Analyst Reid Holloway issued a study today which concludes that Obama will "trounce" McCain by more than 10 million votes in November. Interestingly, Holloway predicts that Obama will take Florida's electoral votes and can even take Arizona, despite the conventional wisdom that McCain will carry his home state.
I don't know anything about Holloway, other than what is in his study. He has accurately predicted presidential outcomes since 96, however, and in 2004 he called 47 states correctly.
His study predicts that Obama will get 65,736,338 votes and McCain will get 55,710,526. Further, he predicts 319 electoral votes for Obama and 219 for McCain. Here is his EV forecast (to save typing, these are states McCain is projected to win):
McCain: AL, AK, AR, ID, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, MI, MS, MO, MT, NE, NC, ND, OH, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, WV, WY
The press release for this study describes his methodology, which is based upon a review of all polls, but more "uniquely" is that he "projects individual candidate vote tallies for every state . . . not just percentage shares based on small samples." A conclusion he mentions in the study:
We start by looking at economic conditions particular to the individual states, and we also look at the corresponding circumstances of the voters in those states. Which states have strong incomes and income growth? Which states don’t? The main finding is that Barack Obama is not the ‘black man’s candidate,’ but rather, he is the candidate with whom young, upwardly mobile professionals—mainly white, I might add—identify, and see as not just a fresh and attractive new kind of political figure, but as having a ‘21st century’ outlook and feel for a rapidly changing world viewed and understood in innovative and imaginative ways.
Make of this what you will. Holloway appears to be a stock analyst as well. His website is here, although I don't have a link to this study (it was forwarded to me by a friend at the WSJ).
****UPDATE****
I scanned in the study (pdf). If anyone can advise on how to get it linked to this diary I would appreciate it.
****FURTHER UPDATE****
Crude, I know, but here is the text of the study (not the charts, however).
OBAMA POISED TO CRUSH MCCAIN BY MORE THAN TEN MILLION VOTES, ANALYST PREDICTS;
Says Illinois Senator Could Even Take McCain’s Home State
TORRINGTON, CONN, July 9—Using an entirely new methodology for gauging the impact of demographic factors observed in the divisions between supporters of rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during the primary season, a quantitative expert based in Connecticut who has been accurately forecasting presidential contests since 1996 has unveiled a recently completed study predicting that the junior senator from Illinois will trounce Republican John McCain by more than ten million votes this November—more than three times the margin by which George W. Bush defeated John Kerry in 2004—and may even overcome the senator from Arizona in his own home state, an outcome none of the major pollsters considers even remotely possible.
"Conventional polls and polling methodologies fall far short of providing clear understandings of the underlying demographic factors driving voter sentiments," contends Reid Holloway, who authored the study. "The biggest hole in the models used by the major pollsters, who are generally quite adept at collecting data accurately, is accounting for and precisely weighting income-growth and other highly politically relevant economic characteristics forming the most decisive aspects about voters shaping their views about elections. These dynamics vary widely from state to state, so their impact on presidential contests is especially important because, no matter what the polls show about nationwide samplings, it’s the outcomes in respective states that establish the Electoral College numbers, and that’s how we pick presidents in the United States.
"Because income and economic conditions differ so markedly from region to region," Holloway explains, "we’re really looking at 51 simultaneous yet entirely distinct elections whenever we vote for president."
Holloway’s number-crunching currently foresees Senator Obama garnering approximately 66 million votes this fall, with Senator McCain’s tally at roughly 56 million. He further predicts that Obama will win 319 of the 538 electoral votes versus 219 for the senator from Arizona. Holloway also believes Obama will carry Florida, a state critical to McCain’s fortunes, which most pollsters see so far as leaning toward the Republican—even though he sees McCain carrying industrial heartland states such as Ohio and Michigan, significant Democrat strongholds.
Holloway’s predictions and methods differ strikingly from conventional pollsters. For one thing, he doesn’t do any polling himself, but he does keep track of polling done by others. But the thing Holloway does that’s unique is that he projects individual candidate vote tallies for every state and the District of Columbia, not just percentage shares based on small samples. "Once we settle on projected tallies, it’s just a matter of seeing who comes out ahead in each of the states and the District and totaling up the electoral votes," Holloway summarizes, "although assembling those estimates is a bit more complex than it may sound."
Holloway was inspired to radically change the model he’s used to forecast presidential elections for the past twelve years by what he observed in the prolonged primary contest between Democrat rivals Obama and Clinton.
"It was really a kind of glaring and obvious thing to spot," he begins. "For decades we’ve been wondering when American voters would overcome the prejudices of the past and contemplate a black or a woman president. Finally, this year, we got two for the price of one."
Holloway says the unlikely matchup during the Democrat primary season between a black male and a white woman offered "just about the best test lab you could ever ask for" to study what had been anticipated for years, but had never previously occurred.
"And everything has turned out upside down so far," he points out. "Practically nothing that has actually happened now that this historic development in American politics has actually taken shape even slightly resembles what the pundits envisaged."
Holloway says he is generally motivated to start an involved investigation—which in his "day job" normally encompasses the stock market, real estate and business and strategic planning—by something that "gnaws at" him.
"What gnawed at me in this case was fairly obvious. Indeed, I’m surprised that just about nobody’s discussing it," he notes. "We generally thought that the first viable black candidate for president would be a champion of the ‘have-nots,’ rallying disadvantaged minority constituencies whose traditional positioning among Democrats tends toward social spending and income and wealth redistribution. Similarly, we assumed the first viable woman candidate for president would be a crusader for women’s rights and the social and economic advancement of women."
While those traits in large part have so far been true and observable, Holloway says, they’re not among the most important lessons of this year’s drawn out Democrat primary season.
"Instead," he points out, "it’s an unanticipated emphasis having far less to do with race and gender than was traditionally assumed. Barack Obama has become the darling of affluent urban white professionals in large metropolitan areas, and Hillary Clinton the refuge for right-center, downscale and mostly rural white Democrats, some with misgivings about electing a black president. What the primary season reveals is totally unexpected against the backdrop of what experts assumed for years would be the most important characteristics of the first election involving viable black and woman candidates. What we’ve also learned is that—rather than race and gender—it’s all about the income and economic characteristics of widely differing individual regions around the country, and how those respective regions’ voters think about choosing presidents today. Barack Obama’s huge popularity has practically nothing to do with being black."
So, how did Holloway put these insights to use, formulate the parameters of his study, and end up forecasting an Obama rout over McCain this fall?
"We start by looking at economic conditions particular to the individual states, and we also look at the corresponding circumstances of the voters in those states. Which states have strong incomes and income growth? Which states don’t? The main finding is that Barack Obama is not the ‘black man’s candidate,’ but rather, he is the candidate with whom young, upwardly mobile professionals—mainly white, I might add—identify, and see as not just a fresh and attractive new kind of political figure, but as having a ‘21st century’ outlook and feel for a rapidly changing world viewed and understood in innovative and imaginative ways."