17People Predictions Breakdown

After an awful year of misreading polls and making predictions that did not come true in primary after primary,,, 17people redeemed itself by nailing the Presidential election only missing two states and 6 electoral votes. 17people said Obama would get 370 electoral votes (he ended up with 364) and 53% of the vote (he ended up with 52.6%), and said he would win by 6 million votes (ok I underestimated, he won by 8.3million).

If not for overestimating the impact of the Obama ad buys in North Dakota and Montana,,, I'd be the blog being talked about instead of Nate Silvers awesome fivethirtyeight.com.

In 17people's Senate predictions it is too early to tell on my call of 60 which remains a possibility. I stupidly forgot to put the Mississippi Senate race on my battleground list, but would have given it to incumbent Republican Roger Wicker, though I would have said that it would be closer than it was.

17people correctly called easy races in Virginia, New Mexico, and Colorado. Called tougher races in North Carolina, Louisiana, New Hampshire, Oregon, and for a Republican in Kentucky. Also correctly called the runoff in Georgia which will get plenty of coverage over the next month.

As for the two other undecided races in Alaska and Minnesota.

Am genuinely surprised that Alaska is still leaning for convicted felon Ted Stevens. The polls at the end were between 10 and 22 points against Stevens, so something doesn't feel quite right in Alaska. But with 90,000 absentee and provisional ballots to be counted, maybe Alaska can redeem itself and fire Ted Stevens before the US Senate does.

As for Minnesota I wrote last Tuesday it was "the toughest race of the year in Minnesota" and the 200 vote spread with a recount coming,,, proved that out. Minnesota proved to be a state that baffles. Jesse Ventura was an eccentric, if not very bad Governor, Paul Wellstone was one of the most progressive Senators, and this year they reelected the crazy Michelle Bachman.

Perhaps only in Minnesota could Al Franken, unapologetic liberal with a career of politically damaging statements is still a possibility to become that states Senator.

Now I predicted a 33 seat gain for Democrats in the House and missed the boat on that as more endangered Republicans survived than I thought.

The Dems have picked up 20 seats in the House so far with a chance for maybe 4 more which is a big gain, just two years after winning 20+ seats. The Democrats have more than a 75 vote advantage meaning they have much more power than either party has had in some time.

After picking like Mush from "A Bronx Tale" for most of the year, 17people is relieved to have come back with a vengeance this General Election.