| Obama | McCain |
| 100.0% probability of winning | 0.0% probability of winning |
| Mean of 376 electoral votes | Mean of 162 electoral votes |
Yesterday’s analysis showed Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain by (on average) 370 to 168 electoral votes. There were 26 new polls representing 17 states released today to weigh in on today’s analysis. For the most part, the polls strongly favored Obama.
Now, the outcome of 100,000 simulated elections is that Obama wins them all. Obama receives (on average) 376 to McCain’s 162 electoral votes—a gain of six. In an election held now, Obama would win with near certainty.
This table shows the electoral vote total for different criteria for the probability of winning a state (Safe=100%, Strong=90%+, Leans=60%+, Weak=50%+):
| Threshold | Safe | + Strong | + Leans | + Weak |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Safe Obama | 189 | |||
| Strong Obama | 177 | 366 | ||
| Leans Obama | 12 | 12 | 378 | |
| Weak Obama | 0 | 0 | 0 | 378 |
| Weak McCain | 3 | 3 | 3 | 160 |
| Leans McCain | 15 | 15 | 157 | |
| Strong McCain | 105 | 142 | ||
| Safe McCain | 37 |
Detailed results for this analysis are available at Hominid Views.
Methods are described in the FAQ. The most recent version of this analysis can be found on this page.
This is hilarious. A compilation of right wing “Obama derangement Syndrome”. I bet our trolls believe in each and every one of these.
http://jonswift.blogspot.com/2.....gging.html
A great expose of right wing shit head bloggers.
The circular firing squad forms:
http://www.politico.com/news/s.....14891.html
ready.. aim..
FIRE!!
@2 I’m pretty sure the procedure used by those guys is … ready, FIRE, aim!!
I posted excerpts in the preceding thread of a Democracy Now! article that discusses some of the GOP’s election-stealing techniques: Electronic vote flipping, rerouting election returns through their own computers, and vote suppression.
Two salient points of the article involve why the GOP steals elections and the so-called Bradley Effect.
Basically, it’s about “saving babies” from abortion. The operatives behind these schemes think the majority of voters are heathens who can’t be trusted to choose our leaders. So it’s necessary for those doing God’s work to steal elections to make sure the right people run the country.
The Bradley Effect is a myth. Research has shown that. Its purpose is to provide a cover explanation for why Obama lost despite polls. It’s supposed to divert attention away from evidence of election theft. If there’s a reasonable-sounding explanation of why Obama lost despite the polls, the hope is that no one will pay attention to that evidence.
Rats Continue To Leave GOP Ship
Former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan endorsed Obama tonight.
It’s not a foregone conclusion the GOP will steal this election. Election stealing is tricky. You want to steal just enough votes to win, plus a small extra margin for insurance against miscalculation, to avoid suspicion. The fewer votes you steal the less likely you are to get caught, and the more plausible the outcome looks. But if the opposition’s turnout is much bigger than you expected, or if a big part of the electorate turns on you, your vote stealing can get swamped by what amounts to a popular uprising against your party. That’s what happened in 2006. There was election rigging going on then, but the GOP operatives underestimated the size of the backlash against Bush and the GOP, and didn’t steal enough votes to save Congress for their party. Likewise, we’ll experience rigged voting machines, long lines, and all the other GOP dirty tricks in this election, but the Obama tsunami may be too big for them to overcome. So, despite the fact the GOP is making massive efforts to steal this election, the situation isn’t hopeless.
NY Times Endorses Obama
“Hyperbole is the currency of presidential campaigns, but this year the nation’s future truly hangs in the balance.
“The United States is battered and drifting after eight years of President Bush’s failed leadership. …
“As tough as the times are, the selection of a new president is easy. After nearly two years of a grueling and ugly campaign, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has proved that he is the right choice to be the 44th president of the United States.
“Mr. Obama has met challenge after challenge, growing as a leader and putting real flesh on his early promises of hope and change. He has shown a cool head and sound judgment. We believe he has the will and the ability to forge the broad political consensus that is essential to finding solutions to this nation’s problems.
“In the same time, Senator John McCain of Arizona has retreated farther and farther to the fringe of American politics, running a campaign on partisan division, class warfare and even hints of racism. His policies and worldview are mired in the past. His choice of a running mate so evidently unfit for the office was a final act of opportunism and bad judgment that eclipsed the accomplishments of 26 years in Congress. …
“Mr. McCain offers more of the Republican every-man-for-himself ideology …. Mr. Obama has another vision of government’s role and responsibilities. In his convention speech in Denver, Mr. Obama said, ‘Government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves ….’
“The American financial system is the victim of decades of Republican deregulatory and anti-tax policies. Those ideas have been proved wrong at an unfathomable price ….
“Mr. Obama sees that far-reaching reforms will be needed to protect Americans and American business. Mr. McCain talks about reform a lot, but … [h]is answer to any economic question is to … wait for unfettered markets to solve the problem.
“Mr. Obama is clear that the nation’s tax structure must be changed to make it fairer. That means the well-off Americans who have benefited disproportionately from Mr. Bush’s tax cuts will have to pay some more. Working Americans, who have seen their standard of living fall and their children’s options narrow, will benefit. …
“Mr. McCain, who once opposed President Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy as fiscally irresponsible, now wants to make them permanent. And while he talks about keeping taxes low for everyone, his proposed cuts would overwhelmingly benefit the top 1 percent of Americans while digging the country into a deeper fiscal hole.
The American military … is dangerously overstretched. Mr. Bush has neglected the necessary war in Afghanistan, which now threatens to spiral into defeat. The unnecessary and staggeringly costly war in Iraq must be ended as quickly and responsibly as possible.
” … Mr. McCain is still talking about some ill-defined ‘victory.’ … Mr. Obama … has presented a military and diplomatic plan for withdrawing American forces. …
“Mr. Obama would have a learning curve on foreign affairs, but he has already showed sounder judgment than his opponent on these critical issues. …
“Both presidential candidates talk about strengthening alliances in Europe and Asia, including NATO, and strongly support Israel. Both candidates talk about repairing America’s image in the world. But it seems clear to us that Mr. Obama is far more likely to do that ….
“Unfortunately, Mr. McCain, like Mr. Bush, sees the world as divided into friends (like Georgia) and adversaries (like Russia). … We have no sympathy for Moscow’s bullying, but we also have no desire to replay the cold war. …
” … Mr. Obama has called for a serious effort to try to wean Tehran from its nuclear ambitions with more credible diplomatic overtures and tougher sanctions. Mr. McCain’s willingness to joke about bombing Iran was frightening. …
“Under Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the justice system and the separation of powers have come under relentless attack. Mr. Bush chose to exploit the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001 … to place himself above the law.
“Mr. Bush has arrogated the power to imprison men without charges and browbeat Congress into granting an unfettered authority to spy on Americans. He has created untold numbers of ‘black’ programs, including secret prisons and outsourced torture. The president has issued hundreds, if not thousands, of secret orders. We fear it will take years of forensic research to discover how many basic rights have been violated.
“Both candidates have renounced torture and are committed to closing the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But Mr. Obama has gone beyond that, promising to identify and correct Mr. Bush’s attacks on the democratic system. Mr. McCain has been silent on the subject. …
“The next president will have the chance to appoint one or more justices to a Supreme Court that is on the brink of being dominated by a radical right wing. … Mr. McCain is certain to pick rigid ideologues. …
“It will be an enormous challenge just to get the nation back to where it was before Mr. Bush, to begin to mend its image in the world and to restore its self-confidence and its self-respect. Doing all of that, and leading America forward, will require strength of will, character and intellect, sober judgment and a cool, steady hand.
“Mr. Obama has those qualities in abundance. Watching him being tested in the campaign has long since erased the reservations that led us to endorse Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primaries. …
“Mr. McCain, whom we chose as the best Republican nominee in the primaries, has spent the last coins of his reputation for principle and sound judgment to placate the limitless demands and narrow vision of the far-right wing. His righteous fury at being driven out of the 2000 primaries on a racist tide aimed at his adopted daughter has been replaced by a zealous embrace of those same win-at-all-costs tactics and tacticians. …
“Mr. Obama has withstood some of the toughest campaign attacks ever mounted against a candidate. He’s been called un-American and accused of hiding a secret Islamic faith. The Republicans have linked him to domestic terrorists and questioned his wife’s love of her country. …
“This politics of fear, division and character assassination helped Mr. Bush drive Mr. McCain from the 2000 Republican primaries and defeat Senator John Kerry in 2004. It has been the dominant theme of his failed presidency. The nation’s problems are simply too grave to be reduced to slashing ‘robo-calls’ and negative ads.
“This country needs sensible leadership, compassionate leadership, honest leadership and strong leadership. Barack Obama has shown that he has all of those qualities.”
(Quoted under fair use.)
Roger Rabbit Commentary: The NY Times has provided a well-reasoned argument for electing Obama in this editorial. It’ll be interesting to see who the Seattle Times endorses — and, if they endorse McCain, what their justification is.
I expect an Obama victory, but I want him to do more than eke out a win. I would like to see a landslide on the scale of LBJ’s 1964 victory over AuH2O — I want Obama to win by a 60% – 38% margin.
Why? For a couple reasons.
First, America needs two competitive parties. One-party rule isn’t good for democracy. But the GOP needs a major shock to regain its sanity. Alternatively, if that proves impossible, it must be destroyed to create room for a more responsible second party.
Second, a crushing defeat of the McCain – Palin ticket will discredit Palin. She’s as toxic as a lynch mob leader, and for America’s good, we must stop her career as a demagogue in its tracks. A sharp repudiation of her at the ballot box could save this country much future grief.
Why Obama Should Win And Palin Should Lose
Palin told a North Carolina crowd she was happy to be in “the real America” and proceeded to praise “the pro-America areas of this great nation.”
Obama told an Indiana crowd, “There are no real or fake parts of this country. We are not separated by the pro-America and anti-America parts of this nation — we all love this country, no matter where we live or where we come from. There are patriots who supported this war in Iraq and patriots who opposed it, patriots who believe in Democratic policies and those who believe in Republican policies. The men and women from Indiana and all across America who serve on our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a red America or a blue America — they have served the United States of America.”
(Quoted from Slate under fair use.)
Roger Rabbit Commentary: It’s that vision thing again that Republicans always bungle. Obama has a broad vision of himself as a leader of all Americans. Pan is a narrow-minded pipsqueak who thinks only those people who see things her way are “real Americans.”
If any more Republican operatives move to Obama, our side might be able to steal this election.
electoral-vote.com has Obama winning by 218 electoral votes.
My prediction of 50 or better seems conservative now. Could it end up being a “landslide?”
What would a right-winger accept as a landslide electoral margin? Would a 200 electoral vote margin convince you that your guy lost in a landslide (that’s 369-169)?
unethical @6 – So that’s how Gregoire did it in 2004?
zapporo @ 12,
I’ve been saying that for years. It’s not a popular thing to say on this blog. It really pisses-of his nibs.
Keep saying it!
RR @ 4: We saw a precursor to the “Bradley Affect” argument in 2004, when pollsters were at a loss to explain how Bush won that election despite polls showing a Kerry victory as recently as the day before. More importantly, the EXIT POLLING (asking people how they voted as they left the polls) which is historically VERY accurate, showed a Kerry victory.
How to account for the discrepency between the exit polling and the vote returns? The pollsters assumed that the vote was the accurate measure, and that something went wrong with the polling. They couldn’t find anything wrong with their methodology, so within a few days of the election they announced as their conclusion what was actually nothing more than a guess: that people lied to pollsters about who they had just voted for. It was the Bradley Affect explanation applied to exit polling.
But the explanation didn’t hold up. It was thoroughly investigaged by veteran poll expert and statisticion Steven Freeman (a lifelong Republican, who noted that:
The conclusion: the exit poll results were accurate.
That leaves only one other explanation. The exit polls were correct, it was the vote count that was rigged.
And that is in ADDITION to the one in five Ohio voters who arrived at the polls to find that they had been erased from the registration rolls – which overwhelmingly occured to Democratic voters.
rhp–
Your PROOF of 2004 being “rigged” is Exit Polling??
C’mon….that isn’t proof.
It is barely a light- light pink flag.
Exit polling by whom?
Left-wing pollsters like the MSM??
Exit polls are historically unreliable.
And certainly not PROOF of any Election Fraud.
Having more VOTES than VOTER consistently in Gregoire strongholds is a lot more proof than some unreliable Exit Polls.
Today’s Rassmussen:
Friday, October 24, 2008
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday once again shows Barack Obama attracting 52% of the vote while John McCain earns 45%.
Obama up by 7 points consistently. How that translates into Electoral College votes, hard to tell. Obama will like win by about 100. The stock market tanking again this AM will bode well for Obama…even though he is clueless & powerless to fix what is happening which is A GLOBAL MARGIN CALL.
Wise investors are averaging into the market in high quality, oversold stocks.
AVERAGING IN…not dumping the whole wad and rolling the dice on where the bottom is.
Politically Incorrect is STILL trying to sell that story, that Rossi actually won the 2004 Governor’s election??????
The Republicans tried to sell it to a Republican judge in an overwhelmingly Republican county. They gave it their BEST shot, and all they could prove was that a handfull of votes for Rossi were illegal (felons illegally voting for Rossi).
But that dosn’t stop Politically Incorrect from continuing to try to sell a completely discredited lie.
In contrast, the 2004 election was never contested in court – in part because the U.S. Justice Dept. under Gonzalles, refused to investigate any allegations of Republican election fraud, but instead focused entirely on trying to pursue prosecutions of Democrats for “voter fraud”, despite the absence of any evidence to support such charges.
That’s going to change, as of early next year.
@15 “Wise investors”
Like you have a clue.
Cynical @ 15:
Nice attempt at deflection, Cynical, but it doesn’t wash.
And the exit polling was done by several different firms, including those hired by Fox News and some which have traditionally been hired by Republican campaigns. Their results were virtually identical. The methodology and polling results were carefully reviewed in detail by quite a few scholars afterwards, as well as the polls themselves, since the outcome was so controversial within the polling community.
The discrepencies between exit polling and vote count in Ohio in 2004 had a clearly discernable pattern. Where Republicans were in charge of the voting proceedure, the discrepencies were as much as 10%. Those tended to be pro-Bush areas anyway, so there would have been no motive for voters to falsely tell pollsters that they had just voted for Kerry. In areas where the Democrats were in charge of counting the votes, there was no statistical discrepency.
One Source: Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? : Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count by Steve Freeman, Joel Bleifuss
Go ahead and throw rocks at the authors if you want – Freeman is a lifelong Republican – or at least he was through the 2004 election. He might have changed his mind after that.
By the way, Cynical: How would you respond in this election if Seattle precincts reported a 98% voter turnout, but Republican precincts around the state reported only a 7% voter turnout? I’m sure you would jump on that as convincing evidence of election fraud.
That’s not what happened in the 2004 Guvenatorial election in Washington, and it won’t happen here in 2008, either. It WAS what happened in Ohio in the 2004 Presidential election, though.
In New Mexico in 2004, election officials claimed that almost 10% of the total vote couldn’t be counted because counting machines mangled the ballots – an event which misteriously only happened to ballots from strongly-held Democratic precincts.
Correction – the New Mexico number was 1%, not 10%. That was a typo on my part, but I couldn’t seem to edit the post.
rhp–
Your cherry-picking of anomolies left you the most famous Democratic Fraud of all, where a precindt in Texas had 100% voter turnout and all 100% voted for Lyndon Johnson!
Remember that one?
Anecdotal evidence is easy for you rhp. But it proves nothing.
We can all agree that it is desirable to make sure ALL VOTERS meet legal voter registration requirements, that they vote only once and that their votes are properly counted.
Seems like a tough thing to do…especially with ACORN throwing a bunch of sh*t against the wall knowing some will get thru and tying up valuable Election Staff time.
I believe we need to have a Nationwide Voter Re-registration before the next election.
Counting the votes properly is one thing.
Making sure Legitimately registered legal voters only vote once is another.
Both are equally important.
After this Election is over, Republicans will have clear evidence of Democrat irregularities. The problem with our system is late registration AND if you contest a registration, you must have evidence the person doesn’t live where they say AND where they actually do live.
How can you do that if the person doesn’t seem to even exist?
Plus, many students have voted more than once…in the state they go to school and where they are from. Illegal Aliens etc.
No meaningful National Voter Registration database.
Lots of room for improvement…starting with a National voter re-registration and national database where registrations are matched with SS #’s (who in the hell doens’t have a SS#??) and Driver’s License.
@21: you mean the election Johnson won with almost 70% of the vote over Goldwater?
Gee – I bet that one precinct really threw off the vote.
cynical, you get even dumber by the minute.
CNR–
No you idiot,,, it was the famous 1948 Texas Senate Election and Ballot Box 13, where everyone voted in perfect Alphabetical Order and ALL for Johnson is the very close race that launched Lunatic Lyndon’s political career and gave the Dems FOREVER the honor of the most well-documented case of Voter Fraud.
Haven’t you ever read about this CNR??
If I’m dumber by the minute, you are stupider by the second! Read your history…including the stuff about DEMOCRATS like Johnson and the Dailey/Obama Chicago Cheat Machine.
21 Cyn
Many? How many? Where? When?
How many? Where? When?
“the most well-documented case of Voter Fraud.” Really? Who was tried and convicted of perpetrating this federal crime?