@MittRomney now officially at 47% of the popular vote

Dave Wasserman brings us the news:

And with that, the moment many have been waiting for has arrived. @MittRomney drops to 47.49% of the popular vote: https://t.co/jCy2jAEZ

Which, of course, when rounded to the nearest integer in the conventional way .. is 47%.

Pat yourselves on the back, Obama voters. You built this.

2012 Predictions Update

So, now that the election results are in for all but a smattering of races, let's see how I did on my election predictions for this year.

1. Barack Obama will be re-elected to a second term as President. This of course happened, and it happened for pretty much the reasons I stated. The Republican brand was in shambles by election day, especially on the heels of nutcases like Akin and Mourdock coming out of the closet on their true feelings about reproductive rights. This, combined with Obama's approval ratings going back above 50% in late October, pretty much sealed the deal. What's really interesting, though, is just how in denial the Republican faithful were on election day. They had gone so far as to convince themselves that all the scientific polls were wrong. And when they turned out to be right, they were stunned.


2. John Boehner will be ousted as Speaker of the House. In fact, Boehner managed to come out of the election stronger than before. The Republicans lost seats - a lot of seats - but most of the seats they lost belonged to Tea Party caucus members. Having fought off a challenge from outside, and with his main opponents inside his own caucus weakened, Boehner now has all the cards he needs to be a truly effective Speaker of the House.


3. Democrats will just barely hold on to the US Senate. In fact, the Democrats did better than I imagined this year. They got the pickup in Massachusetts (which I expected). Additionally, they managed a pickup in Maine (which a few people predicted, on the assumption that Olympia Snowe might retire), and another in Indiana (which nobody saw coming). Meanwhile, the Republicans missed a great pickup opportunity in Missouri and another one in Montana, mostly because their candidates were too anti-abortion for the electorate's taste.

Meanwhile, in Pat Robertson Land

Wherein Pat Robertson admits that he misheard from God about the results of the election.

It remains to be seen whether he thinks through the implications of this. I'm not holding my breath.