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.
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