2012: The projection
One political-scientist-to-be's projection.
For the record -- and, as my lovely fiancee reminded me, a blog with no readers is more like a journal, so this is mostly just for the record -- I wanted to put my projection down in virtual ink. After the conventions I told the students in my section that Obama was on track to win 50.5% of the vote - and since that time Romney actually over-performed in his campaign - but the economy turned out better than I thought - which brings us back to about the same point. (50.3% of the popular vote for the President, and 290 EVs)
To reiterate, I think Romney had a very good campaign. But so did John Kerry in 2004, and the election never escaped its destiny as the "bizarro 2004" all the way until a last minute diversion (Osama bin Laden video meet Hurricane Sandy) that didn't have a clear effect, but did slow the challenger's rise at a crucial time.
Finally, tonight there is much Romney optimism but any argument for Romney necessitates systematic error in the state polls, and in the modern age of advanced polling techniques, with a much greater number of polls to be aggregated, I have a hard time believing this will be the case. There was some error in those Republican primary polls, but there was a lot of noise in that race especially from election to election with the hectic campaign schedules. See you Wednesday for some analysis.
