Election Day Predictions - Presidential Race

My Prediction

It's finally Election Day! I hope that you've done your research and voted. If not, you have a little bit of time left before polls close.

I've been obsessively watching polls for the last year and I'm going to do my best attempt and making a prediction. Here we go...

I predict President Barack Obama will win re-election with a 303-235 victory in the Electoral College.

KEY: (Blue = Obama / Red = Romney)
Light Blue/Red = Candidate will win by less than 5 points.
Blue/Red = Candidate will win by 5-10 points.
Dark Blue/Red = Candidate will win by more than 10 points.

Other Predictions

Nate Silver of the New York Times blog FiveThirtyEight.com has Obama winning 313-225. Silver bases his results on math statistics so the number reflects an "in-between" count of Obama either winning 303 or 332 electoral votes depending on whether or not he carries the state of Florida. Silver has Florida as an exact tie, but gives Obama a very slim edge.

HuffingtonPost has Obama winning 277-191 and still has Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Virginia as toss-up states. Without toss-up states, they have Obama with a 303-235 lead.

RealClearPolitics has Obama winning with a 303-235 lead.

Wrap-Up and Other Thoughts

A consensus among most pundits appears to be that Obama will win, but they vary on which states he will carry. The states in question are Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire and Virgina--all of which Obama could lose and still win. The tally in the Electoral College, depending on which of these states Obama does carry, would be between 277-258 and 332-203.

 These are the top 10 states, in order, that I think will be the closest:
1. Florida
2. Virginia
3. Colorado
4. North Carolina
5. New Hampshire
6. Ohio
7. Iowa
8. Nevada
9. Arizona
10. Wisconsin

I've got my fingers crossed that the polls and my predictions turn out correctly!

Tomorrow is Election Day! I can hardly believe it. This campaign has been going on for over 18 months and it's finally coming to a halt.

National polls are slightly tilting towards Democratic incumbent President Barack Obama. He leads Republican challenger Mitt Romney by an average of 48.5 to 48.1 according to RealClearPolitics--just under half a percentage point.

Here is a map of how the Electoral College is predicted to look if the election results were counted now based off of the polls.

Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia are toss-ups.

Here is another look of how the Electoral College is predicted to look if the election results were counted now based off of the polls--without any toss-up states.

If this polling is accurate, Obama is re-elected with an Electoral College victory of 303-235. This is unchanged from last week.

The most notable change from last week is that Obama regained the lead nationally and firmed up his lead slightly in the swing states. Wisconsin was shown as a toss-up last week, but isn't this week due to Obama's slight uptick in polling. Ohio is on the cusp of no longer being a toss-up because Obama's lead there has also gone up. North Carolina is also almost no longer a toss-up given Romney's lead there.

Last week I predicted Colorado, New Hampshire and Virginia to be the closest three states. Obama seems to have a pretty firm grasp on New Hampshire at this point though. Florida has re-emerged as one of the top three closest states. I had personally written off Florida as a safe bet for Romney long ago, but it is within striking distance for Obama. Early voting numbers in Florida look optimistic as well. If Obama were to win Florida, Romney's chances of getting to 270 electoral votes is abysmal.

At this point, it is in the hand of the voters. It remains to be seen who actually turns out tomorrow and whether or not polling is accurate. For what it's worth, RealClearPolitics, which has a pretty solid conservative slant in their editorial and website content also has the race ending up as 303-235 in favor of Obama. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com (who conservatives and Republicans have blasted in the last few weeks for his predictions) also has the race at 303-235 in favor of Obama.

If there is time tomorrow I plan to go through a few of the most likely scenarios and have my personal final Electoral College prediction.