Posted on 11/04/2012 6:55:53 AM PST by COUNTrecount
Final 2012 Election Predictions: Romney wins White House, GOP keeps House, and Republicans take Senate. 100% chance that Nate Silvers career collapses into ruin.
Since today is Saturday before the election and I think voters are mostly committed to what they are going to do next Tuesday, I think its time to lock in my personal expectations for whats going to happen as we conclude the 2012 election season. As of sometime around 9pm CST, Mitt Romney will be declared our 45th President in what will become a commanding lead of 322 to 216 electoral votes. Republicans will hold the House and expand their majority there by a few seats but I think that will be a gain of around 3+ or so; in thinking about the span of time from 2010 to 2012, I think voters are as-angry or a-little-more-angry than they were at Democrats since the midterm elections so I believe the House will be more or less where it is now and any changes that happen will be to the Republicans advantage. The Senate will also fall securely into GOP hands, but Ill get into those numbers below.
It will be interesting for me to see how close my results come to what actually happens on Tuesday because I 100% believe all of the polls are being manipulated purposefully by pollsters to give Barack Obama a psychological advantage in this election. I directly accuse almost everyone involved in polling of rolling the dice with their reputations because these people honestly want to do anything they can to allow Barack Obama an advantage and so they are willing to risk the destruction of their reputations to push him over the finish line if they can. Since this is the first time in American political history when theyve ever done anything like this, I think that a lot of people have not picked up on the fact that there is not a single reputable polling outfit left. On top of that, I also believe that a great number of Americans out there are purposefully lying to pollsters to make them look bad on November 6th as punishment to the national media for being such a Ministry of Truth for the last four years and churning out nonstop pro-Obama propaganda.
Because I believe the talking heads will melt on the screen come Election Night because none of the results coming in will match the polls the Left relied on for their mental health in the last days of this campaign, I intend to watch MSNBC all day next Tuesday because I want to document in real time the implosion of the Ministry of Truth. This is the only time in my life that I will ever say this, so mark it in the history books, but I encourage all of you to watch MSNBC if you can on November 6th because decades from now you will want to describe to your progeny how unhinged the Left became on live tee-vee as the Obama Regime came to an abrupt end. This would be like you being able to tell someone in the future that you were there when Mount Vesuvius erupted and leveled Pompeii and you had time-traveled back to sit in a lounge chair and sip chianti while you watched it all happen LIVE.
Before I get into the breakdown of what I think is going to happen I want to talk about why my prediction is so different from what you are probably seeing on other conservative sites (and is, of course, the polar opposite of what Nate Silver is saying). Frankly, Ive devoted the last five years of my life to American politics and it has been quite and education. In that time, Ive observed three constants in play during the 2008, 2010, and 2012 elections that I think need to be considered when scrying into the future to determine whats going to happen in a race:
(1) Almost everything the media tells you is a lie designed to help Democrats and there really is a de facto Ministry of Truth that serves the Left on the tee-vee, over the radio, and in newspapers.
(2) Conservative websites are pessimistic places run by straight males who are deathly afraid of being mocked if theyre wrong about predicting a Republican win but are never concerned about being called out for saying that a Republican will lose (since conservatives are so happy the Republican wins in those instances that euphoria-induced amnesia means theres no downside for a conservative writer to lowball a prediction). I think this is crucial in the 2012 race because I still see conservative writers freaking out their readerships by claiming Obamas going to win Ohio! when that, to me, would be like saying Obamas going to lose Massachusetts!. Neither of those things are going to happen, but it carries almost no negative consequence for a conservative writer to scare his readers by insisting Romney will lose Ohio since when Romney wins his readers will be too thrilled by the win to ever remember how much that guy freaked them out in the lead up to the election. Conservatives are very kind and forgiving people by nature and so conservative writers play with their emotions to generate web traffic, counting on there never being any professional consequences for doing this. I really hope youve learned some lessons from all the fear porn churned out this election at various conservative sites and will ask questions starting November 7th about why any of these guys decided to freak you out over Ohio needlessly.
(3) The Tea Party is real, it exists, it never went anywhere, and is more fired up than ever. This is something that almost no one writes about because Tea Party Americans are not holding rallies every day anymore because they are too busy doing actual work behind the scenes to win this election. The Ministry of Truth (Minitru, for short) tried pretending the Tea Party was just an astroturf, manufactured outfit like Occupy Wall Street was for Democrats but they are dead wrong. The purpose of the Tea Party rallies was to recruit Tea Party Americans into action. Once Tea Party groups were staffed up, they began working hard and no longer needed recruitment drives. This is how a real political movement operates and how results are won. All predictions that Minitru makes of an Obama win or a close election are based on the Tea Party having disappeared and of Americans actually liking Obama more in 2012 than they did in 2008, which is madness.
(4) The biggest reason Obama won in 2008 was because Americans got sucked up into the biggest fad ever to hit the country in many years. I am talking about a fad along the lines of the Cabbage Patch Kids, pet rocks, neon friendship bracelets, McRibs, New Kids on the Block, Beanie Babies, etc. Combine the fact that Americans wanted to be part of hopeychange with the fact that many saw Barack Obama as the sort of magical black man character that Will Smith always plays in movies and you will understand that Obama won election because a great many white people thought he was the magical black man whod come to save them (like in the movies!) and they wanted to be part of making history when that happened (alongside all others sucked into the fad). Minitru keeps trying to believe that instead of all this emotion that Americans actually decided with their thinking brains that they wanted to take the country to the Left and transform it into something radically different than has existed for the last 235-odd years. Thats madness. 2008 was not a transformational election but a massive fad that hit the country like a hurricane and for the last four years weve been cleaning up the damages. Every poll, news article, or analysis of this election is flawed because its based on the conceit that voters choice Obama because they liked what he would do to the country instead of the reality that people had no clue what Obama would really do and instead just wanted the magical black man that the media loved so much to have a chance to dazzle them. When Obama not only failed to dazzle, but actively harmed the country, Americans decided he had to go.
Though Mitt Romney will win this election (decidedly and it wont even be close) on November 6th, 2012 I think that Barack Obama actually lost his bid for reelection on May 21st, 2010 which was the day that Nancy Pelosi rammed Obamacare through the House (without any Democrats even reading the bill) over the objections of Americans who resented Democrats abusing their power in this way. An argument could be made that Obama actually lost reelection on December 24th, 2009 because thats the day the Senate rammed Obamacare through in a partisan vote with no Democrat Senators ever reading the bill either but Im going with the House vote date for when Obama lost because few paid much attention to the Senates Christmas Eve machinations since Democrats timed the vote to happen during the holidays so they could get away with it.
That House vote, however, seared Obamacare into peoples minds and made Americans realize the only way to get rid of it was to get rid of Obama the first chance they had. The 2010 elections were, thus, a warmup and the first opportunity that Americans had to boot Obamas allies from power. I maintain to this day that Harry Reid would have lost his Senate seat if Sharon Angle had been a better candidate against him but this only proves that voters WANT to get rid of bad Democrats but require a decent Republican alternative to do so.
Clearly, Mitt Romney has proven to be an alternative to Barack Obama that Americans view as a remedy to everything they havent liked in the last few years. Minitru keeps telling you that its almost impossible to unseat an incumbent! but in reality its that an incumbent president only loses reelection when the challenger presents himself as a stark and acceptable REMEDY to the incumbent and thats the very definition of Mitt Romney.
Just so we are clear, I mocked Mitt Romney for four years and tried everything I could to stop him from being the Republican nominee and in all that time I never found a line of attack on the guy that would stick. I also never discovered any dirt on the man and boy did I try. I never wrote about all the many hours I wasted chasing leads in attempts to find anything despicable the man has ever done because I turned up empty every time. Mitt Romney is a great guy and will make an excellent president. Americans who are so fatigued with having an enigma like Obama whose past is cloaked in surreal mysteries will be overjoyed to have in office a man with nothing to hide and no skeletons in his closet. I dare say that Mitt Romney might just be the most decent human begin to ever become president with the unique qualifications to lead the country out of an economic depression and back towards solvency. The guy who turned around the Olympics and saved Salt Lake will do the same thing to the country from Washington and I look forward to the day when I can shake his hand and thank him for agreeing to serve and save the day.
I dont think the polls or other conservative writers are picking up on just how exhausted Americans are with the nonstop outrages and bizarre mysteries of Barack Obama and the Leftist gang of Chicago thugs who went to Washington with him back in 2008. On a very personal note, the way I feel right now is EXACTLY the way I felt when I was in a bad relationship with a really terrible guy named Harvey and I had finally made the decision to break us up and move on with my life. I wanted the weirdness to end. I was sick of wondering what stupid or crazy thing would happen tomorrow. It was time to remove all of Harveys awful relatives and terrible friends from my orbit. I just reached the point where I wanted Harvey out of my life so that I could move on.
I think that nationwide Americans are desperate to breakup with Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is our valiant rebound guy who we can enthusiastically rush towards.
At this point, the only people who will be voting for Barack Obama will be:
(A) Confirmed Leftists whose only gripe is that they wish Obama had done more Leftist things in his term
(B) People who just like having a black president because they vote on skin color
(C) People who will vote for any Democrat no matter who that person is
I dont think A+B+C is enough for a Democrat to win a national election, ever.
If it was, then Nancy Pelosi would still be Speaker of the House and the 2010 midterms would have looked exactly like the 2008 election. No matter how much Minitru will try to claim this, the United States is not a Leftist country. It is a center-right country and most states do not default-vote Democrat.
On Tuesday, you will see the Democrats safe states shrink to the smallest number since Ronald Reagan, largely because Mitt Romney appeals to Midwesterners very much like Reagan (perhaps even more so because Romney was a businessman, not an actor, so no one is worried about Romney being able to handle the job the way some were of sending a matinee idol to the White House in 1980). The only safe states for Democrats this year are: Hawaii, California, Washington, Illinois, Vermont, New York, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, and the Capital (since DC is not a state but it gets electoral votes equal to those given to the lowest-represented state in the country).
This is a massive pendulum swing from 2008, when Republicans saw their own safe states reduced and threatened by the Obama fad.
Now that the fad has been extinguished, the pendulum has sliced through the Democrats firewall and is obliterating them in states that were normally viewed as safe. While Im predicting that Mitt Romney will win 322 electoral votes, that number could actually be even higher because I think this could be a tidal wave for Republicans that has been building since 2009 when the Tea Party first formed in opposition to Obamacare and the Lefts agenda after Obama took office. I think that 2012 is the year that Democrats actually have to be afraid of losing Oregon, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Michigan which would be like Republicans having to worry about losing Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, or Georgia. This is a BIG DEAL that its even in the realm of possibility that Oregon, Minnesota, New Jersey, or Michigan could be swing states. Never in my life did I think that would happen.
This is what finally made me realize that, yes, Mitt Romney will win Pennsylvania a state that has teased Republicans for years. But if Pennsylvania is really a swing state and is not guaranteed to fall to Democrats every election like California or New York, then 2012 is the year that Republicans win it. If not, then we can never call Pennsylvania a swing state again and must accept it is permanently lost to the Left because of Philadelphias control over the state. But, since I dont believe Pennsylvania is like California or New York and that it has to vote for a Republican sometime I think that Mitt Romney is probably the only Republican it would ever vote for. Barack Obamas War on Coal and his 2008 remarks calling Pennsylvanians bitter and clinging Midwesterners might have been enough of a push to put Romney over the top.
Ohio is a no-brainer and is not even a swing state; its going for Romney because it gave Obama a chance in 2008 and he blew it. Ohioans are loving and decent people who are fair and will give an opportunity to anyone but they will fire someone who does not deliver the goods he promised. Such is Obamas fate in Ohio.
I gave New Mexico to Obama because I looked back on past elections and have seen that more often then not this state votes Democrat, so it might be a sort of Delaware of the west. Since Delaware, Connecticut, and Rhode Island arent leaving the Democrats column this year neither is their cousin out west. I have to admit I have never been to New Mexico and know little about life in the state; as much as I like Governor Susana Martinez and hoped shed be able to carry the state for Romney I just dont see evidence that her personal charm can overcome New Mexicos tendency to be the Delaware of the West.
I do think Democrats lose Nevada though, because I dont see how a state that depends so much on Las Vegas to survive can reelect the man who crippled the tourism industry in Vegas back in 2009. I enjoy reading columns by Steve Wynn, the casino magnate, and he talks about the volcanic anger towards Obama in Nevada. Minitru is putting Nevada in Obamas column just because Harry Reid won reelection in 2010 but as noted above, read would have lost running against someone other than Sharon Angle. If you remember the focus group that Frank Luntz ran in Nevada the night of the second presidential debate youd remember how angry people were there at Obama. How on Earth do they reelect him?
Here in Illinois, Obamas going to win the state by the smallest margin ever for a Democrat; hes actually going to come incredibly close to losing Illinois because enthusiasm for him is so low in Chicagos Cook County. Democrats only win the state because they pull big numbers from Chicagoland. But I think in the end Romney will come up short in Illinois but it will be fun to watch Democrats sweat here a little.
Final Result for the Electoral College: 322 Romney to 216 for Obama (but it could actually end up being as high as 337 Romney to 201 Obama if Minnesota and New Mexico surprise us).
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For the House and Senate races, the logic I am operating under is that there are few instances where vote-splitting will be happening AGAINST Mitt Romney so I am assuming that the vast majority of people heading into voting booths will be voting for both Mitt Romney and the Republican running down ticket from him for the other races in that state. There will be some exceptions to this and in Massachusetts I believe that Scott Brown will win his Senate race because many people will vote for him for Senate but will vote for Obama for president (because Elizabeth Warren is a much worse candidate than Martha Coakley was so I cant understand how shed win while Coakley lost when Brown has done nothing to alienate his 2010 voters and Coakley has done little to steal those people away from Brown).
I think that every state that Romney wins will also push the Republican to the win in that Senate race too. Therefore, I think the Senate races will look like this:
Nebraska = Republican win
Arizona = Republican win
Connecticut = Republican surprise win
Florida = Republican surprise win (Im basing this on something oddball, and its that a lot of voters think that Connie Mack is a woman its actually a man named Cornelius Harvey LaFontaine Beardsley Hiperion McGillicuddy XVII, or something bizarre like that; so he calls himself Connie Mack, which makes people think hes that actress that used to be on Hotel in the 80s, but now she got married. Florida is going to go to Romney and I wonder if Floridians are big vote-splitters and will back Romney for President but the Democrat for the Senate. Why would the do that? Connie Mack sounds like a nice lady so why not vote for her with Mitt Romney? You might laugh, but I think this will really happen but no one wants to talk about it because its so ridiculous. The reason I believe this is happening is because I have five different friends who live in Florida but who dont have tee-vee and all of them think Connie Mack is a woman. They only see Connie Mack written in a paper and dont see a picture, so they assume it is a woman. I think this helps pick up the seat).
Indiana = Republican win (that garbage about abortion is not a big enough deal to vote split no matter what Minitru says)
Massachusetts = Republican surprise win
Missouri = Republican surprise win (because I dont know how someone could vote for Romney and then agree to keep on ObamaClaire)
Montana = Republican win
Nevada = Republican win
North Dakota = Republican win
Ohio = Republican surprise win (because I dont see Republicans vote splitting and see no reason why Mandel would not get votes from the Romney voters in Ohio)
Pennsylvania = Republican surprise win (because Smith rides Romneys coattails here and theres no vote-splitting against him)
Virginia = Republican surprise win (I think people have forgiven Allen for the macaca stuff 6 years ago and see no reason to vote split against him in a state Romney will win)
Wisconsin = Republican surprise win (because I think Romney/Ryan win Wisconsin and with it the Senate seat too)
Hawaii = Republican SUPER SURPRISE win (because its so strange to think that Linda Lingle beat Lazy Mazie for the Governors race a few years ago so why would Mazie win the Senate race this year? I think Hawaiians are vote-splitters and will vote for Obama but elect Lingle; of all these Senate races this is the one I am most on the limb with and its all based on the Lingle vs. Lazy Mazie gubernatorial race and the fact that Hawaiians have rejected Mazies attempts at higher office before, so why go with her now?). I have an 80% chance of being wrong on this Hawaii race but I just see nothing in Lazy Mazie to make me think this latest race between her and Lingle will go differently than the last one.
Maine = Democrat pickup (though Olympia Snow was always a Democrat with an (R) after her name)
Michigan = Democrat
New Jersey = Democrat (because that prostitution scandal doesnt affect the votes in Jersey for Menendez)
New Mexico = Democrat, only because I think Obama will win the state so why would there be vote splitting here?
Washington = Democrat, because Obama wins this state and the Senate race here
West Virginia = Democrat, because I think West Virginians vote-split all the time and have a habit of making bad choices with Senators (See: Byrd, Robert K.K.K.)
TOTALS:
That makes it 15 wins for Republicans by may count, with just 6 wins for Democrats for a net of 9for the GOP.
I think the low end of things would be about a net of 4 or 5 for the Republicans on Tuesday, which provides for some vote-splitting in states that Romney wins but the Republican running for Senate loses for some reason. But I do believe that Republicans will control of the White House, the Senate and the House.
Im not going to do a rundown on House numbers because I have not had time to follow all of those races closely. I do think that Romney adds seats in states that he wins and that people voting for Romney in general will vote straight down ticket as well which could lead to a lot of surprises.
I really think Debbie Wasserman Schultz loses her seat in Congress because of how poorly shes looked in everything shes done in the high profile position Democrats gave her. Shes too affiliated with Obama not to lose, because I cant imagine people voting for Romney in Florida and then vote-splitting to vote for DWS too.
Nancy Pelosi will be ousted as Minority Leader in the next Congress and will retire some time in early 2013. A special election will have to be held to replace her. Pelosi is not going to spend her last years as a former Speaker who has no power and is just another member of the herd. So expect her to be moving back to San Francisco for good around the same time the Obamas are moving to Hawaii.
Conclusion:
I do believe this is a giant wave election for Republicans and that Minitru and even conservative writers are missing that fact.
There is just no enthusiasm for Obama or Democrats and people are tired of all the bizarre things that have happened in the last four years. I think Benghazi is a story that will only be understood in retrospect because most Americans realize Democrats are lying about what really happened there, even if they dont understand what went down. The White House is clearly lying and Minitru is helping the White House lie and I am surprised every day by people who know little about the news or politics who tell me something is fishy about all that Libya stuff and Obama is lying. This has made Democrats I know not want to bother to go vote and its fired up the independents and Republicans I know to race out to vote against Obama.
Weve never had an election where the following three things have happened before (so I think Election Night is going to be just madness):
* The Left has been assured by Nate Silver that there is an 80% chance of Obama winning so they are not mentally prepared to see a map where Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are in Romneys hands. Expect epic freakouts on MSNBC over this. And then never expect to hear from Nate Silver ever again. He will need to go into hiding like Salman Rushdie. I hope he is enjoying his last three days as a mini-celebrity.
* A great many conservative writers know Romney will win but are using the last few days before the election to terrify their readers to drive up their web traffic through fear porn. They THINK that people will be so happy that Romney wins and Republicans take the Senate that people will just forget how much they were scared before the election. I hope there are professional consequences for anyone who pushed this fear porn but since Republicans are amnesiacs most of the time, I doubt there will be. Which is a shame, because anyone who pushed fear porn hurt a lot of good people who got scared and upset for no reason just so a few sites could make extra money by driving up their web traffic through shouts of SHARK! when there were no sharks in the bathtub to be scared of.
* The Ministry of Truth completely lied to the American people and didnt care about the damage it would do to its reputation. They went all-in and broadcasted from an alternate, fictional universe in this race. What happens to them next?
This is the 2012 race as I see it in the last days of the campaign.
I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you out there who have been providing me with consistent ground reports and anecdotal intel for the last several months, because your reporting from the ground shaped my understanding of this race and led me to my conclusions. Well see whos right on November 6th, but everything I have seen, heard, and read from real people directly contradicts what all the experts say so I think my projection will be closer to reality than any of the Eeyores or fear porn peddlers out there.
I also want to thank everyone who has been letting me know about the latest fear porn stories and shouts of SHARK! that they see posted online. Its so helpful to know who is spreading this fear porn and what they are saying. I tried to use this essay to counter most of it, but if I missed anything please chime in below and tell me and I will address it in the follow up tomorrow. There is no reason to be afraid, because we are going to win BIG.
Nate Silver, on the other hand, might be applying to Arbys soon because that prediction model of his is cuckoo and the Democrats who buy his fairytale are the ones that need to be afraid of whats to come on November 6th.
CHIME IN BELOW WITH YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE ABOVE.
What am I getting wrong?
Go ahead and tell me what you really think. Because the risk in putting a projection/prediction together is that after Election Night nasty trolls will want to rip me apart no matter what, since Im human and none of us can be exactly right on anything. But I think Im picking up on trends that others are missing and I also think that things are going to roll our way this time, because this is the year that will happen (if its ever to happen at all).
On Election Day, Im going to camp out in front of a live stream of MSNBC and do rolling historical coverage of the results and what the MSNBC talking heads in particular are saying. I think Im going to start at about 10am on the 6th and will go through the late evening after Romney wins covering everything thats being said. I am going to get a honey baked ham for Justin and myself and will be making some other treats that remind me of Wisconsin, Michigan, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Utah. I think its just going to be Justin and myself and maybe a few other friends, but I hope you will join us here on HB from time to time throughout the day to see how close our predictions come to reality.
I think I will be much more right than wrong, though
and I think Ive called more than a few things that will be surprises to everyone else.
Bookmarking in case of epic fail.
If there’s an epic fail tomorrow than we are all in Venezuela.
Obama will claim a mandate for his "fundamentally transforming" vision even if he wins by one electoral vote.
If Romney wins PA, I hope I have the privilege of seeing Chris Matthews try to explain it.
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Chrissy will claim that there was a massive wave of vote fraud by the GOP! Either that or Romney bought the election with all his money which of course he only has because he has not paid his “fair share”.
Great, great prediction on all those Senate seat pickups there, pal. You were so close! And your reasoning and methodology to back it up were so sound, I don’t know how anyone could ever have possibly doubted your prognosticating brilliance.
On the basis of straight-tciket voting, the Republicans in blue states lost. Also, the Republicans in battleground states lost by Romney also lost. Did any of them outperform Romney? I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. If any would have outperformed Romney in the battlegrounds, I would think that would be Tommy Thompson. But, no, not even Thompson outperformed Romney in the battlegrounds. So, the theory of straight-ticket voting condemned them all. This actually supports the argument that, had Romney won, the theory of straight-ticket voting would have helped them all.
Now consider the only two deviations from the assumption of straight-line voting, Republican losses in the red states of Indiana and Missouri. Even in these cases, the third party vote was significant, although not decisive.
Things changed during Hurricane Sandy. The change was masked by the suspension of the Gallup Poll.
After the suspension of the Gallup Poll, Romney’s lead in Gallup and Raz fell to only 1 point. This was because Obama’s standing with the public strengthened during the suspension.
In contrast, during the same period, Obama’s lead in the media-sponsored national and state polls fell to 1 point or so. But, how could the President’s standing with the public have fallen during that period? His standing didn’t fall. His standing with the public increased. The bias in the media-supported polls was removed.
A dramatic turn-around of the election. The October surprise was a November surprise and was an Act of God.
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