The absolute final results of the 2012 Presidential Election.

The 2012 Presidential Election results have all been certified, and the electoral college (last week) voted.

As noted previously, Obama won the electoral college count, 332 - 206.  What you might not have heard, is that President Obama was the first President to earn over 51% of the vote, twice.  In the end, President Obama won, 51.1%  - 47.2%.

There is a reason why I'm smiling right now.

That same August 2nd prediction where I wrote down that President Obama would win reelection with a 328 - 210 electoral vote advantage, I also said that he'd win 51.5% - 46.5%.  That's 96 days in advance!  :D

So if you're keeping track, that means I was within 1.1 percentage point of the final outcome's difference (3.9 percentage points), months in advance.

Sam Wang's prediction, based on a two-candidate election (no third party numbers), was 51.1% - 48.9%, which was 1.7 percentage points off the final tally.

Nate Silver's prediction was 50.9% - 48.3%, or 1.3 percentage points off the final tally.

Now, I'm not saying that I was more accurate than the quants, because after all, my prediction, at 96 days before the election, was equally educated guess and pure luck.  But that they were remarkably similar, should be informative: Conservatives and the media were practically clueless to what was actually going on, all year long.  Rather than objectively looking at polls, they'd cherry pick the numbers that supported their own stories, while tossing the rest, or worse, adjusting the ones they didn't agree with.