Mostly Right, a Little Wrong

I'm sure you know, Faithful Reader, that I expected George W. Bush to win re-election. Here's what I wrote in January:

George W. Bush will lose Pennsylvania in the general election, but will win both the electoral and popular votes nationwide by an indisputable margin because, among other things, California is more important than Pennsylvania.

Okay. He didn't win California.

Last Friday, over at Free Republic, I wrote this in response to a suggestion that Bush would win in a landslide:

I don't think a landslide. But a decisive victory, yes.

And I posted this comment over at JunkYardBlog in the wake of the early exit polls that showed John Kerry would win really big:

I suppose I don’t know what I’m talking about. But it seems to me that looking at exit polls at this stage of the game — that is, before any actual vote tallies have been reported — is like putting a lot of stock in being the “frontrunner” for the Democratic nomination until people actually start voting in Iowa and blow you out of the water.

True, I was way, way off in one respect:

In the presidential election, Nov. 2, 2004, Bush-Cheney will carry at least five states that right now are considered to be a lock for the Democratic ticket; and, at least two-thirds of the "battleground" states will be carried by the Republican ticket.

That's because, Faithful Reader, I was thinking that the move towards Bush would evidence itself in this or that state, not across the board around the country, which is what happened. But, I did get that right, too, in a way:

I think the whole idea of an evenly divided electorate, with the presidential election hanging in the balance of a relatively small number of undecided voters, is hogwash.

As Bryan Preston notes, Friday:

Now that Iowa's votes have been counted and its electoral votes credited to the President, his total margin of victory has widened. One red state, New Hampshire, barely went blue. But two blue states, New Mexico and Iowa, flipped red. In the ECV, it's 286-252. In the popular vote, it's 56,828,162 to 52,160,172, or roughly a 4.7 million vote margin. Or 52-47. Tell me that's not enough to give President Bush a mandate.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 11/08/04 05:27:15 PM
Categorized as Political.