A Final Look at the Convention Bounce: It’s All Obama

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It’s now been nearly two weeks since the end of the conventions, and before long the polls will start to show the effects of the secret Romney video. So this seems like a pretty good time to check in on Sam Wang for a final look at what kind of convention bounce we saw. And luckily for me, Sam fixed a technical glitch in his polling feeds today, providing us with a corrected look at his estimated electoral vote count. Here it is:

Bottom line: The net effect of both the RNC and DNC appears to be a bounce from about 300 electoral votes for Obama to 322 electoral votes. That’s a pretty big bounce.

By the way: Some of you might be wondering why I usually use Sam Wang’s forecast rather than all the others that are out there. The reason is that back in 2008 I ran a pool to predict the results of the election, and Sam was one of the co-winners. For now, then, I consider him the official election forecaster for this blog. This is, needless to say, a tenuous position, and requires him to predict really well this year too if he wants to hold on to this prestigious post. But that’s life in the free market, no? Red in tooth and claw and all that. For now, though, he’s top dog.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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