Taking a Stand

[Cross-posted at Movin' Meat]

Okay, pure horse-race politics here. It's just three days away (finally) and it's time to put my chips on the table. Here's my predictions for Tuesday night. I may be hysterically wrong, or prophetic, but's that's the fun of predicting, right?

President:

• Obama-Biden 379 EVs
• McCain-Palin 159 EVs

Popular vote:

• Turnout: 130,000,000 votes
• 70,000,000 Obama
• 60,000,000 McCain
• or Obama 54%-46% (neglecting third parties)

State-by state results:

Obama keeps all the other Kerry states and wins the "battleground" states of: FL, NC, VA, GA, OH, PA, MI, WI, MN, IA, MO, CO, NM, NV
GA is my long-shot pick. CW is it's out of reach, but turnout there may surprise us. Obama has made plays for IN, WV, AZ, and has a chance at LA, MT and the Dakotas, but I predict all of those will narrowly stay in the McCain column.

Here's my predicted map:


Senate:

Dem 58
Rep 42

This includes Lieberman and Sanders in the Dem caucus, for the sake of argument.
Dem Pickups:

• VA Warner (open)
• NH Shaheen (Sununu)
• NM Udall (open)
• CO Udall (open)
• AK Begich (Stevens)
• OR Merkley (Smith)
• NC Hagan (Dole)

I predict that Franken will fall short in MN, and none of our outside-shot seats in GA, KY, or MS will materialize. Landrieu in LA seems safe, and there are no other pickup opportunities for the GOP as far as I know. Note that I am contradicting myself a bit: if Obama does pull off the upset in GA, then Martin will probably also beat Chambliss. Bah. Who needs consistency?

House:

Let's say a net Dem pickup of 20 seats for a Congress composed of 256 Dem to 178 Rep. That's a conservative estimate, but there have been a few setbacks in the House races recently. A big Obama night could conceivably run the Dems up to as much as 270 seats. That really would require running the table.

Background:

The cool map up there is courtesy of the Daily Kos Political Scoreboard. I don't care if you think DKos is a bunch of lefty haters, you've got to go check out the scoreboard. It's the coolest toy ever for a political junkie. You can of course play with the EV map, but you can also drill down to the state level, graphically looking at county-by county results, or individual congressional district results historically, all of which will be updated in real time on Tuesday. It's very very cool. Also, 538.com has a wealth of data on the current state of the races, and NBC's political guru Chuck Todd has a nice state-by-state walkthrough as well.

Okay, there it is. Now you all know that I am terribly, terribly wrong. Tell me where, and why.