If Politics Prof. Larry Sabato’s final predictions hold true, Democratic candidate Barack Obama will be elected the next president of the United States and will earn more than two times the number of Electoral College votes than Republican rival John McCain.
“The Crystal Ball expects Barack Obama to run closer to the maximum than to the minimum in the popular vote tally,” his final prediction released yesterday states, adding that Obama is expected to earn 364 Electoral College votes.
Moreover, Democrats will pick up seven to eight seats in the U.S. Senate, raising their seat total to either 58 or 59. One of those new Democratic seats, Sabato predicts, will go to Democrat Mark Warner, who is expected to triumph over Republican Jim Gilmore in Virginia to take the post currently occupied by Republican Sen. John Warner.
In the House of Representatives, too, Democrats will gain ground, according to the Crystal Ball predictions, adding 26 seats and raising their total to 262. The commonwealth, though, is expected to re-elect Republican congressional candidate Virgil Goode. Also in Virginia, which has not swung in favor of a Democratic party presidential candidate since 1964, voters are expected to make history, turning the commonwealth Blue for the first time since Lyndon B. Johnson was elected president.
Sabato’s political divination for both state and national elections goes beyond looking a shiny sphere as the Crystal Ball name implies. Sabato said he and his team at the University’s Center for Politics have been working and researching for months in preparation for the 2008 presidential election.
Sabato also has been kept busy with numerous on-air interviews relating to the elections for both national and international media syndicates.
“Since January, I’ve done 340 national TV appearances [with outlets such as] Fox, CNN, ABC and CBS,” Sabato said. “We’ve [also] done about 60 international [appearances], primarily for the BBC.”
Today, Sabato will be in Washington D.C., covering the election for the BBC as a co-anchor and on-air analyst. Sabato will not be the only University professor involved in TV analysis of the elections; Politics Prof. Paul Freedman said he will be doing off-camera polling return analysis for ABC News tonight, a job he has done since 2000.
Sabato’s analysis for the Crystal Ball reports was completed with the help of a team of researchers, said team member Dan Keyserling, deputy director for communications for the Center for Politics and former Cavalier Daily executive editor.
“There’s too much information to compile for any one person to do it well, so the Center for Politics has a great team of people who work together throughout the year who work to make predictions as accurately as possible,” Keyserling said. “A lot of it comes from looking at raw data polls, financial expenditures, independent expenditures, and all that information is supplemented by analysis by pollsters and journalists.”
Along with Keyserling, the team includes Cordel Faulk, Center for Politics director of communications; fourth-year College student Isaac Wood, a Cavalier Daily Opinion columnist; and third-year College student Paul Wiley, a Cavalier Daily Sports columnist. Wood and Wiley focus particularly on races in the House of Representatives, Keyserling said.
“It’s a collaborative effort,” Keyserling said. “We all work together.”
Although the election season ends today, Sabato and his team will not be taking a break in the near future.
“We’ve got virtually every minute scheduled up until Thanksgiving,” Sabato said.
Keyserling, meanwhile, agreed that even though the formal presidential selection process will conclude, the politics and analysis will not.
“There are always future elections, and politics doesn’t end after elections,” Keyserling said. “Some could argue that’s when it really begins. For every election, there is a sense of temporary closure, but for instance, between now and January, the winner of the presidential election will have to assemble an administration, and in the meantime, the world goes on and politics continues to occur and the cycle of analysis continues.”
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