Thursday, 4 November 2004
Projection Inspection
« Election Results | Main | Ungrateful Specter »I have been able to review my predictions for the election and noticed howaccurate my score card played out and how good my over/under line really was.Once we remove Hawaii from the middle of my score card which was the leastlikely poll result to be sustained on election day, we see that Ohio is thebreaking point between the two candidates. Interestingly enough Bush gotevery state on his side of the line which he needed to seal the victoryand Kerry came up one state short of the line.
As I watched the returns, I kept looking for either candidate to pick upa state on the other side of the line and neither one did which explainswhy I was up till 5 AM watching returns.
As for my predictions on the electoral college, I was right on the money.My best scientific guess was the race would be a 2-3 point victory for Bush (which it was). I thought that would give Bush Wisconsin and New Hampshire (which he almost won) and a 296-242 victory. Instead, Kerry did better in the swing states than the national average which allowed him to keep Wisconsin and New Hampshire (more on the swing states later). These two close pickupsallowed Kerry to beat my over/under number. On the day after, itappears that my over/under number was very nearly ideal.
Personally I though Bush was going to out perform the polls and win witha larger margin of 4-5 points. Had this occurred Bush would have likely picked up Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, New Hampshire, and possibly Pennsylvania which would have made my election prediction accurate. The bottom line is my scoring model proved highly accurate,
Note on swing states: It appears the reason my model was slightly off was due to the true middle of the road swing states. These handful ofstates did not follow the national trends and actually trended closer toKerry. This has to be attributed to Democrats doing an amazing job getting the vote out. This allowed them to do slightly better than the national average and make Ohio, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire competitive while giving them a comfortable margin in Minnesota, Michigan, andPennsylvania. In fact, if the Republicans hadn't done an incredible jobthemselves getting their vote out Kerry may well have won this election.
The problems for the Democrats moving forward is two fold. The election mapcontinues to favor the Republicans. They have solidified their control onthe South, expanded their margin in the South West and are competitive inthe upper Midwest. It is going to be difficult for Democrats to puttogether a winning state combination in four years. The much more severeproblem for the Democrats is the budding ability of Republicans to getpeople to the polls. This is an area the Democrats have always dominatedthe Republicans. Once the Republicans perfect a system, the Democrats mayhave a very difficult time winning the house, senate, or another nationalelection for the foreseeable future.
