Legal Commentary

A Prediction Report: Obama 339 Electoral Votes, McCain 199

By Jeralyn

William Arnone, author of previous reports on the key states in the primaries and the electoral vote, has prepared his final assessment of who is likely to carry each state in Tuesday's Presidential election. I am publishing the report with his permission.

His summary:

The final assessment shows that the Democratic ticket of Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Senator Joe Biden of Delaware will win 27 states (including the District of Columbia) and part of one state (Nebraska) with 339 electoral votes.

The Republican Presidential ticket of Senator John McCain of Arizona and Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska will win 23 states and parts of one state (Nebraska) with 199 electoral votes. The number of electoral votes needed to win is 270.

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This final assessment represents a shift of two states (Florida and Ohio) and part of one state (Nebraska) for a total of 48 electoral votes from the Republican ticket to the Democratic ticket since the last October assessment. A detailed analysis of the shifts in these two states and one Congressional District is included.

Since the initial assessment was conducted in August, which showed that Senator McCain would win 30 states with 291 electoral votes to Senator Obama's 21 states (including the District of Columbia) with 247 electoral votes if the election had been held then, there has been a dramatic shift of six states (Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia) and one Congressional District (Nebraska's 2nd CD) totaling 92 electoral votes from the Republican to the Democratic Presidential ticket.

With hours to go before Election Day, the likelihood of the results changing depends on the possibility of one or more new intervening variables. Among them are:

• A domestic or international incident that disrupts voting or changes the focus of voters from the economy to national security.

• A new eleventh-hour revelation about one or more of the Presidential or Vice Presidential candidates.

• "keep-down-the-vote" effort in key states, including new-voter registration purges and activities designed to discourage turnout or challenge the voting results. There is already evidence of such destabilizing activity in six states (Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia). Should these six states with 107 electoral votes go Republican, then the result would be a 307-231 McCain-Palin triumph.

Do Arnone's predictions match your's?

Full post as published by TalkLeft on November 03, 2008 (boomark / email).