October 6, 2012

2012 Election Pool Is Now Open!

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There’s exactly one month left until the November election, and that means it’s time for predictions. As usual in a presidential cycle, there are three categories this year:

  • Winner and total electoral votes for president.
  • Composition of the House. Current composition is 190 D, 240 R (5 vacancies).
  • Composition of the Senate. Current composition is 53 D/I, 47 R.

This year, instead of giving my own projections, I decided to provide an official line as forecast by Sam Wang, this blog’s semi-official election forecaster (and winner of the 2008 election pool). Here it is:

The links take you to Sam’s posts, which include error bars and other details. Can you do better than Sam? His presidential forecast sure seems optimistic to me. I’m thinking Obama wins something in the neighborhood of 300-310 electoral votes. In any case, put your guess in comments. The winner gets a one-year subscription to Mother Jones and the adulation of your peers.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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