Predict the popular vote for the US election

[Operational]

Well the election is almost upon us, time to get your predictions in. I've made the poll in terms of popular vote margins to avoid any complications due to 3rd parties.

Latest Polls

Popular vote margin in the last 7 elections:
+09.70 Reagan over Carter
+18.20 Reagan over Mondale
+07.80 Bush over Dukakis
+05.30 Clinton over Bush
+08.53 Clinton over Dole
-00.50 Bush over Gore
+02.40 Bush over Kerry

 

[VirusType2]

+1-4% Obama

I just have a feeling it will be very close.

 

[Laivasse]

Obama wins by a modest margin. I said 4-8% but I don't think a smaller margin is unfeasible either. The polls might look one-sided at the moment but I smell shades of Labour in 1992. The Bradley effect, some US equivalent of the 'shy Tory effect' and turnout issues could tighten it.

I'd love to see a landslide but it just doesn't feel like conditions are right for it.

 

[Eejit]

The popular vote will be close but in terms of electoral college Obama will win by a big margin imo.

 

[Raziaar]

In the United States, a landslide victory is considered something of only a few points.

 

[Absinthe]

4-8% optimistically, although I expect smaller.

 

[No Limit]

+4-8% for Obama but more wouldn't shock me. This is assuming the election is not stolen, something I find hard to believe since they will still be voting on emachines.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

****in mccain, stupid rednecks and stupid women

 

[Ridge]

My dad hated Nixon growing up....he swore up and down that he would vote Carter come Election Day....in the end he ended up staying home and getting high...I imagine something similar will happen tomorrow for the Dems...

 

[Escaep]

<5% Obama.

My school had a mock election last Tuesday. McCain won the popular vote by only 2 votes (with nearly 1100 people voting) but Obama won our schools electoral vote.

 

[VictimOfScience]

I call for Obama by 4-8%, though I hope it is more. I am still worried though as you just cannot possibly overestimate the GOP cheating factor--its potentially is truly frightening.

 

[CptStern]

<5% Obama.

My school had a mock election last Tuesday. McCain won the popular vote by only 2 votes (with nearly 1100 people voting) but Obama won our schools electoral vote.

I cant see what McCain could possibly offer young voters ..I mean really, "the man" is a silver haired old white guy. Kids at that age are usually against "the man" as they see him as the root of all problems ..why would they want to elect someone who in no way shape or form appears to them specifically ..Obama looks like some uber cool guy in comparison ..I mean McCain is old fat and grumpy ..he's far more prone to statements like "get off my lawn" than obama is

 

[Omnomnick]

Polls suggest 7% or something Obama at the minute. I'm gona go with that.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

guess what? IT DOESN'T MATTER A GOD DAMN BIT WHAT THE POPULAR VOTE WILL TURNOUT.
We need it renamed + who will be the president based on a shitified voting system

 

[No Limit]

guess what? IT DOESN'T MATTER A GOD DAMN BIT WHAT THE POPULAR VOTE WILL TURNOUT.
We need it renamed + who will be the president based on a shitified voting system

The electoral college looks even worse for McCain. Only way he can win that is if he gets PA, where he is behind 10 points.

http://www.pollster.com/polls/pa/08-pa-pres-ge-mvo.php

Even if he pulls off a nearly impossible win in PA he will need to pick up one other blue state, McCain's campaign is betting that this will be New Hampshire where he is also 10 points behind and has been dropping in support for a while:

http://www.pollster.com/polls/nh/08-nh-pres-ge-mvo.php

Then once he picks up a blue state he will need to win in all 8 (I think there are 8, don't quote me) toss up states where Obama leads in each.

Not to mention the fact that something like 30% of the voting population has already voted, and in those that already voted Obama has a huge lead.

Not even a miracle could deliver this election to McCain, it would take blatant cheating for them to be able to pull this off. And they have plenty of ways to cheat. Everything from throwing away registrations, intimidating black and hispanic voters, and down right hacking of the voting machines.

 

[Absinthe]

My dad hated Nixon growing up....he swore up and down that he would vote Carter come Election Day....in the end he ended up staying home and getting high...I imagine something similar will happen tomorrow for the Dems...

Because turnout for the GOP has absolutely dwarfed the Democrats so far, amirite?

So is that 1-4% McCain or what? You didn't actually answer the question, just supplied some stupid snickering comment.

 

[Ridge]

Because turnout for the GOP has absolutely dwarfed the Democrats so far, amirite?

ACORN registered 1.2 million voters (all Democratic) in Ohio the past few months...turns out around 255,000 of those were actual human beings who could vote...

 

[No Limit]

ACORN registered 1.2 million voters (all Democratic) in Ohio the past few months...turns out around 255,000 of those were actual human beings who could vote...

And that has to do with what? Is Mickey Mouse or Tony Romo showing up in Ohio on election day to vote? Is it your position that this kind of registration fraud (not voter fraud) doesn't occur on the GOP side?

 

[Absinthe]

ACORN registered 1.2 million voters (all Democratic) in Ohio the past few months...turns out around 255,000 of those were actual human beings who could vote...

What does ACORN have to with people who have already voted early?

 

[Ridge]

It shows how many votes are fraudulent...reports are coming out everywhere that people arent able to vote because apparently theyve already sent in mail in ballots, despite the fact that they havent...fact is, the election IS being stolen, and its being done by the Democrats...

 

[No Limit]

It shows how many votes are fraudulent...reports are coming out everywhere that people arent able to vote because apparently theyve already sent in mail in ballots, despite the fact that they havent...fact is, the election IS being stolen, and its being done by the Democrats...

Please, by all means bless us with your sources (I haven't visted right wing blogs in a long while).

 

[Escaep]

I cant see what McCain could possibly offer young voters ..I mean really, "the man" is a silver haired old white guy. Kids at that age are usually against "the man" as they see him as the root of all problems ..why would they want to elect someone who in no way shape or form appears to them specifically ..Obama looks like some uber cool guy in comparison ..I mean McCain is old fat and grumpy ..he's far more prone to statements like "get off my lawn" than obama is

We have lot of rednecks. If you catch my drift. And lots of colored folk.

 

[CptStern]

so the rednecks support mccain and the "coloured people" vote obama? where do the white non rednecks stand?


and are the rednecks traditional rednecks? bare feet, rope for a belt or are they simply white folks who fear integration with black folk making us all mud coloured?

 

[Laivasse]

It shows how many votes are fraudulent...reports are coming out everywhere that people arent able to vote because apparently theyve already sent in mail in ballots, despite the fact that they havent...fact is, the election IS being stolen, and its being done by the Democrats...

I find it very hard to believe that registration fraud could ever be perpetrated in a widespread enough fashion to rob a significant number of people of their vote. Wouldn't you essentially need to effect some kind of identity theft for every person for whom that happened?

Stuff like this, on the other hand, is very worrying:

an electronic voting machine in Franklin County, Ohio (Columbus) added 3,893 votes for Bush. (It recorded 4,258 votes for Bush from 638 voters)

the internal audit capability of the Franklin County voting machines had been manually disabled by county election board programmers last year, making it almost impossible to tell if any nefarious changes have been made to the systems. SysTest also discovered that the election board had failed to adhere to routine machine testing standards and had tested only one machine in each precinct rather than all of the machines.

Cuyahoga County ... lost 812 voter-access cards that allow a voter to cast a ballot on machines; it also lost 313 keys to the memory-card compartments where votes are stored on machines and hired taxi drivers to drive to election precincts and pick up the memory cards that contained the votes).

Then in 2007, two election officials in Cuyahoga County were convicted of rigging a recount in the 2004 presidential election by cherry-picking ballots to recount that they knew would match the official count rather than randomly picking ballots.

Jennifer Brunner, Ohio's secretary of state and chief election official, reported that on November 6 when she was casting her ballot, she saw a gray bar and the words "candidate withdrawn" appear in the slot where Jay Perez's name should have been.
...
But Brunner's husband, who was voting on the machine next to her that day, says he saw no such message on his ballot. Instead, he saw Perez's name. Perez himself reported that his voting machine also displayed his name.

So why did some voters receive ballots that displayed Perez's name while others received ballots that indicated he'd withdrawn from the race? And who removed Perez's name from the latter ballots?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/politics/campaign/06ohio.html
http://www.writeslikeshetalks.com/2008/03/18/ohio-crime-bureau-seizes-franklin-county-boe-voting-machines/
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/the-mysterious.html

 

[Krynn72]

so the rednecks support mccain and the "coloured people" vote obama? where do the white non rednecks stand?

A month ago I would have said I stand with Obama, but hot diggity damn my sweet gal Louisiana sure is warming up on me!

 

[Saturos]

+1-4% Obama

I just have a feeling it will be very close.

^This

so the rednecks support mccain and the "coloured people" vote obama? where do the white non rednecks stand?


and are the rednecks traditional rednecks? bare feet, rope for a belt or are they simply white folks who fear integration with black folk making us all mud coloured?

The traditional tater sack wearing, shotgun toting, whiskey drinking, mountain living "redneck" is a dying breed. All the other rednecks out there non-redneck whites just call "white trash". lol

Or K-mart cowboys. lol

 

[Krynn72]

The Human resource guy at the place I work at has been arrested several times for shooting various things with shotguns, including, but not limited to: Fish, filled gas tanks, and squirrels.

 

[Escaep]

so the rednecks support mccain and the "coloured people" vote obama? where do the white non rednecks stand?


and are the rednecks traditional rednecks? bare feet, rope for a belt or are they simply white folks who fear integration with black folk making us all mud coloured?

You pretty much nailed it right on the head. It is split between the non-redneck whites, probably about dead even. Rednecks as in wear tight jeans, camo, big raised up trucks, chew tobacco, talk about hunting, go muddin, stuff like that.