LOL, remember how close the election was predicted to be, by pollsters and pundits alike?
Only two days left — and, no, no one knows what's going to happen.
President Obama and Mitt Romney are scrambling for last-minute votes on Sunday and Monday in what could turn out to be a historically close presidential election — maybe not a rerun of the 2000 George-W.-Bush-Al Gore battle, but very close nonetheless.
How close, you ask?
The average of polls compiled by the RealClearPolitics website gives Obama a lead of 0.2% in the popular vote — 47.4% to 47.2%. That would leave 5.4% undecided.
And after President Obama won reelection, the media still insisted on calling the election
very close.
There seems to be some confusion about whether or not the United States just witnessed a close election. Perhaps some historical perspective can help: Yes, this was a close election.
Here’s why:
If we include Florida, Obama appears to have won 332 electoral votes to Romney’s 206. In the popular vote, the latest numbers suggest an Obama victory of 50.4 percent to Romney’s 48.1. This is not recount territory. Measured by the standards of the 20th century, though, it reflects a genuinely tight race.
On today's episode of ABC's This Week, John Karl gave himself some good advice:
KARL: Maybe if we can just listen to Nate Silver next time and not have to bother with the election.
The Pundit Row on the same show was asked to choose the defining moment of 2012. It seems that now that the election has ended and all the votes are in indicating a 51% popular vote majority, the media is finally reluctantly admitting that President Obama's victory was decisive.
KARL: OK, now we've asked each of you to come up with your -- since this is the last show of the year -- tell me what you felt were the defining or was the defining moment of 2012.
PURDUM: Well, it sounds like an obvious answer, but I think President Obama's re-election will be seen by history as...
(CROSSTALK)
(LAUGHTER)
PURDUM: I think -- I think the way that he won, the way that he won, so decisively, so clearly, and with an electorate that -- whose composition surprised the heck out of the Republicans will make his second term seen as -- he can no longer be seen as sort of a fluky creation of the wars and the Bush economy. He's actually a two-term president.
Imagine that. Sen. Mitch McConnell failed, in his main mission to make President Obama a one term President. Spectactularly, by all measures. I am glad President Obama is acting like he knows it, in these fiscal cliff 'negotiations', where the Republicans still delusionally seem to think they have some hand and are making
demands as we inch ever closer to the curb. The Republicans continue to cling to their
gerrymandered House 'majority' as their mandate. Time for them to embrace the reality.
Link to video is here, the quote appears in the last segment of the show.