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By BRIAN A. HOWEY
INDIANAPOLIS - Howey Politics Indiana’s final forecast called it an “epic election” and it was. That was the easy part. But how did our final forecast on Monday bear out with the vote? You decide.
Presidential: While the final Howey/Gauge Poll had John McCain leading Barack Obama 47-45 percent, on Monday,”We forecast that the Obama ground organization overcomes not only the racist tendencies in some pockets of Indiana, but lifts it into the 11 Electoral College votes.” 
Result: Obama carried the state by 1 percent, or slightly more than 20,000 votes. That’s the ground game we were talking about. The final was also within the 4.1 percent margin of error in the Oct. 23-24 Howey/Gauge Poll. On the Electoral College front, HPI predicted Obama would get 340 votes. As of this writing, he had 349.
Gubernatorial: This was our forecast on Monday: “Ultimately, we think (Gov. Daniels’) floor and ceiling is in the 55 to 57 percent range. Thompson’s golden opportunity came during the Wall Street meltdown and she was broke at the time. We suspect Thompson’s ceiling is in the upper 30s to low 40s, with some of the anti-Mitch vote going to Libertarian Andy Horning due to Thompson’s name recognition problems.” Result: Daniels won 58-40 with Libertarian Andrew Horning at 2 percent. We were just a wee bit off. Thompson was able to attract some of Horning’s 3 percent support in Howey/Gauge Poll which had Daniels up 61-30-3. We believe Howey/Gauge was catching Daniels at the peak of his support 10 days out. Both Republican and Democratic internals were showing margins between 20 and 30 percent. In the final days, Thompson’s moderate TV buy obviously narrowed the margin and she picked up some of the Obama momentum.
Congressional: We predicted that U.S. Rep. Mark Souder would lose, giving his re-elect a 20 percent chance. Howey/Gauge had Michael Montagano leading Souder 44-41 percent on Oct. 23-24. Our survey began just as the RNCC was attacking Montagano for having his father buy him homes, Hummers and not having his own income. Beyond our poll, we theorized that Souder’s vote for the financial bailout plan might doom him. What we suspect happened was that Montagano’s family gravy train had more of an impact than Souder’s courageous vote on the bailout. We acknowledge here that we did something we haven’t done lately, which is to under estimate Souder’s intricate knowledge and grasp of his congressional district. As he displayed in 1994, he’s one of the best. As for Congressmen Mike Pence and Steve Buyer, we suggested that one of them might get washed out in the Obama tide just as Earl Landgrebe and David Dennis did in the Watergate backwash of 1974. Obviously Hoosiers split their tickets (thank you Mitch) and the Pence and Buyer base turned out. So this was not our shining moment.
Statewides: On Monday we forecast a “GOP sweep for Daniels, Zoeller and Bennett.” Bingo!
Legislative: On Monday we forecast on the latebreakers: “We’re not sure which one, but we think the GOP has a chance at pealing one of these seats (Avery, Cochran, Bischoff) off in the ‘time for a change’ environment. Result: State Rep. Bill Cochran lost while Reps. Bischoff and Avery won easily. On the switches, we predicted the Democrats would defeat State Rep. Amos Thomas and the Republicans would win the Democratic open seat of Dave Crooks. Bingo! In our six tossup races, two of them are in recount zone (HD 26 and 31). We gave Tincher a “slight” advantage and he won. We’re kicking ourselves for not going with our gut and predicting Mary Ann Sullivan’s defeat of Jon Elrod. On the “incumbent advantage” portion of our analysis, we gave Reps. Lehe, Reske, Davis and Borders the edge. On House control: our Monday forecast was “a 52-48 Democratic House. We don’t mean to equivocate, but it could easily go one seat either way.” It ended up 52-48. Bingo!
Our final grade: Let’s see, it was an “epic election.” We nailed the presidential, gubernatorial and statewides. We were equivocatingly close on the Indiana House (and still might reach our forecast). We were quite off on the congressionals (after pegging the March special and May primary) and obviously Rep. Pence missed a golden opportunity to finally win an election bet against Howey, though we hope he and his family ride their horses up to the cabin over the next month or so (upon which we will all go fishing with the Zoellers). How’s about a B+?
Tags: Barack Obama, Howey/Gauge, Mark Souder, Mike Pence, Mitch Daniels
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This entry was written by and posted on November 6, 2008 at 1:45 pm and filed under HPI Weekly. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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