Yes, I have been watching the polls and the trendlines, and been reading what Nate Silver are saying, and looked at Poblano's charts, and played around with the interactive maps at 270toWin.
And yes, I have been thinking about posting a 'prediction map' BEFORE we get the actual results, and then see how my map compares with the actual results. This morning, in Kula2316's Morning Joe diary, she had a prediction posted by Larry Sabato.
Follow me over the fold for Larry's prediction, compared to my prediction
Larry's prediction looks like this:
While I mostly agree with this, my prediction puts Obama at 418 and McCain at 120, and looks like this:
I added Arizona, because my sis-in-law lives there, and I think there is an underestimation of the 'fed-up' factor.
I added Louisiana and Georgia, because this Huffpo article states the following:
...there are three states in which early voting has already exceeded its totals from 2004. These are Georgia, where early voting is already at 180 percent of its 2004 total, Louisiana (169 percent), and North Carolina (129 percent).
I think the early vote numbers here indicate that the Poblano model, which predicted Obama victory with only 30% increase in AA votes, underestimates these actual numbers.
I also added Alaska, Montana and North-Dakota, because I understand the minds of 'individual mountain-living people' - they dont stand for BS, and they can quiclky detect it. I think especially Alaska may be a surprise....
So, there, I put myself out there... 5 days to wait to see how wrong or right I was, but I challenge you... post your prediction map in the comments, explaining why you add or leave out certain states, and lets see in 5 days who came the closest!!
Lastly, as promised, the poll: