November 4, 2008

Senate Prediction (Coleman vs. Franken)

Based on a sampling of 341 unlikely voters today in the liberal heart of St. Paul (which gave Obama the presidency in a landslide), manyhighways is predicting a victory for Republican Senator Norm Coleman over Democratic challenger Al Franken. The margin of victory for Coleman will be slim (under 5%) but Coleman will be reelected to the Senate.

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November 2, 2008

2008 Presidential Election Prediction

I think I'm probably going to go through withdrawal when this whole thing is finally over. I've been reading way to much polling data and statistics lately, mostly from the excellent site fivethirtyeight.com. I've learned a lot and have decided that the time has come for the official manyhighways presidential election prediction. Without further ado...

Barack Obama: 311
John McCain: 227

Chances are good that Obama will actually do much better than this, so I'm making quite a conservative prediction here. I'm predicting that McCain will win the battleground states of FL, MO and SC while Obama will win CO, VA, OH and PA. If McCain doesn't do well in the battleground states, the margin of victory for Obama will obviously be much greater.

One thing I am not willing to make a prediction on is the Minnesota Senate race which is the most contested in the nation, largely because of Independent Dean Barkley. Minnesotans have had no problems electing third party candidates before (see Jesse Ventura) so who knows what will happen on election day. The majority of polls are saying Al Franken has a slight advantage right now but this lead falls within the margin of error in most cases, making the race too close to call.

Finally, and most importantly, be sure to VOTE ON TUESDAY!

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