So How Did I Do?

So four candidates go home, and two go on to battle in the final election for a seat in the U.S. Senate, but the most important question remains: how close were my predictions to the results?

Here are the predictions I published seven hours before the polls opened in Massachusetts (see previous post):

Coakley: 44%
Capuano: 35%
Pagliuca: 12%
Khazei: 9%

The actual results are as follows:

Coakley: 47%
Capuano: 28%
Khazei: 13%
Pagliuca: 12%

Not bad, if I do say so myself! I was not far off on the Coakley number, and I had the Pagliuca number spot on. Boy, if Steve paid me a couple hundred grand to tell him how he’d do, he could have saved a lot of money and we’d both be better off!

The real surprise to me was Khazei outperforming my expectations and Capuano underperforming them. A quick look at Khazei’s numbers looks as if he had pretty consistent strength with some particular strength in some of the suburbs.

On the Republican side, there is no surprise in Scott Brown winning big. Now he faces the challenge of the general election, with the Holiday Season taking voters’ attention away combined with the usual institutional advantages favoring any Democrat. Add in the potential for a snowstorm like that which Greater Boston had this morning, and the turnout could be abysmally low, as it was yesterday with less than 15% of the electorate participating in these primaries. That would all add up to another day at the polls dominated by the political machine and a big win for Coakley.