Waking up to Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire:
Nate Silver now projects President Obama’s margin of victory to be two or three percentage points
in the popular vote, approximating the margin that George W. Bush achieved in defeating John Kerry in 2004.
In addition, he gives Obama a 91.6% chance to win the necessary 270 electoral votes for re-election.
John Avlon: “The final polls are out and behind the national horserace is a fascinating dynamic — Mitt Romney is narrowly winning independent voters while President Obama is winning centrist voters by a nearly 20-point margin.”
“This is significant because in past elections independents and centrist voters have been largely synonymous-overlapping cohorts, reflecting the belief of many independents that the two parties are too polarized and disproportionately dominated by their respective special interests. But what I think we’re seeing this year is the extended impact of the tea party – a growth in the number of independent conservatives that has moved the overall independent voting block slightly to the right. In turn, centrist voters are more likely to vote for Obama precisely because of the polarizing impact of the tea party and the intransigence of many conservative congressmen when it came to working in a good faith spirit of principled compromise with the Obama administration.”
OK… I’m off for my morning appointments (gee…how do people get up this early?). – Bill
