Post Election Thoughts

• Congratulations to:   Ted O'Brien who won a seat in the NY State Senate.   He will do a great job.  New Yorkers are lucky to have  him.
• Winner:   Nate Silver.  The right wing press spent days maligning him ...but assuming Florida goes Obama, Nate will have predicted the winner of the presidential vote correctly in all 50 states.
• Loser:  the Gallup Poll whose daily tracking polls consistently showed Gov. Romney well ahead.  As of October 23rd they had Romney beating Obama nationally by 5 points (see here and here).  The poll-geek community was scratching its heads as to what sort of likely-voter screen Gallup was using considering other polls showed the race in a dead tie. (Obama ended up winning by 2 nationally.)
• Loser:  Rasmussen Reports.  These guys are considered credible pollsters (unlike say Wenzel Research) yet for the second national election in a row Rasmussen consistently biased their polls to the right.  Below is a list of Rasmussen's final poll results for swing states.

State	Rasmussen	Actual Result
Colorado	Romney +3	Obama +4
Florida	Romney +2	Obama +1*
Virginia	Romney +2	Obama +3
Iowa	Romney +1	Obama +6
Wisconsin	tie	Obama +7
Ohio	tie	Obama +2
New Hampshire	Obama +2	Obama +6
Nevada	Obama +2	Obama  +6

• Winner and Surprise of the night:   Heidi Heitkamp (D) beats Rick Berg (R) for ND Senate seat formerly occupied by Kent Conrad (D). See here. The polls had Berg up.  But it was not a heavily polled race.  Data below from 538 Blog.

Polls	Date	Dem	Rep	Margin
Mason-Dixon	28-Oct	45	47	Berg +2.0
Rasmussen	18-Oct	45	50	Berg +5.0
Forum/Essman	15-Oct	40	50	Berg +10.0
Mason-Dixon	5-Oct	47	47	Tie
Rasmussen	11-Jul	40	49	Berg +9.0
Mason-Dixon	6-Jun	47	46	Heitkamp +1.0
Forum/Essman	8-May	44	51	Berg +7.0

• Loser:  Sen Mitch McConnell.  McConnell's stated goal  (see here and here) for the Republican Party was to deny President Obama a second term.  That did not happen.  The current Senate has 51 Democrats, 47 Republicans and 2 Independents both of whom caucused with the Democrats.  In the 2012 Senate elections there were 21 Democrat seats, 10 Republican seats, and 2 Independent seats up for re-election.  McConnell needed to hold his R seats and flip 3 of the D+I seats (if they won the presidency) or 4 D+I  seats (if they did not win the presidency) to take control of the US Senate.   That looked very doable a year ago.  Instead he net lost two seats (see below).
• Losers:  the Tea Party who for the second election in a row stymied the Republican Party's chances to takes control of the US Senate by backing inept candidates in Indiana, Missouri, and Montana.  Amazingly if you read this mornings postmortem of the presidential election as seen by Tea Partiers - the problem was that Romney was not conservative enough.  While it is certainly in the best interests of the Ds to help the Tea Party nominate more lousy Tea Party Republican candidates - it is not in the best interest of the country to have a single sane party.
• Winner of The Harry Reid Award:  Claire McCaskill.  The award celebrates the incumbent Senator with the worst approval rating who wins re-election only due to the opposing party nominating an incompetent contender.  Not only did McCaskill win, she came from behind to drub Akin by a margin of 55-39.
• Winner:  Senator Dick Lugar (R).  After years of distinguished service to his country Lugar was upset by Tea Party favorite Richard Mourdock in a primary.  One of Mourdock's primary criticisms of Lugar was the latter's ability to work across the aisle.  Yes bipartisanship is a sin now.   Mourdock promptly imploded losing the red state of Indiana to the Ds.
• Winner:  all those voters who stood in long lines to be part of our continuing great experiment in democracy.  We have a lot to be proud of.