2012 Predictions

Using the same predictive model as for 2008. It only predicts states trends regardless of national swing, so it just gives a rough outline of what to expect. Also, I'm also predicting what the electoral college votes might be as they will be changing as a result of the 2010 census.
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No Change, Obama gets the same national vote in 2012 as in 2008.
Obama - 52.8% - 301 EV
Republican - 45.7% - 159 EV
Toss-Up - 78 EV

Note: Compared to the 2008 result, considering <5% a toss-up, North and South Dakota move from Republican to toss-up, Montana and Indiana move from toss-up to Democrat. However, due to changes after the census, Republicans would probably pick a handful of electoral votes despite no favorable shift in state trends.
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Obama does as well as Bush Jr. and Clinton, gains 3%.
Obama - 54.3% - 334 EV
Republican - 44.2% - 144 EV
Toss-Up - 60 EV

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Obama does as well as Reagan, gains 8.5%
Obama - 57.1% - 376 EV
Republican - 41.5% - 83 EV
Toss-Up - 79 EV

Note: There are two reasons why this map doesn't look like Reagan's 49-state sweep map. First, Reagan won by a larger overall margin. Second, there was less variance among the states, consider in 1980, 50.8% got 489 EV, but in 2008, 52.8% got 365 EV. Basically, the two parties are much more entrenched in a number of states than in the past.
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Obama does as well as Carter and Bush Sr., loses 12.5%
Obama - 46.6% - 204 EV
Republican - 52.0% - 251 EV
Toss-Up - 83 EV

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Obama and Republican candidate have an equal chance of winning, Obama loses 9%
Obama - 48.3% - 219 EV
Republican - 50.2% - 219 EV
Toss-Up - 100 EV

Note: In order for Republicans to have an equal chance at winning the electoral college, they have to win the popular by over 1.9%.

Without Roe v. Wade

After a discussion with my mom about conservatives' seeming obsession with abortion, it got me thinking about what would happen if the pro-life supporters got their way and were able to overturn Roe v. Wade. Overturning Roe v. Wade, of course, just allows states to then decide for themselves whether to support or ban abortion. While this might lead to a few states banning abortion, nationally the majority of Americans consider themselves pro-choice. The most recent numbers I could find that gave state-by-state opinions on abortion was a 2005 survey by Survey USA. This is what they found, blue states are plurality pro-choice and red states are plurality pro-life.



If we just considered these numbers, it would seem that the majority of states would maintain abortion rights. However, there is also another consideration, South Dakota. In the survey, South Dakota showed a slight pro-life lean, but since this poll was taken there have been two ballot measures to restrict abortion rights in South Dakota, and both lost by over 10%. So that would seem to mean that even states with pro-life majorities may be reluctant to restrict abortion rights.

My 2008 Election Predictor

I mentioned about a month ago that a long time ago, I had made a model that used state voting trends to predict the outcome of the 2008 election. The model only gave a result at a given swing, the amount of change between the two parties, nationally, so its most predictive feature was simply finding how much of swing between 2004 and 2008 would be required to for the Democrats to win. The answer, according to the model, surprisingly little. Due to trends that saw a lot of swing states leaning more Democratic, a swing as small as 0.7% produced a Democratic victory. The thing to keep in mind though, is that Bush won the last election by a margin of 2.5%, meaning that for a swing between 0.7% and 2.5%, the Democratic candidate would win the electoral college, but could lose the popular vote by as much as 1.8%. This meant that the Democrats had a huge advantage going into the 2008 election, regardless everything else that happened. In the end though, there was a 9.3% swing in Obama's favor.

So how accurate was the model? Looking at the actual results, it turns out that Obama could have won outright with just a 0.7% swing, so that, amazingly, was correct. More surprisingly, a swing of just 0.1% would have produced a tie, something my model did not find. Overall, the model produced an average error of 5%, so taking that into account, this is what my model predicted a 9.3% swing towards the Democrats would have produced.



I was quite surprised myself to see that my model predicted that North Carolina and Virginia would be swing states. My model also did well in predicting the inevitability of Nevada and New Mexico becoming blue states. In fact, to keep both of these states red would have required a 5.6% swing towards McCain.

Of course the most obvious mistake was Indiana. As Indiana trended more Republican than the rest of the country in the last two elections, the model predicted it would continue to do so, and Obama would lose Indiana by over 13%. Instead, Indiana showed the second largest shift towards the Democrats this election. The largest shift, and ultimately my models largest error, was Hawaii. Clinton and Gore had won Hawaii by quite wide margins, but Kerry did really poorly, so the model incorrectly predicted that Hawaii was becoming more Republican when in fact it appears that Hawaiians just didn't like Kerry. The model did have Obama winning Hawaii by a decent 15%, but he actually won by 45%.

Additionally, the model got Missouri and North Carolina wrong, but they were within the 5% margin of error that I used on the map. The model was fairly accurate for both, they were just so close that even small errors created wrong results. Most of the big errors involved states that were so heavily in favor of one particular candidate, that it still produced the correct end result, such as in the example of Hawaii.