Election Night and Prediction Review

I'm spent. Who new that political spectating and blogging was this exhausting. I needed a day to recover and digest everything.

Part of me is proud and amazed that the United States has elected its first person of color as POTUS. Part of me is wondering if Barack Obama has had a moment like Robert Redford did in "The Candidate" at the end after he wins and realizes, Oh my gosh, now what do I do.

First, how did we do on predictions? Go back to our outcome prediction from Monday and you will see we did pretty well. Our electoral vote prediction was Obama 353, McCain 185. We got 49 states and D.C. correct, but missed Obama's 23,000 vote (out of 2.3 Million) win in Indiana. I am particularly proud of the way we called 2 of the toughest states:

The 2 toughest to decide were North Carolina and Missouri, and we split them. My NC outcome is also somewhat based on a high early voting turnout that was more favorable to Obama and rainy weather expected across the state on Election Day. Missouri would lose its bellweather status if it goes for McCain.

Democrats had a huge advantage in early voting turnout and the rain throughout the state on Election Day may just have had enough impact on turnout to keep Obama in the lead. Assuming current vote totals hold, this is the first time in history a Democrat won the election without taking Missouri, which had gone to the winning candidate in 11 straight presidential elections.

Our popular vote projection was Obama 52, McCain 47. It looks like it will wind up being about 52.4% to 46.4%, so again, very close.

Our vote total projection was for 135 Million which would be 65% of age eligible voters. It appears that will wind up being a bit overly optimistic. Although the exact total won't be known for several weeks, there are about 122 Million votes counted so far and probably a few million more absentee and early votes yet to be counted. It will be interesting to do a state by state comparison because some states and nice increases in turnout.

In my Election Day Hour by Hour predictions, we were also pretty close. In fact, we ended with:

At some point, Missouri is eventually declared for McCain making the final total Obama 353, McCain 185

Correctly predicting Missouri would be the last state called and that it would go to McCain. As of 3:30PM Eastern time on Thursday, it is still not officially McCain's, although he leads by almost 6,000 votes.

I thought that Obama would be declared the winner at 10:30PM after Ohio and North Carolina were called. North Carolina wasn't called until today and so it was the block of 4 Democratic states closing at 11PM Eastern time (California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii) that put Obama over the top. In fact, once all the networks had Obama over 200 Electoral votes an hour or so earlier, the knowledge that this foursome with 77 electoral votes was rock solid for Obama meant his ascent past 270 was certain.

Some states that I was surprised were called so early - Pennsylvania, North Dakota. Both were called shortly after polls were closed. I thought North Dakota would be close enough to wait until some votes were tallied. With the significance of Pennsylvania being the only way McCain could get to 270, I would have guessed the networks would have waited a bit, just to make sure (No Florida, No Way), but I guess they had enough data to be confident and didn't want to be outscooped by the other networks.

Other states like Texas and Nebraska, both won my McCain by larger margins than the outcomes in Pennsylvania and North Dakota were listed as too early to call for a lot longer than necessary.

Finally, in our last Soccer Dad Lawn Sign Poll we had Obama 43, McCain 27 raw score, which translates to Obama 61.4%, McCain 38.6%. The actual voting in our county, Delware County, PA was Obama 60.1%, McCain 38.9%. Chalk one up for The Soccer Dads!