Make your (presidential) predictions here

38 Replies

Just now I saw this request from Phillip:

Forgive the digression from the main point of this post, but hey Brad,
where’s a post where we all get to make our predictions for tomorrow?
After all, we’re like a great big dysfunctional family here on your
blog, me, bud, Randy, Lee, pm, David, slugger, Capital A, occasionally
Mayor Bob, etc. etc. Would love to see everybody go out on the limb at
this late hour and make their call. Popular and electoral.

So go for it.

I’m assuming y’all are mainly talking about predictions on the presidential race. I plan a separate post about local races.

My presidential prediction: Obama wins handily. Although it won’t be a blowout, it won’t be close the way the last two elections have been. McCain wins South Carolina, although not by the 20 percent that a recent poll predicted. Beyond that, I have no predictions, certainly none that I’d break down numerically. Obama will win both in the vote that counts (electoral) and the popularity contest. But I’m not good at predicting numbers.

At lunch today, Rick Noble wanted to bet a barbecue dinner that Obama would win S.C. Not that he thought he would, Rick just wanted to make a bet. That sound familiar? Yup, Phil Noble was proposing the exact same deal on our op-ed page the other day.

And here’s the weird part about that — Rick says they are NOT related.

38 thoughts on “Make your (presidential) predictions here”

  1. Lee Muller

    Obama will lose if the word gets out about his stated agenda, which Big Media hides from the voters:
    * confiscate 401-k and IRA plans
    * “bankrupt them” ( the coal industry )
    * “skyrocketing electric bills”
    * ban ammunition, handguns, semiautomatic rifles and shotguns
    * tax on homes larger than 2,400 sq feet
    * end tax deductions on second homes
    * 54% income tax on small businesses
    * income surtax of 0.7% to go to United Nations
    * continued programs of mortgages and houses for deadbeats who cannot possible pay the bills, subsidized by good taxpayers.
    * $32,500,000 and possibly $300,000,000 in illegal campaign financing from Muslim countries.
    This has become a referendum on Obama, and his stealing the election.

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  2. Norm Ivey

    I was thinking the same thing (as Phillip–not Lee).
    My prediction:
    Popular Vote 55-45 Obama
    Electoral Vote between 345-355 Obama

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  4. Doug Ross

    Obama wins popular vote 50.1 – 47.2
    Obama wins electoral vote: 344-194
    Obama wins NC and comes within 2 points in GA.
    Lindsey Graham only gets 54% of the vote…

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  5. p.m.

    I can’t predict what will happen, but I can tell you what I hope will occur.
    I sincerely hope Obama wins the popular vote thanks to outlandish margins in liberal swamps like California and New York, but loses the election thanks to margins of less a thousand votes in several states.
    I like the idea of America telling New York and California thanks, but no thanks.
    Most of all, I just want to hear the dimwit liberals who think America ought to be a pure democracy scream, louder than they screamed about Florida, louder than ever.
    I can almost hear the sweet music now.

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  7. Rich

    We need to amend the Constitution to provide for direct election of the president and apportion Senate seats on the basis of population. This would end the stranglehold on government currently held by conservative, rural America. Just 17% of the population in the rural South and West controls the Senate. The current practice of adding two electoral votes for each state in the Electoral College is an undemocratic abomination. The Founders of the republic feared that states would bully one another and seize their territory or rights without this layer of constitutional protection for their autonomy. This is simply no longer an issue.
    If we were to democratize the Senate by proportionally allocating seats according to population and if we were to move to direct election of the president, those parts of the country that are now underrepresented under the current system would now be more fully represented and presidential candidates would be able to campaign anywhere in the country.
    Of course, the religious right and the low-information voters who inhabit our rural and low-population states would lose their disproportionate influence and would either have to modernize their worldview or be relegated to permanent obscurity and irrelevance.
    This is NOT a conservative country as a whole. 73% of Americans, for instance, support a woman’s right to choose; they also disapprove of our foreign wars and our yahoo foreign policy. Their kids learn about evolution in the schools without raising a fuss, and they support stem-cell research, gay rights (though not gay marriage), and birth control for teenagers. The blue states are manifestly not under the influence of the religious bigots like John Hagee one can see on cable at almost any time.
    The US leans center-left, but our political system assures the continued existence of right-wing government, constant warfare around the world, and the obnoxious intrusion of religion into public policy and education.
    It’s time for a constitutional convention to democratize the system and truly inaugurate one-man, one-vote.

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  8. Rich

    My money’s on Obama, whom I support the way my family supported Kennedy in 1960. Yes, we can!
    Of course, I could be wrong. Our dysfunctional electoral system could theoretically yield an abomination such as Obama winning the electoral vote with millions of extra votes while John McCain wins the electoral college on the strength of electoral votes from the historically conservative parts of our country to the South and the West.

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  12. Randy E

    African-American students around the country walk into social studies class to see a new face at the end of the row of pictures of US presidents – a face that looks like them.
    Welcome to the “mountain top.”

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  15. Lee Muller

    ACORN director actually worked for the Ohio Sec of State.
    No wonder the Ohio Secretary of State didn’t want to challege the 200,000 fishy registrations by ACORN… the director of ACORN used to work on Sec Brunner’s campaign.
    ACORN director Karyn Gillette is identified on Jennifer Brunner’s 2006 campaign website as a consultant. A blog entry by Brunner’s husband Rick talks about that relationship, saying: “our candidate had gone earlier in the day to have some meetings and work out of Karyn Gillette’s office.” He also describes Gillette as “very helpful to the campaign.”
    According to campaign finance reports that were filed, Gillette was paid $21,250 by Brunner’s campaign. She has a longtime history of serving as a fundraising consultant to Ohio Democrats.

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  17. Phillip

    C’mon folks. Be brave. Let’s see some numbers.
    Popular vote 1.3% others; McCain 47.2%; Obama 51.5%
    Electoral: Obama 333, McCain 205. Among the close states, McCain pulls out Ohio and NC by a whisker (but Dole loses in a squeaker in NC), also Indiana and Missouri. But Obama wins PA, VA, and Florida and all 3 contested Western states (CO, NV, NM) and also in an upset, wins in Georgia. Obama gets at least 46% of the vote in SC.
    Sarah Palin becomes the George Allen of the 2012 race; that is, she is talked about as a leading candidate until she loses her 2010 re-election bid in Alaska.

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  18. Randy E

    National polls have Obama up by an average of about 8%. Allow for some tightening and the Wright ads the GOP is running nonstop now to have some effect and we get maybe 4% – 52 to 48.
    With all the toss up stats being W’s, I’ll give a fraction of those to Obama; NM, CO, VA for 279 to 259.
    I am happy to say my new state is blue but I’ll be in SC for the vote.

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  19. Ozzie

    Well, it’s good to know that 2008 was not the first time we’ve had campaign trash being thrown around:

    During the presidential campaign of 1928, a photograph began circulating in rural areas of the Southwest showing Alfred E. Smith shaking hands with a fellow politician on the roadway of a tunnel. The image depicted Smith as he was officially opening the Holland Tunnel, which had been built during his tenure as governor of New York.
    The people thousands of miles away who received copies of the picture were given a decidedly different explanation: Smith planned to extend the tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Vatican, so he could take secret orders from the pope. As just about any informed voter that year already knew, Smith was the first Roman Catholic ever to win a major party’s presidential nomination.

    I guess the major difference is that they didn’t have the Internet to distribute the trash to every American’s home.

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  20. p.m.

    “We need to amend the Constitution to provide for direct election of the president and apportion Senate seats on the basis of population.”
    Thanks, Rich. You fell into the trap.
    Now you get to live in the Hotel California. You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.
    A direct democracy would end the stranglehold held on the United States by the people who can actually read, write and identify the current president by name.
    The House of Representatives already represents the population directly. The point of having a Senate that doesn’t is to allow each state to maintain its identity.
    Personally, I don’t want anybody confusing South Carolina with New Jersey.
    But, if you’re fond of New Jersey, well, feel free to have at it.

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  21. Randy E

    Personally, I don’t want anybody confusing South Carolina with New Jersey.
    Don’t worry, one has a confederate flag flying in front of the capitol and has a confederate day and the other doesn’t. Simply look for the ubiquitous provincialism.

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  23. Rich

    As a public high-school social studies teacher, I make copious use of the New York Times online. What I will NEVER do is ever use the State newspaper in my classroom. A good editorial department knows how to manage and sustain an intelligent conversation with its readers. This newspaper, however entertaining it may be for local news and sports, is forever condemned to mediocrity and irrelevance by its management. You tend to FOLLOW public opinion rather than lead it, as a great newspaper should.

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  24. Lee Muller

    You might want to save both those fish wrappers, because their arrogant disdain for readers who are much more up to speed on history and current events than the editors, spells the end for print media, in the very near future.
    The Free Times is almost as thick as The State.
    The NY Times is a joke of a newspaper.

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  25. p.m.

    Wow, Rich, I hadn’t understood before that you know more than anyone who posts here about absolutely everything.
    I mean, heck, you teach high-school social studies, so naturally you know more about the newspaper business than a poor stiff like Brad, even if he has been journalizing for more than 30 years and managed to work his way up to vice president.
    I look forward to seeing your opinion-leading newspaper when you open it. I suggest you call it “Der Fuhrer” and see if you can make purchasing it and advertising in it mandatory.
    Then, after you’ve grown a chain of newspapers by demanding people read them and advertise in them, when your publications are running the governments of the world’s major powers by proxy and those of Third World, too, you can write a biography and call it “Rosebud.”
    Or “Camelot.”
    Or “Mein Kampf.”

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  26. p.m.

    Feel free to vote in New Jersey if you want to, Randy. I bet you could get in 20 or 30 ballots up there before the Jersey accent shuts down your brain.
    I’m thinking they don’t have a Confederate Day in that state because it wasn’t part of the Confederacy, and South Carolina has a Confederate Day because it was, well, the first state to secede.
    I’m not so crazy about the Confederate flag at the State House myself, Randy, to tell you the truth. But I don’t think it really means much, apart from folks in South Carolina not liking people from elsewhere telling us what to do.
    I myself don’t think we need to be a rubber stamp of anywhere to the Nth degree ideologically or legally. I don’t think the United States government should be totalitarian.
    But I’ve got a feeling we’re gonna be headed that way the next few years, all in the name of change.

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  28. Robert Adams

    Obama wins the popular vote by 1-2%, but McCain wins the electoral college 285-253. A rock-solid GOP South and wins in the all of the coal-producing states along with another surprise win for McCain in New Hampshire will carry the day for the GOP ticket.

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  33. bud

    Just to make sure my prediction gets counted, I copied it from the other post. I wouldn’t want to be disenfranchised because I “voted” in the wrong “precinct”.
    Ok Phillip I’ll give you a prediction. I sense a tightening of the race at this late stage and it will be closer than expected.
    Popular Vote: Obama 52 – McCain – 47 (1% 3rd party)
    Senate: Dems pick up 7 seats
    House: Dems pick up 20 seats
    And finally, the electoral college:
    Obama wins all the Kerry States
    Plus these: CO – 9
    NM – 5
    NV – 5
    VA – 13
    McCain will win FL,OH,NC,MO,IN and any other tossups I’m missing.
    Final Tally: Obama – 284 McCain – 254
    If I miss on Virginia this will be a very long night waiting for those 3 western states to come in. Hopefully I’ll be wrong about OH and FL.

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  34. Norm Ivey

    An addendum to my prediction:
    Dems end up with 56 Senate seats (plus Lieberman and that other I guy) for 58 total.
    I’d be WAGging on a House pickup, so I’ll pass.

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  35. Rich

    After waiting 2 and half hours to vote, I am cautiously optimistic that Obama will be our next president and that the Republican party will get the spanking it deserves all over the country.
    P.M.: your ad-hominem argument shows clearly that you are an idiot–in the Greek sense of the word.

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  36. Lee Muller

    Obama isn’t president until he can produce prove that he is a U.S. citizen, and stays out of jail for soliciting illegal contributions from Saudi Arabia and Palestine.

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  37. Bart

    I don’t want to predict each individual state so here goes.
    Obama by a landslide in the electoral vote and a 4 to 6% margin in the popular vote.
    A pickup of at least 10 to 15 senate seats by Democrats and at least 15 to 20 house seats.
    Voters want a change and the only change they see is by voting for Obama. I saw the same reaction when Nixon was forced to resign amid a scandal and voter rebellion against the leadership of the country.
    A reminder of another election in 1996 when Clinton blew the doors off the Republican Party when he left Bob Dole tied to a fence post.
    No matter who should shoulder the blame for the economic quagmire we find ourselves in, the ultimate blame will rest with the party occupying the White House. Someone must pay and Bush, tag, you’re it.
    On a note of sadness, I want to express my condolences to Barack Obama and his family for the loss of his grandmother. I think it is an ironic happenstance that she would not be here to see one of the most significant events in recent history with the election of an African American to the highest office in the world.
    I sincerely hope Obama will govern from the middle and remember that there was a very large percentage of Americans who voted for McCain and there positions deserve recognition and consideration as well. Americans are more than willing to accept change when it is prudent and necessary but have some difficulty with a sudden, radical, overnight paradigm shift that is anticipated by a large number of Americans, on both the left and right.
    And last but not least, this election will be the legacy of the media, both broadcast and print. The liberal leaning members of the media have worked diligently for years to bring their message front and center, sacrificing journalistic integrity if it ever existed in the first place. The last eight years have been depicted as the worst in American history, unprecedented in abuse of civil liberties, criminal behavior by the administration, treasonous actions by Bush and Cheney, and a myriad of other purported heinous crimes against society in general.
    I have lived a long life, observed much, and witnessed much worse.

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  38. Lee Muller

    A lot of people hope and believe that “Obama would govern to the middle”, but he shows no indication of that.
    Obama has been an extreme socialist his entire political career, starting with is running as a socialist party candidate in the 1990s.
    All his platform is that of an ideologue, who says he doesn’t care if it hurts people or damages our economy, if he thinks it is “fair”, or brings reparations for some past injustice.

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