Y|O|Y The Prognosticator

I've held off on an election recap because Missouri was still up in the air. The Show Me state finally went to McCain, making it only the second time in over a century that Missouri did not choose the winner. (Since 1904, they only missed in 1956.)

First, let me get to my prognostication that was correct. Back in 2004, after Barack Obama gave his speech to the Democratic Party convention, I turned to my ex and said, "He's going to be our first black president." I was right, but I had no idea it would be so soon. As it happens, I think a lot of people felt the same way I did that night.

My National Presidential Pre-Election Prediction
Now, on to the results where my predictions weren't nearly as good. Before the election, I predicted Obama/Biden 286; McCain/Palin 252 as the electoral totals according to the following map.


The National Presidential Election Results
The results were much more dramatic in Obama's favor, Obama/Biden 365; McCain/Palin 173, since he nearly swept the battleground states including Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Indiana, and Nevada. As we've just seen, McCain held on to Missouri and Obama managed to peel away an electoral vote in the 2nd Congressional District (Omaha) in Nebraska.


New York State Presidential Election Results
Here's how things shook out in the Empire State. In general, New York City usually goes heavily to the Democrats and "upstate" (everything north of New York City) goes Republican. You can see that Obama took the larger metropolitan areas of Albany-Schenectady-Troy, Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester.

The colors make it seem that the State was close to 50/50 but the state went heavily for Obama by 62%-37%. Rensselaer County (the blue county to the east of Albany on the map), where I am, went 53%-45% Obama. Most of the red in the northern portion of the map is the sparsely populated Adirondack Mountains region (the "North Country"), and the red in the south central is the apple/wine growing areas along the Pennsylvania border (the "Southern Tier").