There’s an election map quiz on BBC World that asks readers to define how the battleground states will vote in the US election: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19794259
Here is my prognostication:
I think my prediction is probably too weighted towards Obama (I believe the actual election will be closer), but believe that Obama will win the next election (as I have said before). I don’t plan on watching the debates tonight… I’ll be playing in our regular DCC game over at my friend Kevin’s house (in other words, I have more important things to do).
A few of my picks:
Florida: Florida has usually been close (just ask Al Gore), but I think enough old people will be worried about the vagaries of Romney’s position on Social Security that it will push a few of the elderly centrists (reluctantly) into the arms of the Democrats. Many of the seniors probably don’t like either candidate, so they may just stay home — which is bad for Romney. Plus, Florida has a fairly large Latino population… with the exception of Little Havana, they are probably going to go Obama. Of all my predictions, I think this is the most likely to be wrong, but I have a hard time seeing the fixed income people being that comfortable with the current war on entitlements being waged by some of Romney’s supporters.
Michigan: Michigan went to Obama last election and Romney probably lost Michigan when he said that the car companies should be allowed to fail. Now that Chrysler and GM are doing better (and Ford, who turned down bailout money, is looking a bit flat), Obama can count on the Michigan vote.
Minnesota: I think Minnesota is always a tossup, but I’m calling it for Obama. The “Main Street vs. Wall Street” debate seems to look on Obama with a bit more favor than Romney, plus Minnesota is one of the states where the Democrats can claim job growth under Obama after getting pounded years before.
New Mexico/Colorado: These two are a toss-up. Obama gets love on the coasts but not in cattle country. I split the difference by giving Colorado to Romney and New Mexico to Obama. I think that Colorado has more electoral votes than New Mexico, so Colorado is a better prize, but I’m predicting Obama will get around 75% of the Latino vote for obvious reasons, thus New Mexico, California and maybe even Florida are probably all going to go blue.
There you have it. Feel free to stop in after the first week in Novemeber to congratulate me on my accuracy or gloat over my stupidity.