Monday, November 03, 2008

Calling the election

As my regular readers (all three of them) have probably noticed, I have steadfastly refrained from posting about the presidential election this year. It has at times been difficult for me to restrain myself. I will have something to say about the election results (local as well as national) later this week.

However, the campaign is finally coming to a close, and I thought I'd test my prowess as a political pundit by predicting tomorrow's results. So here goes:

Barack Obama will be elected the 44th President of the United States by winning 311 electoral votes to John McCain's 227.

In the end, I think McCain will wind up with narrow victories in several states currently rated as "toss-ups:" Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Montana and North Carolina. But it won't be enough for him to win, as Obama will win every state that Kerry won in 2004, as well as Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia. Obama's final margin of victory in those last two states, along with Pennsylvania, will probably end up being very narrow and will keep the race in doubt until the wee hours Wednesday morning; that will certainly make the networks happy. But the end result will be an Obama victory.

Anything could happen tomorrow, of course. McCain could pull this thing out (and if he does, I certainly won't be the only person proven wrong), for example, by pulling off a surprise in Pennsylvania. But right now I think the odds of that happening are rather low.

At least we can all take heart in the fact that, come tomorrow night, this interminable campaign will, finally and mercifully, be over.

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