New Mexico

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday named a third former Democratic presidential rival to his administration with his formal announcement of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson as his nominee for commerce secretary.

The United States saw dramatic increases in voting from traditionally underrepresented groups, including minorities and young voters, according to a new analysis released this week by Project Vote. If borne out by systematic analysis of the voter rolls, this change in the electorate is evidence of the power of successful voter registration drives and an indication of the strong inclination of voters to participate in the process when candidates address their issues.  read more »

The vote on Senator Lieberman's chairmanship will be held tomorrow. Even though it will take place behind closed doors and without a roll call vote, you can still make your voice heard by signing the Just Say No To Joe petition at FDL. Or, you could directly call a member of the Democratic Steering committee:

Debbie Stabenow, Michigan - Chairwoman (202) 224-4822
Harry Reid, Nevada (202) 224-3542
John Kerry, Massachusetts (202) 224-2742
Daniel Inouye, Hawaii (202) 224-3934
Robert Byrd, West Virginia (202) 224-3954
Edward Kennedy, Massachusetts (202) 224-4543
Joe Biden, Delaware (202) 224-5042
Patrick Leahy, Vermont (202) 224-4242
Chris Dodd, Connecticut (202) 224-2823
Tom Harkin, Iowa (202) 224-3254
Max Baucus, Montana (202) 224-2651
Richard Durbin, Illinois (202) 224-2152
Kent Conrad, North Dakota (202) 224-2043  read more »

We've all seen this county-level map, showing how isolated the shift toward the GOP was since 2004, against the much broader pro-Obama tide:

But this past week, Professor Charles Franklin, of Political Arithmetik and Pollster.com, has added considerably more to the picture of how broad Obama's win was, first by looking at race, then by looking at different demographic groups.  Details on the flip.  read more »

S. 1193 would direct the Secretary of the Interior to take into trust 2 parcels of Federal land for the benefit of certain Indian Pueblos in the State of New Mexico....

• Vote on This Bill: For | Against

With Missouri and Nebraska-02 seemingly going to McCain, it seems the final electoral count will by Obama 364--174 McCain. Obama wins the Kerry states plus Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. When looking to stretch the map, Indiana and North Carolina are the big prizes.

In the Senate, Democrats have 54 seats, plus Bernie Sanders, with four campaigns (Alaska, Georgia, Minnesota and Oregon) still undecided. We need three of the four to win the Employee Free Choice Act. One or two will probably be enough to pass Obama's legislation. There is still a lot of fighting to be done in the Senate. Expect a recount in more than one of these states.

In the House, we are at 258 seats, with AK-AL, CA-04, ID-01, NJ-03, WA-08 and, maybe, OH-15 still undecided. We seem on course to hit 260 exactly, as per my final House forecast.  read more »

Key Senate Races

State	Reporting	Dem %	Rep %
Alaska	66%	47%	48%
Georgia	98%	46%	50%
Minnesota	96%	42%	42%
Oregon	45%	47%	47%

Democratic seats: 55 54
Republican seats: 40
Independent seats: 2
Undecided: 4
Pickups: Colorado, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Virginia

Update 7: Franken takes the lead: Franken now leads by 1,350 votes or so. Still, get ready for a recount.

Update 6: Minnesota margin now 1,465 votes: Get ready for a recount in Minnesota.  read more »

This is it. My final forecasts for 2008:

President
Electoral Vote: Obama 353--185 McCain
National Popular Vote: Obama 52.8%--45.7% McCain


 read more »

With an historic Election Day coming tomorrow, it is increasingly clear that the McCain-Palin campaign’s ACORN-voter fraud endgame may be to use their relentless attacks as a justification for a wave of legal challenges to close election results in key states. Over the weekend, McCain-Palin campaign manager Rick Davis made the rounds of the Sunday news shows claiming that polls showed McCain “structurally tied” in New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada. Never mind that, as SilentPatriot at Crooks and Liars points out,

“In Nevada, Barack Obama leads in the last eight polls, with a margin between 4 and 12 points.

In Colorado, excluding John Zogby's garbage internet polls, Barack Obama has lead in every single poll taken since the end of September. What's more, the most recent PPP poll has him up a staggering 10 points.  read more »

In my nearly final presidential forecast, I give the following breakdown:

1. Obama at 338 minimum: Obama wins the Kerry states plus Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, and Virginia.
   
2. Three toss-ups: Missouri, North Carolina and North Dakota are the only remaining toss-ups, in that polls yet to be released could still flip those states.

 read more »

Electoral College: Obama 291, McCain 160 Toss-up 87 (270 to win, 269 to tie)
National popular vote: Obama 51.6%--44.6% McCain


Dark Blue (273): Obama +6.0% or more
Lean Blue (18): Obama +2.3%-+5.9%
White / Toss-up (87): Obama +2.2% to McCain +2.2%
Lean Red (28): McCain +2.3%-+5.9%
Dark Red (132): McCain +6.0% or more

Relevant States Chart
Polls 10/28-11/02
States not shown are further either direction  read more »

Current Projection: Democratic Pickup of 7 seats

Republican Held: Democratic Pickups 7  read more »

During these final days of the 2008 election, Republicans are pushing ads that portray Wyoming as a reliably conservative state and one that distrusts East Coast Liberals. If you are a born and bred Wyomingite with conservative creds, you are good and trustworthy. If you were born somewhere else -- especially any East Coast state north of Virginia or (worse) California -- and you're a Democrat, you are bad, untrustworthy and probably a Socialist.
 read more »

Obama has inched up in the tracking polls for the third straight day, and he now leads by 6% according to Pollster.com with less than 77 hours before the polls close in all swing states. (Iowa is the last "swing state" to close, if you can call Iowa a swing state, anyway. Part of Montana closes at 11:00 p.m. eastern). So, McCain has to gain a full 1% on Obama every thirteen hours between now and then in order to win. That means that McCain has to flip about 100,000 voters every hour, or three every second, in order to tie Obama. Best of all, he can only target 70% of the electorate for these votes, because 30% is already spoken for.

More in the extended entry.  read more »

I'm really not temperamentally suited to being any better than any of you at making number-crunching prediction this close to the election.  Yeah, I'll toss some numbers out--maybe.  But my heart isn't it.  I'm not interested in being right.  I'm interested in dreaming big, making impossible predictions.  Which is where October 2006 comes in.  Because that's when I first let my thoughts about 2008 start to slip out... thoughts that had been seriously brewing since Katrina, 13 months earlier.  Because that's what I do best.

Now, I didn't write specifically about 2008.  Nostrodamus I am not.  But I wrote about 2006 in terms of realigning elections, and I said that what was an overlooked key to them was two consecutive wave elections in the House.  Well, it's pretty obvious what that means.  read more »