Election '08

Well as it turned out it appears that our group prediction was quite accurate. The numbers I will be referencing come from MSNBC's website here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23887017?GT1=43001 . They have some nice interactive maps by county that are interesting. The total number of votes cast for the two major candidates is given at 63.5 million for Obama and 56.1 for McCain. This is a bit lower than we had anticipated, and while the numbers are not yet final it is probably unlikely that there will be 10 million more votes added to that total as we had predicted (68.5M to 59.8M). Nonetheless, our predicted split is about the same as the actual at just over 53% of the two-party vote for Obama. North Carolina, which we had going very narrowly to Obama, is still listed at 50/50 as of this writing. We had predicted Indiana to go 51/49 to McCain, but Obama took that state too - the only state we forecast incorrectly (with the understanding that NC could be added to that very short list). In terms of percentages we were generally with a margin of +/- 3%, which I was happy with and I imagine was relatively normal for other groups as well. Outside of the context of the group project the election was very much in line with what I expected and hoped for (if I may editorialize), although I did think that at least one of Florida, Ohio, or Pennsylvania would ultimately break for McCain and lengthen at least the on-air speculation time for political commentators, if not the suspense about the outcome of the election itself.

Moving on to the congressional elections, the Democrats now have 259 seats in the House of Representatives, expanding their current majority by about 20 seats (depending on if that number holds up). Our group had projected 258 seats for the Democrats in the next Congress, which also turned out to be fairly accurate. As for the Senate, again we accurately forecast the winner in almost all cases and generally within a reasonable margin in terms of percentage. The Georgia, Minnesota, and Oregon contests are apparently still too close to call - we had Minnesota and Oregon going to the Democratic candidate. In any case it appears the Democrats will not enjoy the filibuster-proof 60 seats they hoped for - but they got close.

So did all this amount to an electoral mandate for Obama and the Democratic Party? I think it absolutely does. Some will say it is not, perhaps referencing that it was not a historically massive win in terms of either the popular vote or electoral votes, but the Obama victory combined with the substantial Democratic pickups in both the House and Senate delegations nonetheless constitutes a clear directive by the electorate. With respect to President-elect Obama specifically, I mentioned before that I expected McCain to somehow pull out a win in Florida, Ohio, or Pennsylvania. He lost them all. I think the idea of deriving an electoral mandate from this win comes with the fact that Obama won every state a Democrat was supposed to win, every state that is traditionally a toss-up or "battleground" in presidential elections, and then a few states that nobody would have expected him to. That said, in light of all the coverage and polling data that many of us have been looking at for the better part of a year now...purely in terms of numbers, nothing that happened yesterday should have come as much of a shock. The data said that Obama had about a 6-point lead nationally, it said he was ahead in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and it said that he and McCain were running very closely in a handful of traditionally red states. All of that turned out to be very true.