| Obama | McCain |
| 100.0% probability of winning | 0.0% probability of winning |
| Mean of 366 electoral votes | Mean of 172 electoral votes |
Yesterday’s analysis showed Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain by (on average) 369 to 169 electoral votes.
There were 18 new polls from 14 states that add into today’s analysis. The polls show some races tightening up slightly, and McCain gets the better of it.
Now, after 100,000 simulated elections, Obama wins ’em all. Obama receives (on average) 366 to McCain’s 172 electoral votes—a gain of three votes for McCain since yesterday. The simulation results still suggest that Obama would win an election held today with 100.0% probability.
The long term trends in this race can be seen from a series of elections simulated every seven days using polls from 02 Mar 2008 to 02 Nov 2008, each time including polls from the preceding seven days (FAQ):
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 election is a referendum on trickle-down Whack-O-Nomics, period! If you believe giving tax breaks and subsidies to the rich is necessary for job creation, and raises workers’ standard of living, vote for McSame. If you think that’s bullshit, vote for change.
Nate over at 538.com gives McCain a 6.3% chance of winning, but his model is probably more sophisticated than the one you’re using. Not that I don’t like the 100% number, of course.
Basically to win McCain has to hold all of the Bush states, including the ones that have been polling +5, +10, +12 for Obama for a couple of weeks. I don’t see it happening, and there are too many to steal.
Tuesday is going to be a loooooong night if you’re a Republican.
It looks like the race is tightening up a bit, but that’s normal just before Election Day, and even if it does, Obama has an ample margin of electoral votes. Also, about a third of the country has already voted, which will blunt any 11th hour surge by McSame, although there’s no reason to think one will materialize.
The economic argument boils down to this: Socialism for the rich pulls up the middle class. That’s the Reagan Revolution, and the day after tomorrow America’s voters will decide if that was a bill of goods.
If the GOP loses this election it won’t be merely a lost election. Reaganomics won’t come back. This will drive a stake through the heart of rich-coddling. It’ll kill off the trickle-down ideology. The GOP will have to reinvent itself around a different economic theory.
And it won’t be laissez-faire economics, because this election is a referendum on that, too. America’s latest flirtation with laissez-faire economics produced the same results laissez-faire economics always does: Financial panic followed by economic collapse. If laissez-faire economics goes down on Tuesday let’s hope we won’t see it again for another 100 years.
What we’re voting on Tuesday is trickle-down laissez-faire economics (Whack-O-Nomics for short) vs. New Deal 2. If you wingfucks think New Deal 2 is “socialism” I suggest you visit North Korea to see real socialism. (And don’t hurry back.)
Why Obama Won
I’m only a rabbit, and not smart enough to figure that out, but Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne did:
“WASHINGTON — A good politician triumphs by adapting to the times and taking advantage of opportunities as they come. A great politician anticipates openings others don’t see and creates possibilities that were not there before. …
“Barack Obama … seized the opportunities created by President Bush’s failures and the country’s profound discontent …. But by creating a new social movement, new forms of political organization, and a sense of excitement and possibility not felt in politics for three decades, he bids to become one of the country’s most consequential leaders. …
“In the spring, Democrats feared that Republicans had stumbled upon the one foe who might weather the powerful tide of dissatisfaction. … But instead of carrying on as the un-Bush who defied conservative orthodoxy, McCain embraced the right for fear of losing it. … And as the campaign closed, the McCain tragedy became a farce starring Joe the Plumber and casting Obama as a socialist with a radical bunch of friends. …
“McCain’s default allowed Obama to define the campaign, though Obama’s most important insight came much earlier: He saw an opening for a young African-American senator with brief Washington experience, realizing that the very unlikeliness of his candidacy would enhance its attractiveness.
“He not only gave Americans a chance to lay down the burdens of race. He invited them to embrace his very newness and thereby move past the 1960s, the ’80s, the ’90s and the Bush era all at once. ‘It’s time to turn the page,’ Obama would say, and there were many pages Americans wanted to turn. His post-everything candidacy, wrapped in a powerful rhetoric of hope, was immensely attractive ….
“Obama heaped praise on his organizers, a natural act of respect from a man tempered by community organizing and disciplined by the rigors of Chicago-style politics. And he married these old-fashioned skills to high technology: … He created a money machine that fueled his organizers and paid for one of the most … focused advertising campaigns in the history of American politics. He created a brand with a logo and a slogan ….
“Obama understood better than any other Democrat that a vast new progressive movement, called into being by antipathy to Bush and outrage over the Iraq War, was waiting for leadership. Yet Obama knew that the often irate legions of the blogosphere needed to be fused with a soft-spoken center weary of partisanship and division. It was another unlikely marriage that Obama sanctified.
“All this created Obama’s opportunity. But every campaign offers make-or-break moments …. [T]he day McCain suspended his campaign and proposed postponing the first presidential debate …, Obama established himself as a leader. …
“[T]here seems to be an inexorable quality to Obama’s rise this year because he is the first truly 21st-century figure in American politics … the innovator who has set the standard for the next political era.”
(Quoted under fair use.)
Hi, I am new here, and I hate the way politics divides people! Gag!
I hope everyone votes for “none of the above”
I just want Democrats to vote their conscience and Republicans to vote for McCain as a protest.
… uuurghghhhh
How can I keep this up!
I am paid by the McCain campaign to try to get democratic voters to not vote for Obama! I cannot live this lie anymore! I am recently unemployed due to this fucking Bush/McCain economy.. and I am desperate!
Fuck!Fuck!Fuck!
I have no health insurance even though I have worked all my life. The 401K I put 9% of my income into all these years has lost 30% of its value the last few months. I am left pimping for the cause of all my problems…
GET IT TOGETHER… Time to sell!
… ahem..
Vote for McCain! He is not a socialist-Muslim-terrorist like the other guy!!!!
UUURRGGGHHHHH
I cannot do this! I fucking hate McCain! And what is with this Palin idiot? Is she working hard to bring on a rapture that will never come? Does she actually believe that if she starts enough chaos and war that Jesus will come and rapture her from her $15,000 designer clothes and put her at the right hand of Jesus?
What a fucking lunatic!!!
err… Vote McCain!
Can I have my “troll check” now?
RNC?
RNC?
*shoots you in the ass with a ritalin blowdart*
My irrelevant thought of the night: I’m SO glad I live in WA state, and don’t have to stand in line for six @!#%ing hours just to vote.
Nate over at 538.com gives McCain a 6.3% chance of winning
His late update has it back under 4% again. Part of the difference is that Nate’s model is a prediction model and Darryl’s is not.
@1
“This election is a referendum on trickle-down Whack-O-Nomics, period! If you think that’s bullshit, vote for change.”
Although I share your view of trickle-on, it’s repudiation does not hinge on the vote of the American populace. Blood in the streets, lost trillions, bankruptcies, currency collapse, layoffs, foreclosures, insolvencies and the slow train of an oncoming depression are proof enough of the Reagan/Greenspan, et al business folly that has died it’s overdue death. It won’t RIP.
Here is the summary of the republican viewpoints on fair voting, on the African American and minority voting:
The party of Lincoln turns 180 degrees and tries to suppress the black vote.
Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27508967?GT1=43001
Where is Puddy who can explain how the democrats are really against African Americans?
Yup – the democrats must be trying to suppress the 90% democratic vote of African Americans voting for the first African American president.
Yup – that is almost as good as calling the graduated income tax socialist or claiming that Obama serving on the board of a republican sponsored eductional institution with 22 other board members and William Ayers is an “association”.
Republicans are morally and intellectual bankrupt. Come tuesday we will wake up and try to undoe the damage – like the anti-states rights FDA lawsuit to give drug companies immunity from state lawsuits when they are negligent. The FDA has opposed this for 30 years until Bush pushed it to help big Pharma.
Yup – remember what this elections is all about. Power to the corporations versus power to the people of the US. Corporations first or people first. Dishonesty and corruption or change.
Twenty-four hours from now, the whole world will be saying “President-Elect Barack Obama.” Suck on it, wingnut losers!
BRRRAAAAAAACKKKKKK!!!!!
[Pink rabbit tongue protruding]
@10 You’re right, the world’s money has already voted against trickle-lies.
is barak presednt yet?i’mstil wating for the free stuffand i want to join his natinol police farce being a copp wood bee realy cool i mean craking heds on those bush & Mcain nazis hahaha
Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of Hawaii’s Department of Health, and Alvin Onaka, Hawaii’s Registrar of Vital Statistics, told reporters they have personally verified that Hawaii has Barack Obama’s original birth certificate on file.
But this won’t be good enough for the lunatic fringe because both of these Hawaii natives have “foreign sounding” names. Numerous lawsuits challenging Obama’s eligibility to be president have been dismissed by federal courts around the country including in Seattle.
Countdown …
The nonstop whining begins in slightly less than 24 hours.
OBITUARY FOR A CAMPAIGN
The primary problem facing the Republican Party in a nutshell was that by 2006, the Republican Party was a fatally damaged brand name. Rather than make material changes to their product, they tried (again) to re-package it.
The flurry of “GOP” candidates in this year’s election is on sign of that re-packaging effort. The attempt to co-opt the desire for real change by having no-change politicians such as Rossi adopt the “for a change” slogan, hoping that between the slogan, the “GOP” label, and huge ad buys to make voters think that national economic problems caused by the Republicans should be laid at the feet of the governor. But nationally, voters weren’t buying it.
By early winter of 2008, it was apparant that the Republicans were going to lose the White House if they didn’t adopt a rather drastic strategy. That strategy was – to campaign against themselves. They looked about for someone whom they could argue had stood up to the Bush administration. Unfortunately, the Bush administration had aleady pretty much run anybody out of the party who didn’t get out of bed singing the praises of George W. Bush. They were left with a 72 year-old McCain, who’s “maverick” credentials rested upon him voting against the Bush administration a whole 10% of the time.
But as spring turned to summer, it clearly wasn’t enough. Obama still held a small lead, which was still smaller than it should have been because the electorate was still uneasy about committing to a national politician with a foreign-sounding name about whom they knew little. McCain tried to capitalize on Obama’s youth by comparing McCain’s experience with Obama’s relative lack of experience in Washington, and was gaining ground – but not quite enough. McCain was facing the logical inconsistencies of being the nominee of a party he was trying to run against, running as a maverick and an experienced Washington insider at the same time. It just wasn’t enough.
More importantly, the Republicans, by choosing a candidate who in effect was attempting to run against his own party in order to capture the center, there was some steadfast resistence on the far right. Many were threatening to sit out this election entirely in protest. The Republican Party was going into the conventions, in essence, being schizophrenic. Ideologically it wanted McCain to re-assure the far right which makes up the Republican base. But on a more practical level, McCain had to appear more centrists in order to appeal to the relatively small portion (5% to 10%) of the electorate which switches it’s vote between the parties in almost every election.
McCain needed to solidify that base and do so quickly, hoping he had enough time to drift back towards the center to capture their vote in time for the election. So when Obama didn’t nominate Hillary Clinton, McCain thought he had an opening – by appointing a far-right-wing woman, he hoped to capture some of the Hillary vote and nail down the far-right base at the same time. But it didn’t work. The women who supported Hillary wouldn’t support Palin just because she was a woman. And by appointing an unqualified candidate with far-right views of the world, he lost the center.
So as September dawned, Obama still led McCain by a small percentage point, arguably within the margin of error. But the number never really flipped convincingly on McCain’s side. That’s when McCain turned to the Rovian tactics he had claimed to despise so much, attempting to paint Obama as a terrorist and a socialist.
But at virtually the same time, the decade of de-regulation in the home lending and fiancial markets came home to roost, and the stock market collapsed. Despite Republican efforts to blame the collapse on Democrats such as Carter and Clinton, the electorate did what it usually does in such an instance – it blamed the President and his administration. Fortunately, in this case the blame pretty much fell on those actually responsible.
So McCain now couldn’t push the “experience” argument, with Palin as his running mate. His feeble attempt to be the guy who rode in on a white horse to “save” the economy ended in disaster, as his “suspended” campaign was revealed by Letterman to be anything but that, and Representatives and Senators on both sides told the candidates to keep out of it for fear that Presidential politics would make a deal impossible, and the actual deal itself left everyone with such a bad taste in their mouth that neither McCain nor Obama wanted to take credit for it. But by staying above the fray Obama came out far ahead, and McCain gambled his credentials as someone who could “get things done” and lost.
That left McCain only with the Rovian bag of tricks. First he kept repeating the terrorist and socialist accusations which only worked on those who supported McCain anyway.
Finally, the Rovian operatives have been put to work. If you can’t change people’s mind, then just make sure their vote isn’t counted. They already have well in place a campaign to surpress the vote by de-registering voters in swing states, some voters using electronic machines are reporting their votes switching from Obama to McCain as they work on the down-ballot, operatives are calling Obama volunteers to tell them not to show up at call centers or for get-out-the-vote drives claiming that they “already have too many people”, and circulating pamplets with the official state seal telling people that due to expected high turnout, Democrats are supposed to vote on Wednesday, and robo-calls informing presumed Democractic voters that their polling location has changed, and that if they have any outstanding parking tickets they will be arrested if they show up to vote.
So on the day before the election, that’s what the Republican party’s hope for victory rests upon – voter suppression. Hopefully, we’ve learned enough from prior years to prevent that from stealing this year’s election.
A top priority of Elected-Not-Selected President Obama should be passing legislative that makes vote suppression a federal crime with serious penalties … 25 years to life sounds about right.
With the election ending just a little over 34 hours from now, the New York Times has a reminder of the final nail in McCain’s coffin: the economic meltdown which was tarted by the mortgage crisis.
Despite Republican attempts to blame in on CRA (a 1970’s bill to prevent discrimination in housing), or on Bill Clinton’s attempts to make home ownership more affordable, it all came down to executive greed in the banking industry, and the Bush administration’s refusal to do anything more than turn a blind eye to the looming collision.
Keysha Coooper, a former senior loan underwiter at Washington Mutual, detailed how she was pressured to approve obviously fraudulent loans by executives and mortgage brokers who were expecting to receive thousands of dollars off each approved application – and then attempted to put the blame on her when those loans defaulted.
Source: Loan underwriter recalls pressure
FYI,
I’ve noticed on the hannity site that many business owners are starting to blame Obama for any problems with their business. If they lay off workers, it’s Obama’s fault. It’s not the economy, or bad management or republican deregulation, it’s Obama’s socialist plans that are to blame. Watch for it.
BHO has more baggage than Bill Clinton did. This will be a dead end 4 years when more truth is revealed about BHO,his friends and family.
Unfortunately, for our youth they will be disappointed when BHO can’t produce what he has promise to them and us.
This will be devastating for the country and for future voters.
BHO doesn’t care about this or you as long as he wins.
The media is turning on him just wait and see where this ends up LOL.
@22:
It has already started – the sour grapes republicans (epitomized by the ignorant troll above) blame the democrats for the republican mess. If there is one thing that republicans are goods at, it is shifting the blame for their policies and accepting no personal responsibility.
Compared to Bush, Obama will be a shining light versus a black hole. Yes – things will be bad for a few more years because the republicans and Bush have so totally screwed up our country that it will take years to dig out of it.
Luckily, the republican mantras of the past have collapsed under the weight of their own hypocrisy. Republicans who don’t believe in government doing anything, can’t fix government. Trickle down economics didn’t work. Less regulation leads to the obvious abuses – even if Greenspan couldn’t see it (who are the idealists and who are the realists about regulation? Greenspan admitted he thought the banking industry could police itself – what a joke!).
Preemptive war was a facade. There were no WMD’s and we were lied to repeatedly. the war was about oil and neocons and it did not change the middle east for the better. WE still have not delt with bin Laden. The only time bin Laden is mentioned is when republicans want to scare people – he is a useful tool for them.
As to the pathetic troll “adaM” above – who predicts devastating results if Obama is elected – I would say that Bush has already given us devastating results – the worst economy since Hoover, the largest budget deficit in history, the most corruption, the least respect from Americans and the rest of the world for a President since….well, since the founding our country. Even Nixon was at least respected worldwide, despite being a crook and a facist cheater with Watergate.
Yes – at 25% approval (Adam must be one of the 25%) it would be virtually impossible to do worse.
Obama has run a masterful campaign, outperformed McCain in the debates, been a steady hand and is a thoughtful and intelligent person. Bush and McCain are none of the above – and the trolls can’t stand it so they make vague, sad accusations with no facts to back it up.
People are on to your type Adam – and they are sick of the character assasinations and fact-less hysteria and name calling. You will get yours on Tuesday – and your pathetic right wing talk show mentality will go down in flames.
Blue John @ 21: Yep, I’ve been hearing that for a couple of weeks from the Republican Rumor Mill: thousands of businesses are supposedly laying off workers due to the high taxes they expect to be imposed upon them by Obama.
Of course, if any small business owner really is laying off workers for this reason, they are complete idiots and deserve to go out of business, for reasons completely unrelated to an Obama presidency. Last week I reported here a conversation I had with one fellow who insisted this was a fact, yet couldn’t ask which tax increase was supposedly making it impossible for these businesses to keep employing the workers.
Taxes in the U.S. are, with few exceptions, based on the profits of a business. Employment costs are on the expense side of the ledger. Whether taxes are at 30%, 15%, or 5% of profits, it has no effect on the expense side of the ledger. And if the company is making no money, it is completly ludicrous to blame it on tax increases – 10% taxes on $0 profits is $0, just as 30% taxes on $0 profits is still $0.
In short, a tax on profits DOES make a difference on how much the business owner takes home. But it doesn’t make any difference at all on employment levels.
@23
“and the trolls can’t stand it so they make vague, sad accusations with no facts to back it up.”
BHO promises are based on what, fact or fiction? You can’t say Fact you have no idea what he can do, even his campaign, is downplaying his promises to the public now,this is a fact.
Really doesn’t matter he won’t win to many voters have seen how scary and insincere he is in the last week. Tom brokaw and Rose on NPR said we still don’t know who obama is.
I’m an Independent Voter this is a Fact not your sad misleading accusation.
A Real Map of the Real America: Wyoming Rules.
Father Jonathan Morris’ reasons the Election will be closer than you expect:
1) According to varied professional sources with whom I have spoken, there exists a proportionally high number of potential voters who are refusing to be polled or express their opinion publicly. In a historic, high-octane race like 2008, I believe there are more reasons for a McCain supporter to stay silent than for an Obama supporter. It is understandable to imagine McCain supporters fearing labels such as “racist,” “homophobe,” “single-issue-voter,” “warmonger,” or “against change,” even if the voter is none of these.
2) Similarly, pollsters have reported higher than usual numbers of undecided voters or voters still capable of changing their minds. People know Senator McCain. Do they know Senator Obama well enough to break for him this late in the game?
3) Most importantly, in 2004, pollsters were caught by surprise by the amount of voters who left the polls saying “social issues” were most influential in determining their vote. In 2008, the media has been mostly silent on these causes, focusing instead on the economy and Iraq. This focus ignores an important reality. The “Value Voters” block of mostly Evangelicals and a good percentage of conservative Catholics and others, may indeed be wrapped up in these urgent headlines, but there is no convincing data to suggest they have inverted their voting priorities, turning away from abortion, traditional marriage, limited government, etc. If Senator Kerry’s policy proposals were enough to get this voting block to the booth, Senator Obama’s policies should bring them out in droves.