GOING OUT ON A LIMB

ADDING MY PREDICTION TO THE LIST OF OTHERS

Kenneth Hacker

November 3, 2008

I predict that Barack Obama will carry the popular vote tomorrow by something like 1-5% of the vote. On the Electoral College vote, I predict the following:

Obama takes somewhere around 278 electoral votes while McCain takes something like 260 votes. Obama may do better than this but not worse.

It is interesting to see Republican consultants make their predictions right now:

David Gergen: Obama takes 338 EC votes.

Ed Rollins: Obama gets 352 EC votes.

Alex Castellanos: Obama earns 318 EC votes.

Predictably, Democratic consultants like Paul Begala, James Carville, and Donna Brazile all predict over 300 EC votes for Obama.

Yes, this takes a lot of audacity because are dealing with tons of data and tons of subjectivity in interpreting the data patterns. We simply dont know the final result with anything approaching total certainty. But we do know that Obama is trending in the patterns we try to pin down to reasonable estimates.