Who Are You Going to Believe, a Bookie or a Disreputable Creep Like Dick Morris

In recent days Michael Barone, George Will and the incomparable Dick Morris have all predicted that Mitt Romney will be elected President, and by a significant margin.  Mr. Will even has him carrying Minnesota, a state that has not voted Republican since 1972, when Nixon beat George McGovern in 49 states. Karl Rove has also predicted a Romney win, albeit my more modest margins.  Mr. Rove after all has to raise a lot of money every two years, and it helps to not completely shoot your credibility when you ask people to trust you with their money.

If you know someone that also believes that Mitt Romney is going to win tomorrow, please encourage them to wager on it.  Google led me to a web site where one could bet $100 on Romney and collect  $295 if he should be elected tomorrow night.  To bet on the President being re-elected, you would have to risk $340, just to win $100 if he wins.

Bookmakers make a profit by minimizing their risk.  Political pundits get paid to please an audience.  The bookmaker's goal is to minimize risk by having equal amounts of money ride on either outcome.  So a 3 to 1 betting line reflects the real actions taken by actual bettors with their own money.  That should influence your thinking, whether the result is one that you wish for, or not.

Nate Silver's prediction model, which correctly predicted every state except for Indiana last time, and has correctly predicted all but one of the last 60-odd Senate elections, predicts that the President's re-election is 92.2% probable.  The Intrade Future Market has the President's re-election at 67.3% likely.

My official 2012 Presidential Prediction:

• Barack Obama 50.2%/303 Electoral Votes
• Mitt Romney 48.4%/235 Electoral Votes
• Gary Johnson 0.9%
• Jill Stein 0.4%
• Virgil Goode and assorted eccentrics: 0.1%

303 Electoral Votes represents the President winning every jurisdiction he carried except for IN, Nebraska's 2nd congressional district, NC and FL.

A few days ago I wrote a post about how to follow the electoral math on election night.  It considered nine states in play.  But today I find it very unlikely that Romney can win NV or WI.  I also think he can't win without taking NC, the only swing state where he is a significant favorite.  Reducing the variables to these six states, the math becomes even simpler.

The President has 253 likely Electoral Votes and his challenger has 206.  With 79 EV to be determined on Election Day, Barack Obama needs to win only 17 of them.  He can get there just by winning Ohio or Florida.  Or Virginia and one more state among NH, CO, or IA.   One last path to 270 would involve losing OH, Fl and VA, but sweeping NH, CO and IA.

So I'm confident.  Not because I want the President to be elected, but because the available evidence tells me that he is likely to.

Romney Has 5 Paths to 270 (and one to 269)

The Presidential race is 4 days away and the President has a pretty clear upper hand in his re-election effort, but Mitt Romney has several paths to winning the election.

Here are my assumptions: The outcome of 41 states plus the District of Columbia can be predicted with at least confidence.* President Obama can bank on winning a minimum of 237 Electoral Votes (EV) while Mitt Romney is assured of 191.  Romney therefore needs to win 79 EV out of the 110 EV in the nine states that might be carried by either candidate. I think that any path Romney might have to 270 involves him winning North Carolina (15 EV).  So for the scenarios below, we'll say that he starts with 206 EV and consider eight states up for grabs, and I would put them into two categories based on their number of electoral votes:

Three Large Swing States: Florida (29 EV), Ohio (18), and Virginia (13),
Five Small Swing States, Wisconsin (10), Colorado (9), Iowa (6), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4).

The winner of the election will largely be determined by how the Large Swing States go.  Keep these scenarios in mind as you watch the results come in on Tuesday.

1.  If Romney wins Florida, Ohio and Virginia:
If he wins all 3 of the Large Swing States, he will have 266 EV and will need to win just one Small Swing State.

2.  If Romney wins FL and OH but not VA:
He will have 253 votes and can be elected by:
A. Wining WI and CO.
B.  Winning WI or CO  if he also wins two of the other Small Swing States: (IA, NV, NH).

3.  If Romney wins FL and VA but not OH:
He starts with 248 EV and can be elected by:
A. Winning CO and WI plus one other Small Swing States (IA, NV, or NH).
B.  Winning WI or CO if he also wins NV and IA.
Note: if he wins CO, IA and NV, then he gets a 269-269 tie, which would mean Romney being elected President and Joe Biden remaining Vice-President under the provisions of the 12th Amendment.


4. If Romney wins OH and VA but not FL:
He starts with 237 and must sweep all five Small Swing States.

5. If Romney wins FL, but loses OH and VA:
He starts with 235 and must win all five Small Swing States.

Winning just OH or VA while losing the other two Large Swing States does not present any way for Romney to get to 270.

As long as Romney wins NC, he has several permutations to get  over the line.  But every time one of those remaining eight swing states gets colored blue, he loses an "out". If these swing states provide 33 EV for the President, the election is over.



* President Obama could pull an upset in Nebraska's 2nd Congressional district.  This is unlikely to occur and very unlikely to determine the winner, although it could avoid the 269-269 tie scenario discussed above in Section 3B.