As of today, fivethirtyeight.com is projecting a 93.8% chance that Obama will win the American election, with a projected 351 electoral college votes compared to McCain’s 187. They are giving Obama an 84% chance of winning Florida, which would basically decide the election by itself, giving Obama a lead McCain couldn’t counter with other swing states. They are also projecting 56 Democratic senators.
The UBC election stock market is putting the odds of a Conservative majority in Canada at around 10%. The Tories are projected to gain seven seats (ending up with 131 total), while the Liberals are projected to lose eighteen seats (ending up with 85). The big winner is expected to be the NDP: gaining fourteen seats (for a total of 43) while the Bloc loses four and ends up with a total of 47. Two seats are projected to go to Greens or independents.
For those curious about the accuracy of the UBC ESM, here are the results of their trading on the 2006 election:
Party – Seats predicted – Seats won – Error
Liberals – 95.5 – 103 – -7.5
Conservatives – 125.2 – 124 – +1.2
New Democrats – 32.6 – 29 – +3.6
Bloc Quebecois – 53.4 – 51 – +2.4
All others – 1.2 – 1 – +0.2
Mean error: 2.98
I am surprised they are so certain about Obama winning. Still, I hope they are right.
Speaking of Zizek
Audio interview with Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian post-Marxist philosopher and Lacanian scholar whose monologues are as refreshing as they are exposing.
“This is all just the same bullshit…The true message to Republican voters is: you have the right not to understand what is going on. What fascinating me about Palin. Did you notice how until now feminist politicians played the phallic game. Up to and including Hillary Clinton. Here it’s a different phenomenon. Sarah Palin proudly displays her femininity. She wins over men by mobilizing this typical feminine sarcastic undermining of male authority. Community organizers…ha ha ha.”
McCain’s optimism bucks pundits, polls
One of the most powerful analysts in Washington has declared that the American presidential election is all but over
With Campaign 2008 on its last legs, Canadians appear reluctant to give a ringing endorsement to either the Conservatives or the Liberals, leaving neither party with hope of galloping triumphantly across the finish line, according to new polls released Sunday.
Both parties are below the level of support they received from voters in the 2006 election, even in ridings they won. And while the Conservatives are ahead of the Liberals over all, pollsters were firm Sunday in declaring that the numbers ruled out a Tory majority. Similarly, they indicated that a Liberal minority was theoretically possible but no one would put money on it.
…
“The leitmotif of this campaign has been failure” for the two major parties, said Peter Donolo, partner of polling firm the Strategic Counsel. “It’s been the failure of the Conservatives to hold onto the support they had and a failure of the Liberals to hold onto the anti-Harper vote.”
Such handsome laddies.
(you and Sasha)
(.. and Obama.)
A Buckley endorses Obama
“This campaign has changed John McCain,” Buckley wrote. “It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget ‘by the end of my first term.’ Who, really, believes that?
“Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis,” Buckley added. “His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?”
Mr McCain could certainly win both Ohio and Florida. However, that is not enough.
To become president, Mr McCain must also defend two southern states that have been safely Republican.
These are Virginia (13 electoral votes) and North Carolina (15), which have done well economically and attracted young emigres from more depressed northern states.
I would be thrilled to vote for either one of the young men in the black and white photo in a future election!
Obama’s win percentage is up to 95.8%.
I would have put money on Obama to win months ago (if i had any to bet!). I think an Obama win was forseeable right from the start for a few reasons. One is that no party has won three terms in a row since 1920 or some year around there. Second is the fact that the Republican party is in such disarray and is seen in such a poor light after 8 years of Bush that a change of party, (almost) regardless of who was opposition leader, was inevitable.(I also think Hillary would have beaten McCain). Third and fourth are the Iraq war and the state of the US economy. Both are regarded very unfavorably (and have been for awhile) and both are linked to the performance of Bush and the Republicans.
Banksy,
George H W Bush won a 3rd presidential term for the Republicans in 1988. Before that, the last time would have been 1948 when Truman won a 5th term for the Democrats.
Election night will either be over quickly, or will turn into an incredible cliff-hanger. Virginia will be the first clue. It is a state that last voted Democrat in 1964, as part of the Lyndon Johnson wave. And since it is one of only two swing states to be positioned on the eastern sea-board, its exit polls will be available earliest: at 7pm eastern time, midnight GMT, moments after its polls close. If Mr Obama wins there—it looks good for him, given the combination of a large black vote and the affluent Washington suburbs of north Virginia that saw him trounce Hillary Clinton by 28 points—he has almost certainly won the election; Iowa and Virgina on their own are enough to put him over the line.
But if he does not win Virginia, the likelihood is that there is something wrong with the polling: a last-minute break by undecided voters in favour of Mr McCain, a so-far undetected racial bias or some other factor. The next vital state to watch will be Ohio, which will close and release exit polls half an hour later, at 7.30pm eastern time, 12.30am GMT. If Mr Obama wins here too, Mr McCain will be in serious trouble: no Republican has ever won the White House without winning in Ohio. It went only marginally against Mr Kerry in 2004, and Mr Obama’s organisation here is strong.
Pennsylvania, which will close its polls at 8pm eastern time, 1am GMT, represents Mr McCain’s last real hope: he has been campaigning hard in the state, which has a high proportion of rural and conservative voters, backed Mrs Clinton rather than Mr Obama in the primaries and only narrowly goes Democrat in presidential elections. The polls, however, still show him 7.5 points adrift. If Mr McCain somehow wins though, the entire election will be thrown into confusion.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Today’s Polls and Final Election Projection: Obama 349, McCain 189
It’s Tuesday, November 4th, 2008, Election Day in America. The last polls have straggled in, and show little sign of mercy for John McCain. Barack Obama appears poised for a decisive electoral victory.
Our model projects that Obama will win all states won by John Kerry in 2004, in addition to Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, Florida and North Carolina, while narrowly losing Missouri and Indiana. These states total 353 electoral votes. Our official projection, which looks at these outcomes probabilistically — for instance, assigns North Carolina’s 15 electoral votes to Obama 59 percent of the time — comes up with an incrementally more conservative projection of 348.6 electoral votes.
Election 2008: State of the Race
The final Rove & Co. electoral map of the 2008 election cycle points to a 338-200 Barack Obama electoral vote victory over John McCain tomorrow, the largest electoral margin since 1996. All remaining toss-up states have been allocated to the candidate leading in them, with Florida (27 EV) going to Obama, and Indiana (11 EV), Missouri (11 EV), North Carolina (15 EV), and North Dakota (3 EV) going to McCain. The two candidates are in a dead heat in Missouri and North Carolina, but they go to McCain because the most recent polls conducted over this past weekend show him narrowly ahead. Florida, too, could end up in McCain’s column since he’s benefited from recent movement in the state.
All eyes on Virginia, then!
“If those states go roughly as expected (meaning, say, an Obama win in Virginia and a close race in Indiana), we can conclude with almost literal 100 percent certainty that Obama will win the election.”