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Time to toot my own horn (not in that way...perverts...)

I don't typically like to brag, but I have to say that with regard to my predictions during this election season, I've been closer to perfect than Halle Berry with a British accent.

As I mentioned in an earlier post today, I called 50 of the 51 states (including D.C.) correctly in the election last night and guessed 46 of the 51 accurately when it came to specific margin of victory. Florida was my only hiccup, as I gave Romney an ever so slight edge and it appears as if Obama is going to carry the state.

I predicted the winner of all four debates accurately and guessed the margin of victory correctly on three of the four. In the fourth and final debate, I gave the president a slight edge, but thought that the CBS snap poll would only show him winning by a score which was in the margin of error and that wasn't the case, as according to that poll, it was his most dominating performance of the three presidential debates.

I also correctly called out the Gallup tracking poll as being an outlier and that it would likely be shown as quite inaccurate come election day. Ever since Gallup switched from their registered to likely voter model, they had Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the lead. Before they suspended polling in light of Hurricane Sandy, Gallup had Romney leading by between 5 and 7 points, while almost every other poll (outside of Rasmussen) had the race at about even. Even on election day, the only poll outside of the right-leaning Rasmussen which had Romney in the lead nationally was Gallup. The Gallup poll also showed that Romney had erased the gender gap among women voters. As election day showed, I was right about Gallup being wrong. President Obama won 11-12% among women and appears to be headed for a 2-3% victory overall.  So, Gallup was only off by about 10-11% among women and 3-4% overall with regard to their final poll, 7-11% off if we look at the polls taken just prior to Hurricane Sandy striking the Northeast.

Lastly, I made the shocking claim that at the end of election night, the state of Ohio wasn't going to matter as far as declaring a winner. Why did I say this? Because according to my numbers, President Obama was going to win 26 states (including D.C.) for a total of 303 electoral votes. Even without Ohio, he would have won the election with 285 electoral votes - a full 15 more than is required for victory. For an entire week preceding the election, almost all I heard pundits and columnists talk and write about was the state of Ohio and that whomever won this very state would win the election. With Florida yet to be decided, but seeming to lean Obama's direction, the president will likely end up with 332 electoral votes. Even if he didn't win either Florida or Ohio, he would have remained in office for another four years by winning 285 electoral votes.

On that note, I may head to Vegas shortly, for I seem to be on a roll (a figurative one, that is). From this point forward, I think I'm trusting myself more than Gallup or Rasmussen, but not as much as Nate Silver quite yet. When it comes to elections, I think I'm going to start the slogan, "In Nate We Trust."

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