2012 Election Predictions Update

So...it's almost October. I made some predictions about how the 2012 election would go. Let's review these really quickly:

1. Barack Obama will be re-elected to a second term as President.


2. John Boehner will be ousted as Speaker of the House.


3. Democrats will just barely hold on to the US Senate




Right now the polls give Obama a small but significant lead - significant enough so that, if we held the election today, Nate Silver's "Now-Cast" model says he would get about 52% of the vote and about 330 electoral college votes. If we reject Dick Morris's and others' whining about a conspiracy of poll bias for the nonsense that it is, we can safely say that Obama is, right now, winning this election. He and Romney have three debates coming up, and that gives Romney three chances to turn this around. To win those, he has to get over the fact that he's just not that personable compared to President Obama. There's also a possibility of some disaster that Romney can capitalize upon, but we've already seen how he handles that.





Obama's momentum in the polls has had coattails in Congress. The GOP was hoping to win enough seats to gain control of the Senate, but now it looks like a wash: if the election were held now, the Democrats would lose MT, ND and NE, but win IN and MA, with a seat in ME going to an independent who will caucus with the Democrats. The stretch goal of the Democrats now is to win back control of the House, which will require them to net 25 seats - an ambitious goal, but not an impossible one.





What might make this task easier for Democrats is what I think might happen this month:




4. The US unemployment rate will dip below 8%.




Given the stronger than expected economic numbers this last month, it could happen.

2012 Election Predictions Update

So...it's almost October. I made some predictions about how the 2012 election would go. Let's review these really quickly:

1. Barack Obama will be re-elected to a second term as President.


2. John Boehner will be ousted as Speaker of the House.


3. Democrats will just barely hold on to the US Senate




Right now the polls give Obama a small but significant lead - significant enough so that, if we held the election today, Nate Silver's "Now-Cast" model says he would get about 52% of the vote and about 330 electoral college votes. If we reject Dick Morris's and others' whining about a conspiracy of poll bias for the nonsense that it is, we can safely say that Obama is, right now, winning this election. He and Romney have three debates coming up, and that gives Romney three chances to turn this around. To win those, he has to get over the fact that he's just not that personable compared to President Obama. There's also a possibility of some disaster that Romney can capitalize upon, but we've already seen how he handles that.





Obama's momentum in the polls has had coattails in Congress. The GOP was hoping to win enough seats to gain control of the Senate, but now it looks like a wash: if the election were held now, the Democrats would lose MT, ND and NE, but win IN and MA, with a seat in ME going to an independent who will caucus with the Democrats. The stretch goal of the Democrats now is to win back control of the House, which will require them to net 25 seats - an ambitious goal, but not an impossible one.





What might make this task easier for Democrats is what I think might happen this month:




4. The US unemployment rate will dip below 8%.




Given the stronger than expected economic numbers this last month, it could happen.