McCain +7
• Arizona - McCain +4
• Ohio - McCain +1
• Colorado - McCain +1
• Nevada - Obama +4
• Pennsylvania - Obama +5
• New Mexico - Obama +7
• South Dakota - McCain +8
• West Virginia - McCain +8
• Aransas - McCain +9

So that makes it a tie. Fucking A. Although I have PA for Obama, it might swing if Mac is having a good day - maybe my other predictions suggest it, just naturally, by demographics. But I have no idea. I think Nevada is still possible as well, but I feel the rest are definitely going blue. Here's to hoping the bankrupting coal comments by Barry mean something to Ohio, PA and others.

Senate

• AK - D Beigich over Stevens (idiots up there nominating that guy while he's facing charges - good call morons)
• GA - R Chambliss holds
• CO - D Udall
• KY - R McConnell holds
• LA - D Landrieu holds
• MN - R Coleman holds (they may be silly enough to vote for a wrestler for governor, but no way people walk into that both and pull the lever for Stuart Smiley)
• NH - D Shaheen takes out Sunnunu (sorry pal, you're not your dad. Get your shit together, come back for the next one)
• NC - R Dole holds (despite her inept, defeatist campaigning and seeming inability to function, people in NC will play it safe)
• OR - D Merkeley by a hair over Smith
• CT - Lieberman will grow a pair and caucus with the Republicans

If I missed any let me know and I will update. I have no idea what it adds up to but I think under 60 for Dems. I'm too stressed to do math (hence, I attend law school).

Overall, I would be happy with a McCain win and less than 60 in the Senate, but no matter what, the right is going to need to take control of the Republican Party again, or jump ship for another. The worst part is (and Matt Beato agrees with this, so don't let him tell you otherwise) that if McCain loses, the biggest conservative victory of the year is Nichol's ouster. I brainstormed the other day and asked around and sadly, we can't find much of anything else besides that and a handful of other campus triumphs. Clearly, that means they shoudl put me in charge of this thing.

Am I losing my mind? Only slightly more than the usual pace. With my Adult ADD in full swing today, I shoudl be back to check for more posts from Jenn - and maybe I will actually take 10 minutes and read one of them and respond (sorry!)

Polling, exit polls, turnouts etc

I think its all a bunch of bull. How can one poll give Barry 11 points and another give McCain 1? With margin of error, that could be a swing of 16-18 points. That's nonsensical.

The cynic/hater of the leftist media in me wants to say that CBS News and NY Times are so shameless that they would outright lie about their numbers in order to pump up Obama, which could mean that outlier is bull and the range of Barry +3-7 is accurate.

But once again, on the other hand, Gallup's traditional and expanded are both showing Barry +10 which makes ZERO sense. Either youth and minorities are matching up with the mainstream or none of these pollsters have a clue.

Which begs the question: Jenn-- do you think maybe you got into the wrong field?

See Drudge

in Re: last post. And I just don't mean the story on the assault, I mean the last few weeks of stories. No kidding civility is better. But let's be honest: a few nuts yell at McCain's rally, and even the things they yell have been confirmed to be a lot tamer than originally reported. Barry, Mr. Post-Partisan, tells his people to "get in their face" if anyone dare speak against him.

More on Joe the Plumber

The way Joe the Plumber has been handled reminds me of how Palin was in the beginning.

You find some person that will appeal to a target demographic on the surface and neglect to find out anything else about them.

I'm not going to make that "it shows further poor judgment" argument. I don't think Walnuts had much say in the references to Joe the Plumber (not sure the level on the VP choice but I don't think Walnuts had the final say).

Instead, I think it shows how stretched Walnuts' staff is. He's got Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis doing more roles than they should. Just based on a mutual acquaintance of Joe and me's having left the campaign, I can't help but think that camp is bleeding good people and replacing them with questionable ones.

I agree with most stories saying the McCain campaign is being mismanaged. I can't tell if it's being micromanaged too much or if the subadvisors are just not good enough for a Pres run, but something's wrong with this campaign.

Nielson ratings

With a baseball playoff game, the viewership is down -- probably near 50 million.

Assume bias towards over-reporting watching, so true viewership at 40 million.

Drop off because this was boring, around 25-30 million.

Begala and Carville

MSNBC is bringing up the ACORN and Ayers thing.

It's irrelevant. To directly quote the man I wanted to be when I was 7 (seriously), James Carville*:

IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!

See my earlier post on why the election is over. Nothing changed tonight. There wasn't much of an opportunity for it to. If there'd been more of an economic focus it might have, but so far the dominate issue is still the economy and the frame and perception hasn't changed.

Though I find myself, on MSNBC, agreeing with Mike Murphy. Obama was more defensive. Joe the Plumber won. All of this avoided the economy and Walnuts failed.

*Seriously, since I was a tiny child I wanted to be a strategist, not President. Since roughly seven or eight years of age I have known who James Carville is.

Perception

Andrea Mitchell, not my favorite MSNBC anchor (I'm biased towards the Morning Joe crowd, truth be told, especially my girl-crush Mika), but she raises a good points.

Facts don't matter -- perception does.

I was talking about this with one of my advisors the other day, who said the same thing. What the pundits say doesn't matter, what the facts are don't matter... in essence, the truth doesn't matter. All that matters is what the public thinks the truth is. I have no idea (nor do any pundits, but at least I admit my ignorance), how they come to these perceptions of the truth, but that's what matters.

At this point, maybe I was wrong when talking with my advisor and I can pass my comprehensive exams. Also, I'd change it to Fox News if I knew what channel it was on -- so far all I know is MSNBC (mostly for Morning Joe), Comedy Central, Vh1, BBC America, and Disney.

The election is over

Sorry Joe, but the election is over. Theoretically, the economy is a strong predictor of who wins -- if it's doing well the incumbent party does well. If it blows, like this one that just plummeted another 700 points (so net loss of roughly 2200 points in a few weeks), then the out party does well. Additionally, given the low approval of Dubya, most likely the policy mood in America is leaning liberal because of dissatisfaction with the current conservative reign. For further proof, this is just the error correction mechanism in response to the 2002 elections (Erikson et al 2002). And how do you make manifest that liberal mood? Voting Democrat in this two-party system we're resigned to by Duverge's Law.*

So in a typical cycle, the economy would dominate as the most salient issue. There'd be some random secondary issue that would help split the vote a bit better, but right now it's not. The economy is, as always, the most salient issue and right now the ONLY salient issue for the mass public. Because of the stupidity of the American voter, they believe that the President is responsible for the economy's status. I don't care who you say really is, the public doesn't get it. They think the President is in charge and they vote along party-lines based on that. And that's why Obama will win. There is so much data on this that you can't deny it.

Plus, we can also go into momentum theory. Look at the fact that NORTH DAKOTA is now not a solid red state. This is going to be a landslide unless Osama bin Laden comes out within the next 72 hours with his head on a stick. It's all about bandwagonning and cascades. Forget about the Bradley Effect, the margin is entirely too large if it's really at 14.

Sigh, if only people listened to political scientists... Or if only I had wagered money on Intrade in February.

By the way, I LOVE that this election disproves the political-business cycle!

*For full disclosure, the economy and mood theories are the big ideas from one of my advisors, and I had to reread the book cited last night for my MA proposal draft. So this idea has been dominating my thinking for the past 24 hours. Hopefully I didn't fuck up Macropolitics too much in this cursory description of it.