Election Day is here at last. Below you’ll find a guide to
watching the results come in tonight, with my predictions and notes
on what it means when I get things wrong. Let’s get the easy calls
out of the way first:
Mitt Romney will easily win West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee,
South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas,
Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South
Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, Idaho, Alaska, and Indiana
(the last was won by Obama last cycle and several of the others
were in play — there is no chance that Romney will do as poorly as
John McCain did). President Obama will just as easily win Maine,
Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey,
Maryland, the District of Columbia, Illinois, New Mexico,
Washington, Oregon, California, and Hawaii. This gives each
candidate a floor of 191 electoral votes.
Democrats will easily hold Senate seats in California, Delaware,
Maryland, Hawaii, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New
York, Rhode Island, Washington, West Virginia, and, for most
purposes, Vermont (socialist incumbent Bernie Sanders is an
Independent but caucuses with Democrats). Republicans will easily
hold Senate seats in Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and
Wyoming.
Electoral vote calls are in bold, with O+x
indicating that Obama will add x to his total and
R+y indicating that Romney will add y to his
total. Senate calls are in italics. All times are Eastern (note
that some states span more than one time zone, and these are times
when the last polls close; don’t use these times as a guide for
when to vote, especially if you live in Florida outside the
panhandle).
7:00 pm — Polls close in Indiana. Public
opinion polling is difficult in Indiana due to strict regulations
targeted at telemarketers, so there’s been relatively little of it;
there’s some evidence that the race has moved against Richard
Mourdock since his defense of banning abortion in the case of rape,
but with so few polls it’s hardly a slam dunk. I’ll bet on the
underdog in this one: Mourdock wins (Rep. hold). If
I’m wrong: If Joe Donnelly wins, it will a triumph of a
narrative of Republican extremism triggered by Todd Akin’s much,
much more objectionable comments on the same topic. This narrative
has been unfair to Mourdock, but then politics is often an unfair
business.
Polls also close in Virginia. Jim Webb doesn’t seem to have
found the Senate to his liking, and is retiring after just one
term; polls show Democrat Tim Kaine slightly ahead of Republican
George Allen in the race to replace him. Kaine will likely win
(Dem. hold). The presidential race is a dead heat. I’ve
been hearing troubling things about the quality of the GOP ground
game in Virginia, so here begins a pessimistic theme: I’m guessing
that, after a long night of counting, Obama will win Virginia
(O+13). If I’m wrong: Romney’s hope of
victory is probably contingent on winning Virginia, so if he pulls
it out, a Romney victory remains in reach. And if Allen can beat
Kaine in the Senate race, it could be excellent news for Romney,
because it means we may be seeing a systemic pro-Democratic bias in
state-level polls.
Such a systemic bias isn’t all that implausible; the polls are
regularly turning out Democrat-heavy samples that raise questions
about whether there’s a skew in the way they’re treating party
identification. I’m less inclined than some observers to ignore the
polling averages on this basis — party ID ratios that deviate from
the norm are a good reason to ignore individual polls, but in this
case almost all the polls are pointing in one direction. it’s
certainly not impossible for pollsters to all be wrong at once, and
there are colorable hypotheses as to why that might be happening in
this cycle. For an extensive discussion of this,
see this post by Ted Frank.
7:30 pm — Polls close in North Carolina, which
Obama carried in 2008; a couple of pollsters show it close, but
more of them show it as a relatively easy win for Romney, which it
almost certainly is (R+15).
Polls also close in Ohio. In the Senate race, incumbent Democrat
Sherrod Brown leads challenger Josh Mandel in every poll, sometimes
quite comfortably, so expect him to win (Dem. hold). The
presidential race is closer, but the latest polls all show a late
break toward Obama. It’ll be tight, but I expect the president to
win (O+18). If I’m wrong: The Senate race
in Ohio, as in Virginia, may give evidence for or against the
theory that the polls are understating Republican strength. If
Brown isn’t beating Mandel comfortably, it’s good news for Romney.
It’s even better news for Romney, of course, if he wins the state
— though if Romney pulls it out in Virginia, he has paths to
victory both going through Ohio and also going around it (more on
that below).
8:00 pm — Polls close in DC and in sixteen
states. Among them:
Maine. Moderate Republican Senator Olympia Snowe is retiring,
the Independent former governor Angus King is a lock to replace
her, and King will almost certainly caucus with the Democrats; put
an asterisk on it if you like, but essentially that’s a Dem.
gain.
Connecticut. Joe Lieberman is retiring, and while a month ago it
looked like Republican Linda McMahon had a shot at replacing him,
the polls are now breaking strongly toward Democrat Chris Murphy
(Dem. hold).
Massachusetts. Elizabeth Warren looks poised to unseat Scott
Brown (Dem. gain). If I’m wrong: It’ll be a huge
coup for the UMass/Boston Herald poll, the only one
showing Brown slightly ahead.
Missouri. Claire McCaskill looked like one of the most
vulnerable Democrats in the Senate — until Todd Akin mused about
“legitimate rape,” and then ignored Republicans begging him to step
aside. Akin is a legitimate disaster, and the electorate has ways
of shutting that down (Dem. hold). If I’m wrong:
Large numbers of anti-McCaskill voters were embarrassed to admit to
pollsters that they’d vote for Akin (actually quite possible).
Pennsylvania. For a while it looked like Republican Tom Smith
was gaining enough to make this close, but now incumbent Democrat
Bob Casey looks like he’ll win easily (Dem. hold). In the
presidential race, Romney has made a push to expand the playing
field into Pennsylvania and the Obama campaign has felt compelled
to defend it, but the same thing has happened in previous cycles
and the state always seems to stay just outside Republicans’ reach.
I’d bet on that happening again (O+20). If I’m
wrong: If Romney takes Pennsylvania, he’s probably going to
win (and I was probably wrong about some of the pessimistic calls
above). If Casey isn’t ahead as comfortably as expected, it could
be another indicator of pro-Democratic sampling errors in the
polls.
Florida. In the Senate race, Republican Connie Mack was briefly
ahead of incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson in the summer, but Nelson
retook the lead in mid-August and has held it since; he will likely
be reelected (Dem. hold). In the presidential race, Romney
has led in public polling averages for the past month; some
Republicans looking at internal polls sound surprisingly nervous
behind the scenes, but I suspect Florida will stay red even if it’s
a closer shave than some of us were expecting
(R+29). If I’m wrong: If Obama has
Florida, he’s winning by a fairly comfortable margin.
About those internal polls, by the way: Because campaigns (and
party committees and outside groups) will spend more money on
polling than media outlets will — allowing pollsters to do things
like target a particular geographical balance in a sample — the
average internal poll is more accurate than the average public
poll. But the average internal poll usually isn’t the one we see.
Campaigns leak numbers that send the message they want to send, not
numbers that accurately reflect the aggregate of the data they have
access to, so internal polling released to the public is
significantly less accurate than public polling. Yesterday Toby
Harnden of the Daily Mail got
an exclusive look at some internal polls that look very
favorable to Romney — but there’s a very good chance that those
numbers are outliers. I haven’t been shown any internal polls, but
I have had informal conversations with people who have access to
them; paradoxically, this is probably more informative than seeing
the actual numbers (unless you’re seeing them every day). Those
conversations influence some of my predictions.
New Hampshire. This one’s very, very close, but Obama has a
slight lead in public polls, and GOP insiders with access to
internal polling are pessimistic, so I’m calling it for Obama
(O+4). If I’m wrong: New Hampshire can
swing the election one way or another if, for example, Romney wins
Virginia and Ohio but loses the states west of Lake Michigan that
Obama won in 2008. That doesn’t align with my predictions, but it’s
not a crazy scenario, either.
9:00 pm — Polls close in thirteen states.
Among them are Arizona, where retiring Republican Senator Jon Kyl
looks set to be replaced by Jeff Flake (Rep. hold), and
Nebraska, where retiring moderate Democratic Senator Ben Nelson
looks set to be replaced by Republican Deb Fischer (Rep.
gain).
Polls also close in Michigan and Minnesota. The presidential
race has at times looked close in these states, but not close
enough to flip them; both will stay blue (O+16,
O+10) Minnesota has really only been part of the
race because its media markets overlap with parts of Wisconsin. And
Wisconsin really is in play.
In fact, Republicans who’ve seen internal polling actually seem
to feel better about Wisconsin than they do about Ohio, which isn’t
what you’d guess from the public polls showing Ohio as the tighter
race. I think Obama will probably hang on in the Badger State
(O+10), but it isn’t certain. Tammy Baldwin
beating Tommy Thompson in the Senate race is probably a somewhat
safer bet (Dem. hold). If I’m wrong: As mentioned
above, if Romney can win Virginia, he has a path to victory that
goes through Ohio, and one that goes around Ohio; the latter path
requires winning Wisconsin. As you might have heard once or twice
or eighty times this year, no Republican has ever won the
presidency without Ohio, but it wouldn’t be shocking if Romney were
the first to manage it. Romney winning Wisconsin’s electoral votes
could come in tandem with a Thompson upset in the Senate race, so
watch the returns in both races.
Colorado is a coin flip. I say it comes up Romney
(R+9). If I’m wrong: The path to victory
for Romney that includes Virginia and Wisconsin but not Ohio does
not work without Colorado.
10:00 pm — Polls close in Utah (which we’ve
already covered), Montana, Nevada, and Iowa.
In Montana, Republican Danny Rehberg has already been elected
statewide — he’s the at-large Representative — which makes him a
formidable challenger to incumbent Senator Jon Tester. I think
Rehberg wins (Rep. gain). In Nevada, Republican Dean
Heller probably wins the Senate race (Rep. hold), but the
Silver State stays blue at the presidential level; even the rosy
internals leaked to the Daily Mail concede that Obama wins
Nevada (O+6).
In Iowa, Obama underperformed his polls in 2008; the
RealClearPolitics average had him up by 15.3, but he only won by
9.5. The RCP average currently shows Obama up 2.4. I think Romney
pulls it off (R+6). If I’m wrong: As with
Colorado, the scenario where Romney wins without Ohio does not work
without Iowa.
11:00 pm — Polls close in North Dakota, where
Republican Rick Berg looks poised to replace retiring Democratic
Senator Kent Conrad (Rep. gain).
In the Senate, that comes out to a net gain of one seat for
Republicans, yielding a 52-seat Democratic majority (counting
Democratic-caucusing independents). In the presidential race, it
comes out to 288 electoral votes for Obama and 250 electoral votes
for Romney.
One last thing: It’s very likely that Romney narrowly wins the
popular vote, especially if I’ve got a state or two wrong in the
electoral vote forecast.
