I remember ages ago playing a little game known as Sim City. This was way before the fictional residents of that city earned their own spin-off game, The Sims. Ever since those first weeks of micromanaging my own city from empty land to booming metropolis I have always enjoyed sims. Much to my chagrin, Kos has provided me with another sim that is much more than a game. No, I'm not making my own faux life forms, I am playing Electoral Votes in America Sim and I am addicted to it.
Whenever I start to get nervous thanks to a newly released poll I head over to fivethirtyeight.com (If you are a Kos reader and haven't been there yet you really should check it out asap!) and play EV Sim. To reassure myself McCain's chances are grim, just from a statistical standpoint, I only turn states blue if they are listed as 95% or better at 538. Obama wins. Then I like to see the map expand so I do the same for 90% or better. Then 80%. Then 75%. Then 60%. And finally 50%. I just love watching that sea of blue grow larger and larger. After playing with the official stats I like to envision the super duper best case scenario map.
This is the map I want to see when I check the web on Wednesday morning and although the possibility of it happening is slim I am still optimistic that it is indeed possible. Why? There are several reasons. First and foremost the McCain GOTV effort is pathetic. This has been well documented and just today we learned that they don't have any money to cover transport or hotel rooms for volunteers, who really weren't turning out anyways unless they were paid in the first place. On our side Obama has the GOTV behemoth that could take on Godzilla, the Rancor, the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man, and Goliath and still have plenty of resources to get every single person who wants to vote to the polls. Next, Obama's crack legal eagle team has been blocking the GOP's attempts to purge voter rolls and suppress voting in pretty much every state the tactic has been attempted from Montana to Ohio to Colorado to Florida to New Mexico we have stymied their efforts to block us from voting so those shenanigans aren't going to be as effective this year. Of course the polls also favor Obama on the national scene and, even more importantly, on the state EV level. Most people are predicting an Obama landslide if we GOTV. There is also a massive enthusiasm gap with the vast majority of Democrats strongly supporting Obama while only a third of Republicans feel as strongly for McCain. Couple low enthusiasm for McCain with his lackluster GOTV along with our wild enthusiasm and superb GOTV and there's a good chance we will pick up states that even 538 thinks we have little chance of winning. As much as I love visiting Nate Silver's site I would be ecstatic if we could prove his predictions wrong in our favor.
If all those things converge for the perfect voting storm we could make my 420 dream map come true. If we do we would have blue states stretching from coast to coast, the uber-red west states utterly surrounded by blue (I consider the northern tip of Idaho surrounded by blue since it borders super socialist Canada!), and Louisiana voters finally getting some retribution for the crappy Katrina response from the GOP by turning one of their strongholds blue. I know the chances are slim, but I like to dream and I think visualization helps to make reality bend to our will so here's the map we should all be visualizing for Wednesday.