Election 2008 Final Prediction

Final Zogby poll shows McCain losing Florida by a whisker and McCain trailing by 11 points. Accordingly, I am amending my prediction to a likely Obama win in Florida leaving 200 electoral votes for McCain and 338 for Obama although there is certainly still a chance of a McCain win there. What this poll shows is that contrary to popular wisdom the late breaking voters are going overwhelmingly for Obama as McCain's numbers have remained relatively static over the last few days while Obama's have been steadily rising. Also, given the fact that McCain is tied with Obama in Missouri and North Carolina, he is at serious risk of losing those two states as well given the fact that the few remaining undecideds are breaking for Obama which would put him down as low as 174 electoral votes and give Obama a 364 electoral vote tally which is about the same margin of victory as Bill Clinton over GHW Bush in 1992. Given, Zogby's double digit lead for Obama, I believe a McCain loss of both states is at least 50% and perhaps even higher than that. Based on this poll, we are looking at a 54-43% Obama victory today in the popular election which would make a McCain tally of 200 electoral votes all the more impressive. My gut feeling is either Zogby's battleground poll is wrong or his popular vote margin is wrong. Since I am an optimist I choose to believe that his popular vote margin is wrong. For example, in 1992, Clinton won by only 5.3% and yet amassed an electoral vote tally more than 200 electoral votes more than President GHW Bush. In 1996 which has been the election I have been comparing this one to all along, Clinton defeated Bob Dole by 8.5 points and Dole ended up with only 159 electoral votes. My point here is that if the Zogby state by state polls are correct, we should be looking at about a five point margin of victory for Obama not an 11 point margin speaking from a historical perspective. I have noted this disparity in previous Zogby polls and I have not seen him convincingly demonstrate the disparity. So I guess I am still holding out for McCain limiting Obama's margin of victory assuming Zogby's electoral vote estimates are correct. But other polls appear to be bearing out the same result as Zogby. For example, yahoo news is showing McCain winning the same states as Zogby.

http://news.yahoo.com/election/2008/dashboard

The only difference is that they are showing massively Republican Idaho as no data available but of course Idaho is a definite win for McCain so really they are showing the exact same thing as Zogby a 338-200 electoral vote win by Obama. They apparently use the same data as Realclearpolitics.com which has the same margin and the same popular vote margin of 7.8% for Obama. I am going to modify the Realclearpolitics polling average numbers and predict a 53-45% victory margin for Obama and up to 200 electoral votes for McCain. How McCain could lose by 8 points and still win almost half the states (22-24 total) is beyond me. Again, a pretty impressive electoral vote tally for McCain all things considered. Clearly this demonstrates a growing divide in this country between red and blue states.

May God bless our Republican candidates for Congress and bless them with close victories tonight so we can keep the margins close enough to take back at least one house of Congress in 2010!