Who Can Really Say?

Bush 301, Kerry 237

I'm not big on predicting. I didn't even bother going out on a limb two weeks ago and predicting the Yankees would win when they were up 3-0 on Boston and predictions were cheap.

Aside from just being too darn close, reading the tea leaves that we call polls is even more difficult because the electorate seems so highly motivated. We've hung in the low 50% of voting age population turnout for near 30 years, if not lower, and this year we might get close to 60% turnout. Calculating how these first time or irregular voters will split is pretty much a guessing game. It'll be fun when the dust settles to see which polling outfits got closest, and whether success can be correlated with their model.

The last time I tried to pick a number of electoral votes for the winner was 1968, 8th grade social studies with Mr. Litke at Fieldstone Middle School (then only in it's third year of existence). Back in the day, as us old-timer's like to recall, it was Nixon against Humphrey, with a strong third party showing by George Wallace. The deal was, everyone in the class put down how many electoral votes they thought the candidates would get, and the winner received a free ice cream cone, pop, fudgsicle, creamsicle, etc. for a week at lunch. Value of the prize? Fifty cents.

I don't remember what I put in as my predictions, but I do very specifically remember that I won. Now, Nixon pulled 301 electoral votes to Humprhey's 191, and Wallace held 46. Up to that time the South had been reliably Democratic, so if Humphrey had carried it in Wallace's absence it'd have been 301-237.

Earlier today I ran across a link with a map and everything that showed the combination of states Bush would need to reach exactly 301. I lost the link. Sorry.

So there's my prediction. And it's worth every penny of the paper it's not written on.

Posted by Peter at November 1, 2004 09:21 PM