Based on the “Last Updated” time on CNN’s election results site, my best estimate for when Missouri was called by CNN is 21:09 UTC yesterday. So consider this to me an update covering the time immediately prior to 21:15 UTC yesterday.

Missouri is called for McCain. This is the last outstanding state.

This makes the results (assuming no faithless electors) Obama 365, McCain 173… which has been what it would look like it would be for quite a bit now, but now it is official. (Well, not really, not until the electoral college votes… but all states have been called by CNN now.)

So, how did I do?

Well, every single state that I did not say was a too close to call swing state, I got right. But lets be a little more critical than that. If you look at my last regular daily update on November 3rd, the “Current Status” where everybody got their leans had Obama 338, McCain 200. What did I miss? I thought McCain would win North Carolina, Indiana and all of Nebraska. Obama of course ended up winning North Carolina, Indiana and Nebraska’s 2nd District.

Of these, I had considered both North Carolina and Indiana as too close to call and that they could easily go either way. So not too upset about that. On Nebraska I had decided early on not to look at the possibility of Nebraska splitting unless the state itself looked somewhat close. That seems like an error now. However, I’m not sure what else I would have done, as I did not see regular polling on the separate Nebraska districts anyway.

BUT… there was one more error…. after my last daily update on the 3rd, I continued to log polls as they came in on election day itself, before the real polls started closing. I logged one change early in the day that flipped Missouri to just barely on the Obama side of the line instead of just barely on the McCain side of the line.

So my actual final “everybody gets their leans” prediction was Obama 349, McCain 189 which was actually closer to the actual final result than my final prediction on the 3rd, but only because a couple of the states I got wrong canceled each other out. (Missouri and Indiana both have 11 electoral votes, so when I got them both wrong the total remained the same.)

So, in the end, out of 50 states and DC, I ended up predicting correctly on all except North Carolina, Indiana, Missouri and the 2nd district of Nebraska. And my electoral college total was only off by 16. And with the exception of that pesky single electoral vote from Nebraska, all of the states which I “missed” were states that I had actually described as being too close to call.

All and all, I think those are pretty good results. So I am happy with that.

I’ll do one more update when I combine the wiki pages for the historical predictions through the race with the pages reflecting actual results and get everything all cleaned up to sit there forever for random people googling about the 2008 race. And then I’ll finally be done with this! :-)

Edit 21 Nov 04:06 UTC: Fixed Typo in Obama’s actual electoral college vote total (365 instead of 265). Thanks to the reader who pointed this out.

This update reflects states called by CNN in the 15 minutes before 15:30 UTC on November 7th.

There was one state called. North Carolina for Obama. This was the second “surprise” of the season compared to my immediately pre-poll closing predictions. North Carolina had been in the Obama column since the end of September, but had moved to the McCain side right before the election. This makes my record at this point 48 out of 50, with one state left to call.

New summary:

McCain Best Case: Obama 364, McCain 174
Current “everybody gets their leans”: Obama 375, McCain 163
Obama Best Case: Obama 375, McCain 163

I should note however, that although CNN called Nebraska’s 2nd District for McCain, and has not yet retracted that on their Election Results Page, many other sources have since called that district for Obama, thus taking an electoral vote away from McCain and giving it to Obama.

I’ll keep sticking with CNN’s tally here though, although they have been excruciatingly slow after the point Obama reached 270. I think in 4 years I’ll have to use a different primary source.

For the moment though, I presume CNN will eventually catch up on the Nebraska electoral vote, and will eventually call Missouri.

Edit Nov 17 05:32 UTC: Corrected Obama numbers in the three scenarios above, which were all missing 3 electoral votes (from Vermont). The numbers above are now correct.

This update covers the 15 minutes prior to 08:15 UTC.

Montana gets called for McCain. The range of possible results narrows a bit more.

McCain Best Case: Obama 338, McCain 200
Current “everybody gets their leans”: Obama 349, McCain 189
Obama Best Case: Obama 375, McCain 163

If one sticks to one common definition of landslide, namely 375 electoral votes or more, Obama now needs to sweep the remaining three states for this to be a “landslide”. Of course, there is no single accepted definition of landslide, and some people will be calling this such regardless.

Still waiting on North Carolina, Indiana and Missouri. Still no deviations from the predictions this site had with the “everybody gets their leans” line immediately before the polls closed.

Of course, various places are now calling Indiana for Obama. If CNN eventually decides to agree, that will be the first deviation from predictions, as the five poll average here had McCain again by 3.4% heading into the election.

Edit 09:24 UTC – Added the slug about the time the update covered, which I had forgotten when I originally posted.

Edit 15:15 UTC – A reader pointed out that Iowa was the wrong color in the map above. This has been corrected on the main page and on this post but not on the two older posts that were effected. (Although I have added notes on those posts about the error.) Bad paint tool. Bad. The numbers however are correct.

This is the 06:45 UTC update, reflecting states that were called in the 15 minutes before that time.

Just one. Alaska, as expected, was called for Sarah Palin… uh… John McCain.

Summary:

McCain Best Case: Obama 338, McCain 200
Current “everybody gets their leans”: Obama 349, McCain 189
Obama Best Case: Obama 378, McCain 160

Still no surprise states. North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana, Montana, and the Omaha district of Nebraska yet to be called.

(I made a correction to the 04:45 update at 06:03 UTC to reflect the fact that 1 of Nebraska’s electoral votes had not yet been called. The graphs have been corrected accordingly.)

Edit 15:15 UTC – A reader pointed out that Iowa is the wrong color in the map above. This has been corrected on the main page. Bad paint tool. Bad. The numbers however are correct.

This is the 04:30 update, covering states called in the 15 minutes prior to that time.

Three states called. Arizona for McCain. Colorado and Florida for Obama.

Summary:

McCain SuperBest: Obama 333, McCain 205
McCain Best Case: Obama 338, McCain 200

Current “everybody gets their leans”: Obama 349, McCain 189

Obama Best Case: Obama 378, McCain 160
Obama SuperBest: Obama 378, McCain 160

There have still been no surprise states.