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With fewer than nine months to go before Election Day, The Signal predicts that Barack Obama will win the presidential contest with 303 electoral votes to the Republican nominee's 235.
How do we know? We don't, of course. Campaigns and candidates evolve, and elections are dynamic events with more variables than can reasonably be distilled in an equation. But the data--based on a prediction engine created by Yahoo! scientists--suggest a second term is likely for the current president. This model does not use polls or prediction markets to directly gauge what voters are thinking. Instead, it forecasts the results of the Electoral College based on past elections, economic indicators, measures of state ideology, presidential approval ratings, incumbency, and a few other politically agnostic factors.
Now before you Democrats start crowing, you need to understand that The Signal has been about 80% correct in predicting elections, but this one is much closer than that, so I put the Odds at Obama winning much lower. Still, Obama does have the advantage, but lots of things can change between now and election day. Even if nothing changes, there are 3 very important states on the map that are swing states, and could go either way. Check out the following table, which gives the odds in each state, and also predicts the popular vote in each state:
Now take a look at Virginia, Ohio, and New Hampshire. The votes for Obama in these states are 50.22, 50.32, and 50.82, respectively. The margin of error is + or - 3 percent. The odds of Obama winning any of them are 52.00%, 52.95%, and 57.83%, respectively. There is a statistical margin of error here too. Given that all other states, Democratic and Republican alike, are a cinch for their candidate (not a sure thing either), what Republicans are going to have to do is win these 3 belweather states. This is doable. If Mitt Romney wins the nomination, this is going to be much closer than anybody thinks, maybe as close as Bush-Gore. I believe that Romney will be able to take much more of the moderate Independents than Santorum will, hence my prediction of Romney as the nominee, despite the recent upsurge of Santorum, who I believe will end up as just another Republican anti-Romney flavor of the day, just like the rest of the also rans.
So don't look at the headline and assume that Obama is going to win. This election is going to be a nail biter, as it goes right down to the wire. And Obama is not going to be the sure thing Democrats believe he is either.
Article is here.
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