This gives the following electoral vote count:
Republican (Red), 315 electoral votes
Democrat (Blue), 178 electoral votes
Toss-up (Gray), 45 electoral votes
This seems an outlandish Republican win at this point, but my prediction is based on Romney winning almost all of the Republican voters that McCain won, winning more votes from the upper middle class and the wealthy than McCain did, winning higher percentages of Jewish and youth votes. I believe Hispanics and African-American voters will turn out in slightly lower numbers for Obama as well and that Romney will win a slightly higher fraction of their votes than McCain. I expect Obama will win most of the toss-up states in gray in the end, but by squeakers.
This is not because Romney is a fantastic candidate. It is mostly because the economy is that bad and the claims that it is now recovering are so false that most Americans will figure that out before the election. Romney will not make the mistake of elevating social conservative issues over the economic issues, as Santorum would, and as a result he will overcome the coolness factor of the wrongheaded Obama.
It is the economy, stupid!
I am putting this out there in part as a means to track how my own expectations change as this election cycle moves on. Of course this could prove embarrassing, but taking a chance on being wrong is often a useful way to learn. So this is my baseline prediction. It will be interesting to see how this evolves.
Posts
2 comments:
I have to say, based on the latest polling, Romney has only led in one poll, A Rasmussen Poll, and it is an outlier. Obama usually wins between 4-8% in the polling, about as much as 4 years ago.
This prediction really worries me. It seems that with the fizzle of yet another false recovery and with the completely nonsensical Obama viewpoint, that Americans just have to wake up to the Obama disaster before the election. This may be the optimist getting the better of me. It is mighty hard to understand why they are not polling much more in favor of Romney, yet it is also true that few Americans are paying any attention yet to the election. On the other hand, the recent Pew Research Center poll I discussed shows that most Americans rate a D grade on their knowledge of the political parties. Most do not even know that the Republicans are less eager to spend money than are the Democrats.
It seems that it is very difficult to persuade half of Americans not to vote for the Democrat Socialist Party. Even disasters such as ObamaCare and a jobless non-recovery in a never-ending recession are not always sufficient to nudge Americans to rationality.
Post a Comment