My predictions were:
Obama wins 50.5-48, 332-206 (much less generous to Obama than reality; he wound up winning 52-46 with about 364 electoral votes)
House: +17 D (pretty close to reality; it looks like Dems are hovering around + 20, though half a dozen races still uncalled)
Senate + 6D (close to reality- missed NC Dem pickup, Alaska if Stevens pulls it out, Mn if Franken wins)
The Senate and House races came out about as I expected, but nevertheless were surprising. If you had told me that Obama would win by six points, I would have predicted a much stronger downballot showing for the Dems- maybe 30 or 35 House pickups, plus a couple of extra Senate seats that they may not have picked up (e.g. Minnesota, Ak).
My guess is that I underestimated the amount of straight-ticket voting: because people in Republican districts voted straight Republican, even weak Republican incumbents (e.g. Bachmann in Minnnesota) won as long as they were in McCain districts.
Not totally shocked that Fla went for Obama- I guessed otherwise but agonized about it. It was 2 pts more Republican than the nation, about what I would have expected.
To me, the results actually show the strength of the Republican base. If the Democrats had spent eight years in the White House presiding over a slugglish, low-wage 'recovery', running a long, inconclusive war or two, and blowing up the financial system for a dazzling finale, would they have gotten away with a 53-47 loss? Try 63-37 on for size. (Hoover lost 58-42, and he had the advantage of a populace that had been loyal to the GOP for generations). Similarity, would the Democrats have kept 180-odd House seats? I suspect they'd be a lot closer to the 145 that Republicans held after Watergate, or maybe even the double-digit levels of the post-Hoover Republicans. All McCain needed to win was 3 or 4 percent more- not a lot of ground to make up.
Given that result, I don't think McCain's campaign was so terrible [though it certainly antagonized me]. I think they knew that the political environment was toxic for Republicans, and that they simply could not win with a positive campaign. So they tried to scare uneducated white people to death of Obama- and it came fairly close to working, and probably would have worked had it not been for the financial crash. Even with the crash Obama cratered in the non-coastal, Appalachian South.
I am not sure either Obama or McCain would be particularly successful over the next four years. This election reminds me of 1928: two candidates who would be OK presidents under ordinary circumstances but are probably not up to a task this big in a situation this messed up. The only precedent we have is 1932- but in 1932 we weren't laboring under Bush-era deficits.
