Electoral Vote Contest
In just over two weeks all the campaigning, debating, advertising and analyzing will be over and it’ll all be up the Electoral College.
As a little election-season fun, see if you can guess what the Electoral College result will be.
If you need a little help figuring out a good guess, you might find these helpful: The Electoral College, and 2012 Presidential Election. Post your best guess in the comment section.
Prize: the winner will receive a copy of two books:
The World-Tilting Gospel: Embracing a Biblical Worldview and Hanging on Tight and Fatal Illusions: A Novel
Whoever is closest to the actual electoral vote is the winner. Ties will be drawn from a hat (or similar randomizing tool). The contest is open to all registered SI users (register here), but the Publisher and Moderators, etc. are not eligible for the prize (only bragging rights). The deadline for your “prediction” is midnight, Friday, November 2.
(But don’t wait until Nov. 2, to post your guess. You can always revise it until the deadline.)
- 28 views
It’s always easy to see wishful thinking in retrospect.
A bit soon for analysis, but the view of many that “America is a right/center-right country” certainly seems to be disproved. When you can’t unseat an emphatically Left president in a failed economy, you have to wonder if points of no return have been passed and the power of the Left academia-media-entertainment axis has a death grip on the American psyche, and if we’re finally committed to self destruction.
On the other hand, I can imagine better scenarios in four years. It’s just hard to do at the moment.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Aaron,
I think you are exactly right. I have been hoping Romney would win, but I have been saying all along that even if he did it was only a temporary halt in the slide leftward. The younger the demographic, the more heavily the leftward lean in the country, which means over time the country is just going to keep drifting that direction. I don’t see anything on the horizon to arrest this inevitable shift short of spiritual revival sweeping the land.
Why is it that my voice always seems to be loudest when I am saying the dumbest things?
Chip,
Rubio rising, 2016.
Remember that no one really wanted Romney anyway. His chief asset in the Republican Party was that he wasn’t Obama. People were not voting to gain a future as much as they were to avoid one. And that won’t excite voters.
[Jim]If Obama wins …. only 4 in S/I EV contest predicted it
Actually - I did too. Congratuations, Jack!
"Our task today is to tell people — who no longer know what sin is...no longer see themselves as sinners, and no longer have room for these categories — that Christ died for sins of which they do not think they’re guilty." - David Wells
[Larry]Remember that no one really wanted Romney anyway. His chief asset in the Republican Party was that he wasn’t Obama. People were not voting to gain a future as much as they were to avoid one. And that won’t excite voters.
I just told people I was voting for Paul Ryan.
[Jay][Jim]If Obama wins …. only 4 in S/I EV contest predicted it
Actually - I did too. Congratuations, Jack!
Oops … sorry!
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Jack asked that the books be sent to John Brian. Books ordered and on the way. Perhaps we will do this again in 4 years (the contest)
[Larry]I haven’t seen numbers elsewhere, but voting turnout was way down in AZ.Remember that no one really wanted Romney anyway. His chief asset in the Republican Party was that he wasn’t Obama. People were not voting to gain a future as much as they were to avoid one. And that won’t excite voters.
2008 - 74%
2012 - 58%
Why is it that my voice always seems to be loudest when I am saying the dumbest things?
Overall, I saw turnout was down from 131 million to 117 million. Romney didn’t even get as many votes as McCain did.
I wonder why turnout was down? I can’t see how Romney is less appealing as a candidate than McCain or see how desire to defeat the liberal candidate could have been less than in ‘08. I’m sure it’ll be analyzed six ways from Sunday. It will be interesting to see if the “evangelical vote” turned out or not.
Perhaps it comes down to something more mundane: maybe the “get the vote out” process was better in the McCain campaign. It certainly appears that the Democrats excel in getting every warm body that can press a button or punch a card transported to a poll.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Turnout was down among Republicans because there are fewer of them. This is why a lot of the polls were wrong. They over-counted republicans in the electorate, and their polls skewed badly. Romney did really well among Independents because so many of them are former Republicans of the Romney ilk.
As the most optimistic of the pessimists in this contest, there are some silver linings here. In 2016, no one can claim that a bad economy was “Bush’s fault.” I don’t think the economy will rebound that soon. Obama and the Democrats will also have to own the debt crisis. They’ll have to own the Iran crisis, and other international events. America is indeed a more center-left country than it once was. That stinks. But it’s also possible that the sowing that’s been done in the past four years will get some reaping soon. It’s possible America will see the sowing and reaping for what it was. Don’t hold your breath.
Predictions or ” for the coming years:
- Paul Ryan will continue to be super important in selling America on how the debt is dumb.
- Chris Christie will be reelected in New Jersey next year, and his star will continue to rise. He might be a candidate for President that would do well in places like Florida (snowbirds!), Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia. With Marco Rubio as his running mate, he would be unstoppable against Joe Biden or another establishment Dem ticket.
- The Tea Party becomes disaffected and heartbroken. A spirit of moderation will take over some House and Senate Republicans, and we’re already seeing that.
- Republicans pick up a number of seats in the Senate in 2014. The states they’re playing in are good for them.
Re Chris Christie
I don’t think his persona will play well in Peoria (middle America)
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I’m trying meanwhile to not think about 2016.
I suggest a good book that I am reading - The Price of Politics by Bob Woodward
The 2014 Senate does favor Republicans with a possible Alaska gain and maybe Louisiana.
The next Presidential race will be a non-incumbent one and the Democrats will have to own the consequences of Obamacare, namely its costs and management, energy development issues, unemployment and taxes. There will be no Bush in 8 years to blame. They will try to blame the GOP House but it will not stick.
Rubio will be the nominee in my view. He is visionary and as articulate as they come. McDonnell from Virginia may run but he does have the old school GOP kind of identity which is added weight he may not be able to throw off.
I do not believe the GOP is “in trouble”. It does need to evaluate how it gets its message across and understand how to better franchise groups who do not always see their demo demonstratively represented.
Former MN Governor Tim Pawlenty speaks about that:
http://www.minnpost.com/political-agenda/2012/11/tim-pawlenty-talks-abo…
“Some of the things that I think the Republican Party is facing as a challenge is the need to do better with Hispanic and Latino voters, the need to do better with female voters, the need to do better with blue-collar voters who are folks who are not just from higher income levels but people in middle and lower modest income backgrounds,” he said.
About the Hispanics … their not just in S Texas, California and Florida
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100008723963904436966045776455006540985…OTTUMWA, Iowa—José Rodas moved to this blue-collar town on the Des Moines River in 2001 to take a job at the Cargill pork plant, after more than a decade eking out an existence in California and Nevada.
…
Mr. Rodas is part of a Hispanic migration from traditional settlement areas in the Western U.S. to the interior. Drawn by well-paying blue-collar jobs, affordable housing and safe neighborhoods, Latinos have settled in towns that hadn’t experienced immigration for a century.
Hispanic migration to the Midwest has political implications. Though only 2.2% of eligible voters in Iowa are Latinos, President Barack Obama courted them. He won in five out of seven counties that together are home to half of Iowa’s Latino population. The president also won in Wapello County, where Ottumwa is the county seat. Nationally, Hispanics accounted for 10% of the electorate for the first time, and helped power Mr. Obama to victory.
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