Final Thoughts on Election 2006

Roughly two years ago, I rolled out of bed bleary-eyed after a long intense night of return watching, pacing, and hard drinking. Unable to find my glasses, I staggered to the living room and switched on the TV, pressed my nose to the screen, and tried to read the blurry crawl on CNN.

I had predicted early the day before a clear Kerry victory based on a couple common rules of thumb and a slew of polls that I had poured over in the days before. Needless to say, I was very, very wrong. And very hungover.

Lost a good deal of money on that election pool, by the way.

Now setting aside the fact that some people believe that the 2004 vote was rife with fraud and effectively stolen, you can see that my punditry skills when it comes to calling elections are not so good.

That being said: this is what I'm seeing right now:

In the Senate, 49 Democratic seats + 2 Independents vs. 49 Republicans. I see "Jim" Webb winning against "Macaca" Allen.

In the House, 227 Democratic seats to 208 Republican seats, which is based on current polls, and a 50/50 split of some of the more contested races. I will admit that this is rather optimistic, which is why I backed down from the original superoptimistic prediction of 245 to 203.*

The bell weather, however, is going to be in this part of this country with the Hart/Altmire race: if Melissa Hart loses, the Democrats will have trounced the Republicans all over the rest of the country.

Me? I'm voting for gridlock. Hopefully, on Wednesday morning I will be as bleary-eyed and hungover, but significantly less wrong.

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* Oh good, two people got that joke. Horray for the public school system!