My Final Election 2012 Predictions

It’s time to start making final predictions for the 2012 election. I’m also rounding up predictions from others who are out on the limb with me predicting a Romney victory. I still feel fairly confident about my bottom line: Romney will win. But until we see the actual voter turnout, it’s hard to project more than educated guesswork as to the size of that win.
The Electorate and the Popular Vote
The final week of polling has been even more of a mess than usual in a season in which the polls have made less and less sense both internally (their assumptions about turnout and the conflict between the toplines and Romney’s margins with independents) and externally (how the polls’ views of turnout conflict with every other item of evidence outside the polling). Josh Jordan notes the particularly unstable polling of independents in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
But while some of the more garish double-digit margins are gone, the latest battery of national polls shows Romney’s standing vs Obama with independents most likely somewhere around a 7 point lead: CNN/ORC (+22, but with the smallest of sample sizes), Monmouth/SUSA (+16), Rasmussen (+9), WaPo/ABC (+7), NBC/WSJ (+7), Pew (+4), Gallup (-1).
What will turnout look like? First up, we have Rasmussen’s October 2012 Party ID survey; I’ve revised my chart to look at the historical track record since 2004 of his October survey:
ras.party.id.Oct04.06.08.10.12.JPG
That’s an R+6 electorate. Obama is clearly, in my view, doomed if the electorate is D+3 (the historical average for presidential elections since 1984) or less, and probably needs about D+6, maybe D+5 (the 2000 electorate) to win. We haven’t had an R+ electorate for a presidential election since probably the 1920s (2004 was even); we may not have had an R+6 electorate since Reconstruction ended. If Rasmussen’s survey is even half right, Democrats could be in for a very, very rough night across the board. Even as accurate as Rasmussen has been, I’m hesitant to go out all the way on that limb – but it’s hard to argue with his record on this front. The survey encompasses a huge sample, on the order of 15,000 interviews.
It may be tough to measure the final electorate, because exit polls won’t capture early voters, and in some states that’s a lot of people. (The Denver Post cites Colorado Secretary of State figures showing more than 62% of the state’s registered voters have voted already, with a turnout of R+2). My prediction for the national turnout is a conservative one: D+2, D 37/R 35/I 28. Assuming Romney wins Republicans 94-6, Obama carries Democrats 93-7, and Romney wins independents 53-47 – again, a conservative projection given the polls – that gives us Romney 50.3%, Obama 49.7%.
(If you run those same assumptions in the electorate from Rasmussen’s party ID survey, you get Romney 53.7%, Obama 46.2% – and it gets wider from there if the spread among independents gets into double digits. But I’m being conservative here, as I still expect the more likely outcome to be fairly close).
The Electoral College
I start with this map, with Romney up 235-190:
map.final.one.JPG
Obama is still running ads in North Carolina and still contesting Florida; Florida is usually close, but I see no real likelihood that it goes for Obama again.
Then, let’s take off the board the states where Romney is only going to win if it’s really breaking big for him – I’m actually now including Nevada and not Pennsylvania in that category, and to be cautious, Maine’s 2d Congressional District – and the states I’d almost written off in September where I now think Romney is in very solid shape (Virginia, Colorado and New Hampshire):
map.final.two.JPG
Romney 261, Obama 223. Iowa becomes irrelevant at this point – Romney wins one of the remaining three, or Obama wins all three, and it’s game over. But I don’t actually see Pennsylvania being the one to get Romney over the line if he loses Ohio and Wisconsin. Playing it safe, I end up with Romney taking just one of those four – Wisconsin – and a narrow electoral college win, 271-267:
map.final.three.JPG
If Romney wins, as I project, I strongly suspect that he will win at least one of the other three, maybe all three. But Wisconsin is my pick for the state that puts him over the hump.
The Senate
Here’s RCP’s current map of the Senate races, projecting each side picks up 3 seats, netting no change to the Democrats’ 53-47 advantage:
map.final.RCP.JPG
That’s a very disappointing outcome from where the GOP should have been, but probably not as bad as it has looked most of the past two months. I’m going to be absurdly bullish and say R+2 Senate seats because I can’t look across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Virginia, Massachusetts, Indiana, and Missouri and see the Democrats going better than 5-for-7. There are different reasons in different races – Mourdock and Akin will have strong GOP turnout advantages at their backs, Scott Brown is just a tough campaigner, and Smith, Mandel, Thompson and Allen all have the swing state ground games behind them. Add in Montana and it will take a big set of Romney coattails for the Republicans to win half or more of those eight races – but 3 out of 8 hardly seems unreasonable if the presidential race is going well.
(It’s also impossible to be sure how the Maine Senate race will come out – three-way races are notoriously hard to poll – but I’ll nonetheless be surprised if Angus King doesn’t win and caucus with the Democrats. A 50 D/49 R Senate with Paul Ryan as the VP could put King in position to be a tremendous power broker.).
Like most people, I’m not even bothering with a House prediction, other than to reiterate a point Neil Stevens has made: if the electorate was really going to look like the D+7 Democratic wave of 2008, we’d be talking about a ton of Democratic House pickups (redistricting or no) and a threat of the return of Speaker Pelosi. But at this point, even the DCCC seems to have all but thrown in the towel; Nate Silver doesn’t even seem to be tracking odds for a Democratic House pickup. That suggests that down-ticket Democrats are looking at a much more realistic universe.
Around The Horn
Michael Barone has Romney 315, Obama 223. I’m always in good company agreeing with Barone.
Ben Domenech, who was predicting an Obama win until the past month, has Romney 278, Obama 260, with Wisconsin the deciding state.
Gerry Daly’s map has Romney 296, Obama 242.
Neil Stevens’ map has Romney 279, Obama 190 even with a bunch of states up in the air.
Josh Jordan walks through why he has Romney 295, Obama 243 and Romney by 50.5 to 48.5 in the popular vote.
Bob Krumm walks through 5 scenarios.
Jim Geraghty looks at when pollsters have been wrong.

35 thoughts on “My Final Election 2012 Predictions”

  1. It’s a shame to see someone who is so brilliant with statistics be so completely ignorant with politics.
    You keep on following Rasmussen right off the cliff. He was completely wrong in 2008. He’s been wildly off base in this election compared to every other pollster.
    Mittster is toast. You can keep covering your ears and telling yourself it isn’t true- you just need to ignore an overwhelming mountain of evidence. If you can be that ignorant, then go ahead, but it must be tough being completely incapable of sleeping at night.
    Obama. 303. Minimum. MINIMUM.

  2. Rasmussen actually had the make up of the electorate pretty closely in 2008. He underestimated the number of independents, but the relationship between D’s and R’s was spot-on.
    If anything, it looks like in your graph Rasmussen is more likely to underestimate the actual number of R’s than anything else. He would have to be fantastically wrong in his partisan id poll this year in order for Obama to win. I just don’t see it happening. But who knows. I plan to vote even if Godzilla attacks my city (which is unlikely, I live in St. Louis and unless Godzilla hates the arch or something it’s just not in his interest to bother with coming all the way here).

  3. My prediction:
    D 37/R 34/I 29
    I-vote: 52% R, 48% O
    Works out to 50.4% O, 49.6% R, for a 0.8% O victory, which happens to be almost exactly the RCP national poll average

  4. The crux of your arguments sounds strangely familiar:
    https://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/donkeyrising/2004/10/kerrys_lead_among_independents.html
    “No Republican in the modern era has won a presidential election without carrying the independent vote. In the 2000 election, despite losing the national popular vote, George Bush led Al Gore by a narrow margin among independent voters. However, according to the final, supersized Gallup Poll, John Kerry now has an 8 point lead over George Bush among independent voters. In fact, Kerry led Bush among independents in all four Gallup polls this month–by an average of 6 points. This is one more piece of evidence that George Bush’s situation is extremely dire.”

  5. Kerry won independents by 1. If Romney does that, I agree things will almost certainly go badly for him. Bush did survive losing independents in Ohio by 19, but with a 1-2 punch of supercharged R+5 turnout and a *lot* of crossover votes (IIRC, he won something like 11-14% of Ohio Democrats). None of this year’s polling has suggested that crossovers are much of a factor anywhere.

  6. I thought Obama was “toast”, Crank?
    Your delusions were strong to the end.
    Will you eat crow? Or, will you immediately start to berate the new President?
    Bye, Crank!

  7. Ya know…I sat down and read your analysis and your reasoning for picking Romney. It was absolutely ridiculous because it was full of the most optimistic “what-ifs” I’ve ever seen. And your EV projection for Romney came from another planet.
    I don’t know how you can show your face…as a “numbers guy”…ever again. Nate Silver…Sam Wang? Those are numbers guys and they got it right.
    I would say stick to baseball…but I’m not sure you’re even competent in that.

  8. Ya know…I sat down and read your analysis and your reasoning for picking Romney. It was absolutely ridiculous because it was full of the most optimistic “what-ifs” I’ve ever seen. And your EV projection for Romney came from another planet.
    I don’t know how you can show your face…as a “numbers guy”…ever again. Nate Silver…Sam Wang? Those are numbers guys and they got it right.
    I would say stick to baseball…but I’m not sure you’re even competent in that.

  9. Ya know…I sat down and read your analysis and your reasoning for picking Romney. It was absolutely ridiculous because it was full of the most optimistic “what-ifs” I’ve ever seen. And your EV projection for Romney came from another planet.
    I don’t know how you can show your face…as a “numbers guy”…ever again. Nate Silver…Sam Wang? Those are numbers guys and they got it right.
    I would say stick to baseball…but I’m not sure you’re even competent in that.

  10. Ya know…I sat down and read your analysis and your reasoning for picking Romney. It was absolutely ridiculous because it was full of the most optimistic “what-ifs” I’ve ever seen. And your EV projection for Romney came from another planet.
    I don’t know how you can show your face…as a “numbers guy”…ever again. Nate Silver…Sam Wang? Those are numbers guys and they got it right.
    I would say stick to baseball…but I’m not sure you’re even competent in that.

  11. Ya know…I sat down and read your analysis and your reasoning for picking Romney. It was absolutely ridiculous because it was full of the most optimistic “what-ifs” I’ve ever seen. And your EV projection for Romney came from another planet.
    I don’t know how you can show your face…as a “numbers guy”…ever again. Nate Silver…Sam Wang? Those are numbers guys and they got it right.
    I would say stick to baseball…but I’m not sure you’re even competent in that.

  12. No worries, Crank. This is no more embarrassing than your support for the Iraq Clusterfuck.
    Also, will you allow me to accept apologies from the mouth-breathers who scoffed when i stated the Tea Party is nothing more than the GOP with a name change?
    Liberals: Taking shit for being correct since before you were born. (H/T Driftglass)

  13. Crank,
    Are you still in hospital from all the Kool-Aid you drank in the last 48 hours?
    Hey, if you look up, and the sky is blue, don’t say it’s green just because you’re in denial.
    Your number crunching skill has been called into question.

  14. How sweet it is! Within a 76 hour period Oregon set the all-time scoring record against USC in a 62-51 win and Obama defeated Romney in the Presidential election. Make a big “O” with both thumbs and forefingers and hold it up! Let’s hear it for the Big O! Just win baby!
    Currently I am reading Leonard Mlodinow’s “The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives.” It is about probability and statistics. My nickname is Stats. I have been aware of the mode, median, and mean since 1970. Eleven days ago I returned to John Wayne Airport in Orange County after attending the first two World Series games in San Francisco. At the baggage claim a four year old French kid was telling his Dad about the median, defining it as “half.” I’d be more inclined to go with that four year old’s election picks than yours Crank. You still get an A+ for baseball writing and an A- for music stories (I prefer Bob Dyan to Bruce Springsteen, even if Springsteen endorsed Obama. I am 60 years old which might explain that bias). Your 2012 presidential election call must be graded an F. Please keep it so we can have a chuckle in the future. This post will make a wonderful Moldie Oldie down the road.
    Ryan did not even carry his home state of Wisconsin. My name is Yon Yonson, I come from Wisconsin. At least Palin won her home state of Alaska in 2008.
    I was having a friendly argument with a friend who compared Obama to FDR. I pointed out Hoover was POTUS when the stock market crash occurred in 1929 and for 41 months afterwards. Bush the Younger was POTUS when the stock market dived in the fall of 2008. Voting for Obama in 2008 was a statement that I would have voted for FDR in 1932.
    I went to seven World Series games (plus one Super Bowl) over the past three seasons. Any time I go to the World Series three years in a row I would be inclined to vote for the incumbent. Imagine a hot tub time machine. If I had gone to the World Series in 1934, 1935 and 1936 I probably would have voted for FDR in 1936.
    My vote for Obama was by absentee ballot. I posted it in Tustin, California just before 3 p.m. last Friday. It had to reach downtown Santa Ana (five miles away) by 5 p.m. today. If not Obama was shorted a vote.
    In November 1992 I was trekking in Malana Valley in Himachal Pradesh, India. Above Malana we camped in a boulder field. We used one large rock as a backdrop for our campfire. The next morning listening to Voice of America we learned Clinton won the presidential election. In honor of that we called that large rock “Clinton’s Rock.” It was still there when I returned to Malana Valley in May 2001. Yes, there are better places to be than in front of a computer on election night.
    For me this election was about the Supreme Court and Foreign Policy. Keep the war whores out of the White House! To all a good night!

  15. Stick to baseball. Polls as an aggregate don’t over or under sample one party or another- they look for a representative demographic, and then only AFTER that ask what party a voter is for. By putting the cart before the horse you COMPLETELY missed what they were telling you- a lot of the “independents” were former Republicans, so D+7 was in fact accurate. Also the idea that Democrats wouldn’t turn out this time was based on pure speculation- not any numbers. So give me aggregate polling over party hackery every day and twice on Sunday. And, btw, Nate Silver is now 49-49 in his state by state picks, with only Florida to go, which he called Obama winning in a tight race. Care to revise your thesis?

  16. Crank,
    I guess you must hate your enemies because your judgment seems to have been badly affected.
    I will be looking for your post election analysis on how you got it so wrong and how Nate Silver got it so right.

  17. I haven’t had time for much of this lately but I did see the substantial number of posts and their incredible length. After a bit of skimming through the tens of thousands of (ultimately wildly incorrect) analysis I thought things on this order.
    1) Doth protest too much. Seemed like a overkill.
    2) the volume of writing is inversely proportionate to what Crank thinks about Romney. Stinks of desperation especially as the little I read in detail was truly hokum. Some real “creation science” at work.
    3) It was either trying to pull a “Parker calls the ’82 Bordeaux” thing or just keeping up with the Jonses as I suspect every right-wing pundit in print and airwaves was calling it for Romney.
    What really sealed it was when October 27 madirishman posted how it would be a Reagan-Carter athlete landslide and
    The GOP would take the Senate back as well. Being almost universally incorrect when it comes to this stuff, even more so than Crank, I knew Obama would win and win big.
    Failing to ignore your candidate’s general unlikeability, wildly overstating how many indies weren’t just Tea Partiers and failing to realize that Obama knows how to really run a political campaign down to the boots on the ground mission versus Romney stumbling past a pack of fools really threw the “analysis” down a rabbit hole.
    I would guess there is no mea culpa coming here. Fox News doopesnt give a crap when it gets nearly everything wrong so why should Crank? My guess is the next post is either a) how screwed we all are now that the Kenyan is back in the White House or b) what Obama has to do to appease the GOP to get anything done. I won’t be coming here to see GOP self-reflection on why they got boat-raced when they thought they would win. No thoughts on how allowing total crazies like Akin into the fold damages standings with women and young people. No thoughts on how immigration reform that deals with reality and not a “get the wetbacks” out pandering to an LCD might be useful.
    Romney may have been as bad a POTUS candidate ever. He came closer than McCain but the GOP was going down and down hard in 2008 and pretty much no one was stopping that from happening. Flip Romney-Ryan and McCain-Palin and you might have seen a different result. Certainly a closer one.
    Thankfully we did not turn our country over to someone as cavalier and irresponsible as Mitt Romney. We are all so much better off that he will simply go away now and the adults can continue to attempt to run the show.

  18. “Dewey Defeats Truman.” “Obama is toast.”
    Is the Tribune publisher a direct relative or just a family friend?
    Remember: “CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE, MY FRIEND!!!” But, they are not allowed to vote.

  19. My two cents.
    The tone of these comments is pretty hilarious. How many of you went out there and made a public prediction?
    Jim–I agree with a lot of what you said but spare the “adults can now run the show” crap. Obama is hardly the adult in the room. An adult would get a budget passed–or at least propose one. An adult would not issue ads comparing a vote for him to losing one’s virginity. An adult would not issue tweets 5 minutes after bin Laden was killed but stonewall for two months on Benghazi. I could go on. We really don’t have an adult in the room, sadly.
    What’s interesting to me as I study these results is what impact the last week had on the results. (Sandy might have made an impact.) Exit polls state that 10% of the electorate made their decision on either Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday. If the election had been last Tuesday, Crank’s prediction might have been spot on. But, of course, it wasn’t and it does seem most Romney-predicting pundits (Crank included) failed to take into account the small surge the President had in the last week.
    What’s shocking is how down the raw R turnout was. Romney gets less votes than McCain? That’s, well, kind of embarrassing, frankly.
    It’s ironic that one of the public’s biggest complaints is gridlock, but here we have it again for the next 2 years at least; probably 4.
    Finally, this election was still close. Let’s not act as if Obama won easily or that he enjoys some type of sweeping mandate.

  20. Adults in relation to other politicians. I have no illusions about pretty much anyone in political office. In comparison to Romney who would lie, cheat, change his position at the drop of hat, lie, pander, lie and lie some more Obama come off as the adult by comparison. History may bear out that Romney was the single worst POTUS candidate ever. Certainly of my voting lifetime (’84-so it includes Mondale). That Crank and the madirishman et. al. couldn’t see how truly terrible he was and chose to blame the “lamestream media” (what, exactly, has happened to Sarah Palin? Not that I miss her but it is like she disappeared.) is quite amusing. I’ll enjoy years more of Crank potsting long, detailed, alledgedly fact-filled research to back up positions and think fondly back to this step in it moment.

  21. Nice try, Son of Cronus!
    1. Plenty of public comments on this blog have called Crank’s bluff, especially after his laughable “Final Prediction”.
    2. Obama won. That’s the reality. The reality isn’t, “Oh, Romney would have won last week. Or, “Oh yeah, but there still will be gridlock. Na na na!” The latter statement proves that many GOP members are more worried about emasculating Obama than hoping that positive change occurs for America, which is shameful.
    3. Son of Cronus, do not pay lip service to rationalizations. Trust me, Crank will pump plenty such excuses when he finally responds!
    4. Bush didn’t have a mandate either in 2000, whatever that term means. Obama had a mandate of sorts in 2008, and you and your partisan lawmakers did everything in their powers to throw big wrenches in the works…
    Come out, come out wherever you are, Crank!
    Seriously, Crank you could get a lot of respect back if you simply announced you were wrong. Not, “I would have been right last week.” Or, “Those that voted for Obama down the line will be sorry.” Just admit you were wrong and Nate Silver was right. Romney had every opportunity to beat the President, and he didn’t. Wrong VP pick, too many gaffes, too pretentious, too elitist…
    And, moving forward, why not support President Obama? I didn’t vote for Bush, but you asked me to support him on September 12, 2001…

  22. Hi Dad,
    On #2, it’s just the political scientist (I have to do something with my poli sci major!) in me wondering. No sour grapes. Elections happen in time and space.
    I think mandates do exist and do matter. Obama certainly had one in 2008 (although I think he misread it). Frankly, Obama could have claimed one of sorts this year (even with the close results) had he campaigned on ideas and plans for his next term. But he didn’t.

  23. Crank,
    I can’t decide if you are as delusional as you seem or just simply understand reality and refuse to accept it. Either way, what a load of hooey. I most enjoyed two of your points.
    First, you claim that “Social conservatives as a group need to accept the fact that communication and tone matter; people will respect your issue stances, but not if you seem to them like a frightening extremist.”
    To borrow from Michael Kinsley that a “gaffe” is when a politician says what he or she really thinks. The problem was not “tone” or “communication” (whatever that means), but the content of the message. The losers you cite lost because they spoke what they (and a substantial portion of the GOP base) really think and it is anathema to the majority of the country.
    Second, you assert that “It’s clear that the superstorm knocked Romney off the campaign trail and the front pages for a few days and let Obama collect a lot of plaudits (totally untethered from the miserable actual performance of the federal government in responding to the storm).”
    Until the parenthetical, you were doing fine. But, it is laugh out loud funny when a wing nut like yourself (1) complains about federal government performance after seeking to starve it of the resources needed to do a job and (2) unabashedly looks for government handouts as soon as disaster strikes you personally. For an example of how things look differently when they are not impacting you directly, take a look at a blog post from September 15, 2005, entitled, “KATRINA: Making FEMA a First Responder.” I would give you the URL, but I think you are quite familiar with the blog.

  24. My point, Magrooder, is that supporting Obama on the theory that he did some great job responding to Sandy just fails on its own terms. Heck, FEMA ran out of water and then shut down for bad weather. Anybody who voted for Obama on the basis of the storm was a moron.
    I still think disaster response is a legitimate government function, in which the feds can provide a level of what amounts to insurance to local govts. I still think FEMA is poorly equipped by nature to be a first responder, and should not be expected to do much besides cut some checks. It should be, and largely is, primarily a state & local responsibility.

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  26. Crank: In your article, you reference how you always felt Romney had irrevocably damaged himself by running to the right on immigration during the primary debates, yet a search of your previous posts reveals that you never publically made this assertion before last Tuesday’s election results. Did you really always feel this way, or is this more of a position in retrospect?

  27. Crank: In your article, you reference how you always felt Romney had irrevocably damaged himself by running to the right on immigration during the primary debates, yet a search of your previous posts reveals that you never publically made this assertion before last Tuesday’s election results. Did you really always feel this way, or is this more of a position in retrospect?

  28. Crank: In your article, you reference how you always felt Romney had irrevocably damaged himself by running to the right on immigration during the primary debates, yet a search of your previous posts reveals that you never publically made this assertion before last Tuesday’s election results. Did you really always feel this way, or is this more of a position in retrospect?

  29. I never said it made his election impossible, just that it put him on an extremely narrow path without much of a margin for error. My position in 2008 was that he couldn’t win; for much of 2012 it was that Romney could only win by Obama being bad enough to lose.
    Go back to my posts all the way back to 2008, I said this repeatedly, especially in my post explaining why I was backing McCain over Romney. It was also at least an implicit part of my arguments for Perry. I always said Mitt was bad news for the party because of his inability to win Hispanic votes.

  30. I took a look back to the indicated columns. While you did mention mention Romney’s positions on immigration, you never characterized as too extreme or rightward for a general election contest. You did make the claim about Fred Thompson, but never for Romney.

  31. he was very unpresidential- and shweod to be a petty man, and very much the washington politician. they also said they did not like his twon of voice, and how he dodged questions that were not in his favor, and spent the majority of his answers name dropping. Most undecideds said that they were looking for a reason to vote for him, because the media has been boasting him as the front runner, but that this debate not only disapointed them- but was able to see that romney is much more presidential, and while the title commander and chief seems to fit mc cain better- they felt that romney had better qualifications to lead this country in all other areas, and he debated those issues better- and he didn’t shy away from giving answers to tough questions like they felt mc cain did. .intersting mc cain, where was all this straight talk i’ve been hearing you spout so proudly?

  32. I really do Not like any of the catnidades. Hilary is a socialist bordering on communism. Obama is inexperienced and can’t really make up his mind. McCain I knew was just not the man for the job from the beginning. He’s too liberal and Romney is just weird. There’s something about him I don’t like and I just can’t pinpoint it. but oh well. Ron paul has no chance and neither do the others. good thing JE left, he needs to care for his wife his wife should have been more important than politics since the beginning. and Guliani was a good/ great NYC Mayor .but he wouldn’t have been a good Pres. I don’t like any catnidades this time around I guess I’ll vote for the lesser of the four evils .I just haven’t decided. def not Hil.

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