How America’s Voting on Tuesday

PRESIDENTIAL RACE

You may recall my post last week predicting that Barack Obama will capture 400 electoral votes. I stand by that call. Specifically, he will capture all of the currently recognized battleground states (as in the current projection from electoral-vote.com in the sidebar), along with slim wins, in order of decreasing plausibility, in Montana, North Dakota, Georgia, and West Virginia to reach 401. He ought to clinch a victory reasonably early in the evening, even with the media petrified of making a hasty projection. The failures of the McCain campaign are numerous and well-documented, but in the end, it comes down to two: First, the choice of Sarah Palin for VP galvanized the base but chased away everyone else. Second, McCain’s reaction to the financial crisis was consistently inconsistent. A race that appeared to be a dead heat as recently as mid-September has turned into a rout.

SENATE BREAKDOWN

There are currently 51 Senators caucusing with the Democrats, though whether Joe Lieberman will continue to do so is, let’s say, unknown. There are at least five seats moving to the left side of the aisle: Warner in Virginia, the Udalls in Colorado and New Mexico, Shaheen in New Hampshire, and Begich in Alaska. Hence, Democrats would need to capture four of the six toss-ups (Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Oregon) to reach a filibuster-proof majority of 60 votes. By the skin of their teeth in Georgia, they’ll do it, just as they barely got a raw majority two years ago. Franken, Hagan, Martin, and Merkley will be in Washington come January (despite Dole now running the mind-blowingly vile ad below, in the fine tradition of fear-mongering in North Carolina political advertising). In any event, it’s time to construct my election night multimedia war room …