Talking myself down

I'm trying to convince myself that everything will be OK tomorrow. Looking at all of the polls (and believe me I feel like I've viewed a billion of them) I just can't see Obama losing, but I feel like I've been down this road before. Last election day, I sat down to watch the returns come in sure that Kerry was going to win, and I was very disappointed.

So yeah, I'm nervous.

In an effort to talk myself down, I decided to go back to last year and look at the polls and returns. What I found was comforting. Looking at the Real Clear Politics averages of the polls in last year's race, it turns out that the polls were right nearly all of the time...it was me who was wrong. Specifically, look at these 2004 projections, both of the national polls and the battleground states:

RACE            PROJECTION   RESULT
Nation-wide     Bush +1.5    Bush +3
Electoral Vote  Bush +54     Bush +38

Florida         Bush +0.6    Bush +5
Ohio            Bush +2.1    Bush +2
Pennsylvania    Kerry +0.9   Kerry +2
Wisconsin       Bush +0.9    Kerry +1
Iowa            Bush +0.3    Bush +1
Minnesota       Kerry +3.2   Kerry +3
Michigan        Kerry +3.5   Kerry +3
Missouri        Bush +4.2    Bush +7
New Mexico      Bush +1.4    Bush +1
Nevada          Bush +6.3    Bush +3
Colorado        Bush +5.2    Bush +5
New Hampshire   Kerry +1     Kerry +1

While this poll or that poll may have been wrong, the averages were very much on the money. Only two of the states (Florida and Nevada) were more than three points off their averages. Only Wisconsin went against the candidate projected by the poll average. In other words, the polls predicted the result almost perfectly.

So unless all of the polls are particularly bad this year, we should see Obama win the overall vote by around 7.3 percent and by a 338-200 electoral vote margin.

That's a little better, but I'm still nervous.

Tags: Election 2008 Barack Obama John McCain