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A Rambling Prediction of Sorts

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303-235.  Figure Obama’s PV around 50.5%.  I expect him to have slightly over a 2% win in the PV.  No clue nor care about his margin in MA.  Obama loses IN, NE-2, NC, and possibly / probably FL from 2008.

Democrats keep the Senate with 53 or 54.  We all know the House is out of the question, but I’d anticipate a fuzzily modest Democrat pick up, 5-10 seats.

I woke here to excellent numbers nationally, and specifically, movement towards Obama in FL (and a PPP poll showing a tie in NC).  However, yesterday’s (5 November in the US) FL numbers were from PPP, which has had a slight D lean all cycle.  The over night numbers in FL are from Gravis, Angus Reid, and IPSOS, the latter two having strong R leans.  Notable, those two suggest a swing towards Obama from +3% to +5% based on their own previous releases.  I know Silver models trend into his model, which is why he’s showing Obama as a very, very slight favorite in FL.  I’m going to discount that a bit, especially in light of the vote suppression efforts we’ve been hearing out of FL the past couple of days.

FL won’t be called for a while.  If it is called early in either direction, that’s a clear signal.  Plus, the recount procedure in OH is arduous.  If OH is within the “margin of litigation”, it could be a nightmare.  I loved reading that line in the linked NYT article while seated in the BBC Radio Devon studio this morning waiting to go on, and was able to use it.  Excellent line.

What if this is all wrong?  As most here read Wang and  Silver, we know that the polling, specifically the state level polling but latterly the national polling as well, has to be systematically and comprehensively biased in Obama’s favor.  There are reasons why this could be the case.  From the right, Ted Frank has a comprehensive, wishful thinking list of all the reasons the current polling data might be biased, and systematically so in one of the two possible directions, but to Frank’s credit, he’s looking at evidence, not relying on Morris-esque faith.

Regardless, something other than an Obama victory in this election would require a systematic polling error of significant magnitude.  Electoral Vote has around 900 state level polls in its database from this cycle last I checked a few days ago.  It would represent a large pile of error in one direction for this election to be incorrectly called at this point.

But it has happened before, UK 1992, when the polls underestimated the Conservative vote by a not middling 9%.

I catch the midnight (GMT) train to London tonight, as I’m flying to the west coast tomorrow to present a paper this weekend.  I’ll be looking at NH first — it’s a small state that will compile its numbers quickly.  That should be a strong signal as to how valid the overall polling numbers have been this year.

UPDATE: as I was writing this, Wang at Princeton reports that his modal estimation has Obama with 332.

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