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.)

Discussion

Elections are operated by state bureaucracies under state laws. Though it’s difficult, it’s possible to illegally interfere with them through surrogates and old fashioned things like bribery and organized voter fraud. But it’s very difficult to do this on a large enough scale to win a national election. It’s very difficult to do at all other than at an isolated poll or two.

We had a push for voter ID in Wisconsin that has, so far, failed. But it had nothing to do with Obama. There are just a fair number of people in high places (especially courts) who believe getting an ID is undue hardship for voters… and some argue that the hardship is disproportionately heavy on minorities. (I don’t buy that, of course)

I trust Obama to do what he believes in. To me, that’s the problem: a political philosophy much at odds with how human beings and the world work.

[Greg] Two things:
  1. I would want to know how the momentum shift in recent weeks compares to 2004. I don’t remember. Was John Kerry gaining ground on Bush in the last month before the election? If not, it might not be an exact comparison because Romney has been gaining ground on Obama in the last month.
  2. Obama didn’t face a primary, but the current economy draws some comparisons to a Great Depression scenario in that one of the questions people have is how much responsibility he bears for the bad economy.

It’s interesting the different ways the “No ______ has ever _______” analyses work out. For example, nobody with a Nov. unemployment rate above 7.2 has ever been reelected. But you can plug in criteria that produce contradictory conclusions. “No President who’s last name starts with O. has ever failed to be reelected.” :D

Tried to find some data on Kerry in ‘04 in weeks before the vote. No hits yet. What I vaguely recall is that his numbers were pretty flat at that point. But I could be wrong.

Edit: Greg, check this out

Looks like Kerry trended very slightly higher through late Sep and early Oct then peaked on Oct 22 in Real Clear averages…. but other than a brief bounce in August, he was never ahead.

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.

I’m heartened to see the late breaking voters going Romney. As a poli-sci guy, here’s the thing with poll watching: it’s always an accurate measure of how people think now, not necessarily how they’ll think on election day. Polls become far more accurate in the final 2-3 days of the campaign.

I’m hopeful that Romney can pull it out, but he needs things to go perfect in a lot of states he’s slightly ahead in (FL, VA, CO) plus he’s GOT to win Ohio. Here’s my RCP map if everything goes well for Romney.

If Romney does win, it will be an amazing turn of events.

Looks the RCP “Create Your Own Map” tool is cookie based or something…. your link appears to be showing the current averages or something… with 18 toss up states.

BTW, there are a couple of scenarios where he can win it without Ohio. Long shots but the probably is more than zero.

http://theweek.com/article/index/234804/how-mitt-romney-can-win-without…

http://washingtonexaminer.com/yes-romney-can-win-without-ohio/article/2…

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 Shaynus left Ohio undecided in his RCP scenario.

Rick Franklin Gresham, Oregon Romans 8:38-39

I know there are a few other scenarios, but it pretty much all comes down to Ohio.

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Greg Long, Ed.D. (SBTS)

Pastor of Adult Ministries
Grace Church, Des Moines, IA

Adjunct Instructor
School of Divinity
Liberty University

Yeah, I misread the map … 18 toss up electoral votes, not 18 toss up states.

If he manages to get OH and FL (currently leads there) and all the historically “red” states, he only needs two of the current toss-up states to win. Either VA (currently a tie in the polls) or CO (currently whisker-thin lead) would do. O’s lead in OH is now down to 1.9 and seems to be shrinking in WI and a few others. Hard to tell what’s happening in MI.

Would be nice if RR could find a way to clearly and memorably explain to MI and the nation why bankruptcy would have been so much better for the auto industry than the bail-out approach. (What’s tricky with that is to show how it would have been better without predicting that the bailout will fail—which it eventually will. It’s just that this would be a bad time to tell MI “The bailout approach is mostly like only a temporary fix”)

What RR needs now is a dramatic error in the OB administration/campaign to seal the deal. There is still some chance Benghazi will do it, depending on what un-ignorable info comes to light.

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.

That’s the key reason why I think car country (including Michigan and Ohio) will be tough for Romney. Obama is in the tank for the car industry. Romney has to have nearly every close race go his way, while Obama needs a handful. I also look at individual Senate races in these key states and see Democrats up in nearly all of them. This could mean reverse coat-tails for Obama.

Aaron, could you do an RCP map and link it? I’m not sure the math works out without Ohio or Wisconsin. Do your map, then hit the email button and copy the link.

[Shaynus] Aaron, could you do an RCP map and link it? I’m not sure the math works out without Ohio or Wisconsin. Do your map, then hit the email button and copy the link.

I’ll give it a whirl

… Sure enough. Had some errors. For some reason I had Delaware and Maryland in the Romney column. Corrected, if he gets OH and FL and all the historically red states, he’s still shy a few (I think I also might have have a couple not “historically red” but currently leaning Romney)

So if he gets OH and FL, he also needs either VA or CO and IA.

In this map, I gave CO to ObamaBiden but OH, FL, VA and IA to RomneyRyan. RR is more likely to get CO and lose IA… though I still think they get both in the end.

(This is not a new prediction, though. I need to revise my original to get DE, MD and maybe another out of RR column)

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.

You don’t have to have a complex type of answer (like Aaron’s above) or have a click through to a map

Your entry can be as simple as: Obama will win: 285-253.

Whoever is closest will receive both prizes!

S/I Mods and Admins are not eligible to win the prizes.

My new guess is Romney wins 348 to 190. I think he will actually take MN this time. I lived in MN most of my life and Romney is just the kind of guy MN’s would vote for as governor. I just saw the Star Tribune poll and Obama was leading in MN but it had a +13 Dem sample. I also gave one of the Maine split votes to Romney.

My hopeful guess is 295-243 in favor of Romney

split vote 5-1 in NE/ 3-1 in ME

WI, IA, OH, CO, VA, FL, NC, NH to Romney riding the momentum to the White House.

Striving for the unity of the faith, for the glory of God ~ Eph. 4:3, 13; Rom. 15:5-7 I blog at Fundamentally Reformed. Follow me on Twitter.