Alright folks, time to clean up the confetti, put away the pots and pans, and take a look at the aftermath.
According to the folks at fivethirtyeight.com, the final electoral vote tally is 365-173, with North Carolina, Indiana, and even one of Nebraska's congressional districts turning blue this year. In terms of the electoral vote, it was a landslide. If you're looking at the popular vote, Barack Obama still landed a decisive victory over John McCain by about 52-46%.
On my predictions, I got the winners correctly, but it seems that the margins were wrong. Baron Hill buried Mike Sodrel by about a 20% margin in the 9th district. My prediction for Governor was closer, with Mitch Daniels beating Jill Long Thompson 58-40%.
It may surprise you, but there are still a few Senate seats that haven't been fully decided yet. In Alaska, there's a slight chance that Ted "Series of Tubes!" Stevens may be re-elected to the US Senate despite being
convicted for taking bribes from a local contractor. However, they're still collecting uncounted absentee and provisional ballots.
In Minnesota, Al Franken finds himself down by only 200+ votes, triggering an automatic recount while his opponent Norm Coleman lawyers up in what may be a small-scale reenactment of the Florida 2000 debacle. In Georgia, Saxby Chambliss has been held under 50% of the vote by his opponent Jim Martin, triggering a runoff election for the Senate seat. And I'm not even getting into the few House seats that are still undecided.
Anyways, we have a President-elect Barack Obama, with an incoming Congress even more under Democratic control. If you listen to some of the more reactionary blogs out there, we're either entering an age of liberal prosperity with a clean environment and an end to our stupid wars in the Middle East, or an age of jackbooted thugs sending your children to state-run Communist schools where they will be forced to obey Sharia law while all your money ends up going into the pockets of lazy hobos.
Savor the afterglow of the Obama win. Don't be ashamed. But after a few days, accept the fact that he's not going to be able to do much until January 20. Even after that, he will be pressured to keep the status quo and not rock the boat. That test will determine whether he can really push for the "change" he's been talking about, or if he's been blowing hot air all this time.
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