Posted on 02/16/2012 5:38:08 PM PST by blam
Obama Poised To Win 2012 Election With 303 Electoral Votes: The Signal Forecast
By David Rothschild & Chris Wilson
The Signal
Feburary 16, 2012
With fewer than nine months to go before Election Day, The Signal predicts that Barack Obama will win the presidential contest with 303 electoral votes to the Republican nominee's 235.
How do we know? We don't, of course. Campaigns and candidates evolve, and elections are dynamic events with more variables than can reasonably be distilled in an equation. But the data--based on a prediction engine created by Yahoo! scientists--suggest a second term is likely for the current president. This model does not use polls or prediction markets to directly gauge what voters are thinking. Instead, it forecasts the results of the Electoral College based on past elections, economic indicators, measures of state ideology, presidential approval ratings, incumbency, and a few other politically agnostic factors.
We'll dip into what the model says in a moment, but first a note about models in general: there are a lot of them, from complex equations generated by nerdy academics (like the team at The Signal) to funny coincidences like the Redskins Rule, which holds that the incumbent party keeps the White House if Washington's football team wins its last home game. (This is true in 17 of the last 18 elections!) Every year, some of these models are right and some are wrong, and the difference is often just luck. As a result, models get a bad rap as being very good at predicting the past and lousy at predicting the future.
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The following chart shows our predictions for each state in the general election, based on this model
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(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I’ll challenge the WA vote - Gregoire had to cheat to win re-election...
and the IL vote - isn’t Kirk from IL? If he is, that puts IL in the “maybe” column.
I’m not an analyst but throw this out for discussion...
We have FL, NC, and MO
IA is a tough sell because between 2004-2012, the GOP voters are leaving for jobs elsewhere. There’s not as many votes in the West or around the Central part to offset the East. In terms of our GOP candidates, Santorum is probably the strongest in that state, it’s just a matter of whether there are enough voters or not.
NC is an easy pick up for the GOP. McCain ran several points behind Bush in traditional conservative areas as well as the suburbs and he still lost by only 17,000. All the GOP nominee has to do is improve on the 08 numbers in the reliable red areas OR run better in the suburbs. If they do both, NC is a 5%+ win. Plus it doesn’t hurt that Bev Perdue has screwed the NC Dem Party there. If it wasn’t for the DNC in Charlotte, they would be ceding NC without much play.
MO is still GOP. There’s still enough voters to offset the liberal areas in KC/STL/Boone. Senate race also helps.
As you can tell from the model they have, OH and VA are by no means safe for Obama. They’re going off all the swing voters from Loudon County and the outer Nova burbs won’t be near as strong this time. Not a VA that had the GOP sweep in 2010. Obama’s in big trouble here.
OH is always a toss-up. I have no idea.
FL is interesting. One of the few areas McCain actually improved on quite significantly over Bush was in the Panhandle. Obama actually only ran about 1% better than Kerry in the blue areas. Obama won FL by almost breaking even in Jacksonville, and performing strongly along the I-4 corridor and evening things in SW FL. Interestingly, these are the areas Romney won pretty handedly in the FL primary. Easiest assumption is that everyone expects a Rubio or West to be on the ticket and the fact the GOP convention is in Tampa. FL leans slight GOP and probably will continue to do so right up to Election day.
Someone just mentioned flipping those two states makes it 266-272. That’s correct and what most people see. It’s finding that last state that’s difficult. The Romney people want to target NH. The Santorum people want to target the Midwest (PA, MI, WI, IA, and CO). Not exactly sure what state the Gingrich people are looking at. That’s the challenge for 2012, finding the last state.
Which is why Rubio is considered the heavy favorite for VP. He plays in FL and the SW. Santorum/Rubio would be pretty formidable, putting all the battlegrounds in play with Union and Hispanic voters except maybe NH.
In either case, it will be close (unless our guy starts winning all the battlegrounds). Because I’ve looked at the demographics and know where the voters are, I cringe when I here people on here say “so and so can’t win” or “Obama will win in a landslide”.
Being in NJ here, I hope you are right. It is uplifting hearing that some traditional democrat-voting states aren't going to drink the Kool-Aide this year. We simply can't afford another four years of Obamanomics.
That was almost 30 uears ago. The democrats have caused a lot of damage since then. Keep the hope up...
True, but it is also true that you can only fool some of the people some of the time...
The longer the media continues it’s charade, and the more shamelessly they present a skewed version of reality that is favorable to the libs, the more they stretch their credibility. They could slowly heat the frog in the pot for decades, but in order to prop up Obama they are having to turn the heat up dangerously close to the boiling point.
Even assuming their information is pretty accurate, the Republicans would only need to win the 3 states where Obama's margin is narrowest--Virginia, Ohio, and New Hampshire--to get to 270 electoral votes and win the election.
They made up for it by voting against him for Senator later.
Obama may only win a ride involving some tar and feathers IMO.
Obama loses VA & OH giving GOP 266 EV. Then we need 4 more votes NV would do it but I think we’ll get WI and maybe PA too if Santorum is the nominee.
Someone (H.L.Mencken, I think) once said “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public”.
They’re giving both PA and OH to zerobummer, and by RCH margins.
Great analysis. How about Governor Martinez from New Mexico? Would she help with the Southwest and Hispanics? Love the idea of West though. I amazed at the strength of our bench. Rubio and The Virginia Governor are extremely impressive front tier candidates with Haley and Walker as good VP choices-if we survive another 4 years of Obama . I think gas prices will be his undoing.
What did Obama do with the gasoline price problem? How about his problem with faith based organizations?
This list insists Obama wins New Hampshire? New Hampshire saw the biggest state level turn around in anybody’s memory - GOP picked up about 300 seats.
When you see lines like that the whole chart becomes suspect.
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