Who will it be? Or, perhaps, how bad will it be? Will it be a night of surprises? As the fateful hour approaches, National Review Online has gathered fearless Election Day predictions.
Kenneth Blackwell
The latest FOX News/Rasmussen Reports battleground poll presents a plausible scenario for a narrow John McCain victory. While most pundits have written McCain’s political obituary, he is extremely competitive in Florida (McCain leads 50 percent to 49 percent), North Carolina (McCain leads 50 percent to 49 percent), Missouri (tied at 49 percent) and Ohio (tied at 49 percent). Factor in Monday’s Mason-Dixon Virginia numbers (Obama leads 47 percent to 44 percent) and this election is far from over.
The other wild card is the upset brewing in Pennsylvania. The McCain campaign actually thinks it will win that state, giving them a lifesaving electoral firewall.
Looking at the battleground states a day before the election, I see McCain winning Florida, North, Carolina, Missouri, Ohio, and Pennsylvania; and losing Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia. If that happens, McCain will squeak out 273 electoral votes and win.
— Ken Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state, is a senior fellow at the American Civil Rights Union. He has also served as an undersecretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Alex Castellanos
The Swami opens the envelope and predicts a big democratic year but Barack Obama underperforms. Why? Obama is seen as the most inexperienced Democratic candidate at the most uncertain moment in world history. Also, 60 percent of Americans say Obama is left of center but only 20 percent say they are. Congress has the mommy bear job in government, “spreading the wealth around.” The presidency is a daddy-bear job, however, and Obama is not seen as strong enough. The youth vote is huge, black Americans show up in large numbers — but so does everybody else. So Obama’s turnout operation is less of factor than Democrats had hoped.
Pro-McCain voters have less intensity than pro-Obama voters but anti-Obama voters are fired up and ready to go. There just aren’t enough of them in a big Democratic year. The Silent Majority becomes the Silent Minority.
Obama carries Virginia but not North Carolina. He carries Pennsylvania but not Ohio or Michigan or Indiana. Obama carries Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Iowa, and Florida. McCain gets one vote out of Maine. Obama gets 318 electoral votes. Obama 50.5 to McCain 48.5.
The Democrats reach 58 in the Senate because Republicans win Coleman, lose Georgia in a stunning upset, but win Louisiana in a shocker. House Democrats go +31.
— Alex Castellanos is a Republican media consultant residing in Alexandria, Virginia.
Elizabeth Crum
Like everyone who is willing to be honest about it, I have no earthly idea what is going to happen today in the presidential election so I’m going with the most interesting, historically significant (and actually plausible) outcome I can imagine:
Nevada, Colorado, Michigan, and Pennysylvania go to The One; New Hampshire, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida go to McCain; and the electoral college is tied at 269. Ten thousand attorneys descend upon these eleven toss up states like one of the great plagues of Egypt. Obama wins because he has more money and more lawyers to defend the fraudulent votes cast by dead people and out-of-staters.
In Nevada, Democrat Dina Titus will beat John Porter in our Distict 3 congressional race. Many feel that Porter deserves his loss: He has not been a reliable conservative in D.C. and ran a terrible campaign.
The most interesting and controversial Nevada initiative – to raise our room tax by as much as three percent to fund public education – will pass, even though economic analysts have warned this will harm our already struggling tourism industry. And our educational system will no doubt continue to be ranked among the worst in the nation due to our Board of Education’s general hostility to fiscal responsibility, reform, and charter schools.
– Elizabeth Crum is a freelance blogger in Nevada.
Kathryn Jean Lopez
Predictions? What are they good for?
Reading material on E-(or D!) Day, of course!
So here are mine: John Sununu wins. I don’t know if that’s true but it is should be. We’ll need someone smart in Washington who is on our side.
Coleman wins. Al Franken cannot be a senator. This “anyone can be president (etc.)” Was not meant to be made a joke of. I mean, we’re free to make a joke of it all — the Constitution and all, which Joe Biden might be on board for — but … let’s not, Minnesota.
Murtha loses. It’s the right thing. And if anyone can do it, it is the bitter clingers.
I do hold out some hope on the presidential. There is no reason to not keep hope alive. Just vote. Ignore the talking heads prematurely celebrating and ignore the exit polls.
See you tonight.
– Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor of National Review Online.
Rob Long
To be succinct, I would say this about the election: Build an ark.
– Rob Long’s column, The Long View, appears in National Review.
John J. Miller
Barack Obama will win the presidential election. He will carry all of the 2004 blue states, including Pennsylvania, and also flip Colorado, Iowa, New Mexico, and Virginia. This would give Obama 286 electoral votes, to 252 for John McCain.
In the Senate, Democrats will pick up seats in Alaska, Colorado, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, and Virginia. Republicans will hang on in Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, and Mississippi. These results will give Democrats a 58-seat majority (including Jeffords and Lieberman).
In the House, Democrats will gain 19 seats. Big-name GOP losers will include Alaska’s Don Young, Connecticut’s Chris Shays, Florida’s Lincoln Diaz-Balart, and Florida’s Tom Feeney. Also, on the Democratic side, the career of Pennsylvania’s John Murtha will come to an end.
— John J. Miller is NR’s national political reporter.
John J. Pitney Jr.
As I explained Monday, one can think of a scenario in which McCain loses the popular vote but barely wins the electoral vote. But that outcome is just a remote possibility. The most likely result is that Obama wins 54 percent of the two-party popular vote to McCain’s 46. Obama wins the electoral vote 353-185, carrying the swing states of Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Virginia, Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina.
In the Senate, Democrats pick up seven seats: Alaska, Colorado, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, and Virginia. In the House, Democrats gain 30 seats.
This scenario assumes that current polls are roughly accurate. But suppose they understate Obama’s support and the effectiveness of his GOTV operation. In that case, Obama wins 58-42 in the popular vote. He carries all the swing states above, plus Missouri, Indiana, Montana, North Dakota, Georgia, Arizona, West Virginia, and Arkansas. Here he wins the electoral vote 417-121. Democrats post additional Senate gains in Georgia and Minnesota, for a nine-vote pickup and a 60-vote total.
If the latter scenario pans out, here is a cinematic depiction of how we conservatives will view election-night coverage.
— John J. Pitney, Jr. is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of American Politics at Claremont McKenna College.
Lisa Schiffren
Divination isn’t my talent, but my tea leaves say, faintly, McCain.
It will be dead close, but McCain’s trajectory is rising as Palin and the Plumber finally make the case the campaign failed to do. But they got on message late and might need a more time for the lines to cross — as happened in 1976 when Ford lost to Carter. In that case Obama wins.
This election is about legitimate anger at Bush & Co. — vs. legitimate fear of Obama’s promised policies. I can’t see my fellow citizens choosing to punish Bush if it means a return to 1979, with high taxes, stagflation, weakness abroad and cultural decline — which are the predictable consequences of giving Pelosi/ Reid/Obama unchecked power.
If McCain wins, there will be a discrepancy between the popular and electoral votes, as Obama gets supermajorities in big cities, college towns and black neighborhoods — but loses the “outstates.” Life in Obama strongholds will be tense and hostile for a long time. He won’t urge reconciliation.
If McCains win, pundits who claimed Sarah Palin was a drag on the ticket will write essays explaining that, in fact, she allowed voters to believe that a McCain Administration might have a clue about the middle class. Ok, that won’t happen.
— Lisa Schiffren is a speechwriter who lives in New York.
Mark Steyn
The one prediction I can make with confidence is that we won’t get the result we should get – which is a McGovern-esque candidate going down to a McGovern-sized defeat. Instead, we face three options: an Obama landslide or a narrower Obama win, both of which would be bad for the nation and the world; or a narrow McCain victory, which would be bad for our already diseased politics and seems likely to unhinge even further the Democratic Party base, which isn’t good for civilized political discourse.
So I can’t really see any happy endings on Tuesday night. I don’t think it’ll be an Obama landslide, and, if I have to flip between one or other of the 51-49 scenarios, I guess I’m more or less obliged to plump for a narrow McCain-Palin victory. Not a lot of science behind that hunch. Obama will do worse than polls suggest in the Appalachians and rust belt, which is just as well, because I’d say either Virginia and/or North Carolina will go blue. Which I guess is my way of saying the Eastern time zone will determine how the night goes, and everything else will be just mopping up.
In the Senate, Norm Coleman and Susan Collins will survive in Minnesota and Maine, but not Elizabeth Dole down south. And the Democrats won’t get to 60, but with the Maine ladies and other soft-spined Republicans, who says they’ll need to?
– Mark Steyn contributes to National Review, among other publications. He is the author of America Alone.