A Moment in History

Posted 11/05/2008 by Sumner in Labels: barack obama, election results, south carolina, sumner, virginia

As I first woke up this morning my first thought was, "Did that really happen yesterday? Was Barack Obama overwhelmingly elected President of the United States?" The answer was of course yes. I think it may be fair to say that I am still sort of in a state of shock, not fully aware of the reality of the situation. Just a year ago I would have given no better than a 20% chance that Barack Obama would be our 44th president. Not only did Obama win the election, but he did so quite convincingly. The electoral vote count as of now sits at 349-163, which does not account for North Carolina (where Obama has a miniscule lead) and Missouri (where McCain has an even smaller lead).

My election predictions turned out to be fairly accurate. If anything, I was too conservative in my major of victory for Obama. My only errors were in Florida and Indiana (both of which I gave to McCain). More importantly however is that I correctly predicted the outcomes in South Carolina and Virginia with surprising accuracy percentage wise:

Virginia- My prediction/Actual Obama: 50% / 52% McCain: 47% / 47%
South Carolina- My prediction/Actual Obama: 44% / 45% McCain: 54% / 54%

In both cases I slightly underestimated Obama's percentage, but got McCain's correct. I would say that I did a pretty good job.

Most significant however is the fact that Virgina experienced the transition to blue that I predicted: Obama and Warner both won. North Carolina experiences a very similar trend: victories for Hagan, Perdue, and what appears to be Obama. I think the shift in both of these states suggests that we may be in the beginning of a defining political realignment. The country appears to want change, and that's exactly how they voted.

It may take a couple of days for the results of this election to truly settle in, but for now I'll end by screaming, "Yes We Did!"