Calling the Election for Obama

At 10:03 p.m. on Tuesday night, we might actually start the process of closing our books. While people may be a little more effusive, we are more sanguine. We have seen the polls and believe that Obama will win this election tonight. Obama is probably going to win Florida’s 29 electoral votes, he might win Colorado’s 9 electoral votes and also New Hampshire’s 4 electoral votes. At the end of the day, while most people expected the President’s 2008 coalition to crumble, it seems as though Organizing for America has managed to do whatever it is they did best …

Most of this projection is simply based on the fact that Mitt Romney has no path to victory without Ohio. And in that state – the most important battleground state – there is something called provisional ballots. Obama currently leads Mitt Romney by less than 200,000 votes. Because there are more than 250,000 provisional ballots out there, it does not matter whether Obama is ahead. At the end of the night, if Obama is not ahead by more than 250,000 votes, then Ohio will actually remain the toss up state for more than 10 days.

That is why Florida is the November surprise. As we update this – at 10:46 p.m. – Romney has basically maxed out the counties in which we expected him to win while his opponent – Obama – is still growing his lead. And this is still happening in states like Wisconsin and Ohio. Again, let us put Ohio on the side. Wisconsin has two major areas – Milwaukee and Madison. These are reliable Democratic bastions and most people underestimated the Obama ground game. This is what CNN is saying and the truth is that Mitt Romney may have made all the right noises in the polls – but the ground game seems to have come to pass.

Obama will be re-elected as President of the United States simply because he now does not need Ohio, Virginia or even Colorado. And yet, he somehow has them right now. Now, he also has Florida. Even if Mitt Romney is now ahead in the popular vote – with more than 1,500,000 people preferring Romney, we have not even considered California, Oregon and Washington State. What about Nevada and Minnesota? At the end of the day, one would rather be Obama than Romney. It is only 10:50 p.m.

Dennis Matanda,
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