Which state was the most surprising?

[Judäischen Volksfront]

Wisconsin-the last polls seem to reach a consensus that it was in the bag for Bush

Florida-the last week saw wild swings for both candidates (+5 for Bush one day, +6 for Kerry the next) and I had predicted that the Sunshine State would be about +4 for Kerry

West Virginia-I predicted this would be about +3-4 for Bush but I never thought of a 12% margin there

I was just stunned that FL was so much for Bush. I went, "hey, how much did Jeb fix the machines" for the first few hours until settling down.

[Max Power]

Iowa

[nclib]

I'd say West Virginia - not that Bush won but his margin of victory.

[Grad Students are the Worst]

Wisconsin - Lots of people screwed up here because of too much trust in Gallup and not enough in Mason-Dixon. Mason-Dixon showed Kerry by 2 on October 29th, while Gallup showed Bush by 8 the next day. I called this one right, because Gallup had been especially weird lately and I trusted Mason-Dixon. But even Mason-Dixon has a MoE of 3%. A call of >40% Bush would have been more than reasonable. It just came down to who showed up on voting day. My final call of 49% Kerry was a direct hit.

Florida - I predicted Bush by 2. It's "close enough" to Bush by 3, but for a swing state, not very close. A bit of a surprise.

West Virginia - Big-ish surprise. I predicted Bush by 7. Polling was quiet the last few weeks. Now we know why.

My vote is personally Vermont, which was my biggest screw-up, with a 9 point discrepency in Bush's favour. Here was my error chart:

Kerry
9:
8:
7:
6: WV
5: ID, UT
4: AR, FL, MA, OK
3: AZ, NE, NE-3, NC, VA
2: AL, AK, DE, ND, WY
1: IL, IN, IA, MO, NH, OH, OR, SD, TX, NE-1, NE-2
0: CA, KS, KY, MI, NV, PA, SC, TN, WA, WI
1: MD, MT, NJ, NY
2: CO, CT, GA, NM
3: ME-1, MN, RI
4: LA
5: ME
6: HI, ME-2
7: MS
8:
9: VT
Bush

So I would vote Vermont (if that was possible) followed by Mississippi, even though the latter was for lack of polling information.

Of those, West Virginia.

[zorkpolitics]

WI
Kerry won on the stength of Election day registration, thus negating the polls that had Bush ahead.  Of course over half of Kerry's winning margin was due to fraudulent election day registrations in Millwaukee, as shown by the Millwaukee Sentinal investigations.

[WalterMitty]

i was surprised that michigan was as close as it was.  i thought kerry would win there by a fairly comfortable margin.

im also somewhat surprised how 'well' bush did in nj, ct, and ri.

[Jake]

Michigan as close as it was and Minnesota going stronger to Kerry than I thought.

I had Michigan at around 54-45 Kerry and Minnesota as a dead heat.

[True Democrat]

Florida was most surprising.  I was expecting a dead heat.  I could see Bush winning, but not by five points.  Wisconsin I predicted correctly.  West Virginia I was extremely surprised by.  When they called West Virginia with just the exit poll, I was shocked.  Michigan I expected.  Minnesota I though Kerry would win by half a point.  Another surprising state was North Carolina.  I though Edwards would help bring the margin to eight or nine points.

[Sam Spade]

Clearly West Virginia and Vermont, though I was also mildly surprised at Alabama's percentages, to mention a state that hadn't been mentioned here before.

To toot my own horn:

I don't ever trust any polling out of Wisconsin and go by the mean if anything.  Those damn German Catholics in Wisconsin are the true swing voters in this country and trying to predict them is a fool's errand.  So, I predicted that Kerry would win by about 0.1% because of Milwaukee hijinks.  Dead on.

In Florida, I only trust Mason-Dixon and still only trust Mason-Dixon.  They said +4, I predicted +5 because of the hurricane factor.  And I nailed it.  It could just have easily been +3 based on Mason-Dixon, so that wasn't a wrong guess to those who made it. 

Those who predicted ties were not able to separate the wheat from the chaff in Florida and in Florida polling, the chaff in polling always grows strongly and obscures the wheat.

[TexasGurl]

I picked all 3 correctly i think.
but i voted WV

[Ebowed]

Iowa/New Mexico.  But of the choices, West Virginia.  I knew it would go for Bush, but by double digits?!  Ouch.

[True Democrat]

Iowa/New Mexico.

Iowa wasn't very surprising.  I had correctly predicted Iowa would be stronger for Bush and Wisconsin.  New Mexico, however, was surprising.  Early in the campaign, Kerry was leading by ten or some big number like that, but near the end Bush was leading in many polls by 5 or 6.  I expected Bush to take it easily.

[A18]

That one county in Wyoming going Democrat was a surprise.

[Smash255]

That one county in Wyoming going Democrat was a surprise.

teton county didn't suprise me all that much.  It has a largew latte liberal population.  Bush did win it by about 13 in 2000, but Nader got 7% of the vote there.  The county also went to Clinton twice

[Smash255]

West Virginia's margin was the most suprising

[Cashcow]

That one county in Wyoming going Democrat was a surprise.

If you've been there, you wouldn't be surprised.

[Rob]

I was shocked by WV. Just... wow.

[Erc]

The margins in Minnesota, and, to a lesser extent, Pennsylvania.

The only two states I got wrong, Wisconsin and New Hampshire, didn't surprise me too much--although I was holding out hope well into the next day that we'd won Wisconsin (and I still sort of think we did, but that's another story).  I'd seen the Mason-Dixon polls, so I knew our position there was a bit vulnerable (in fact, here's my spot-on prediction from right after the Mason-Dixon Polls came out [11:30 pm, October 30]:

)

In fact, the lack of huge surprises was what was surprising.

[Storebought]

I was surprised by the strength of Bush's win in the South: 62% Alabama (!); 560,000 vote plurality in GA, effectively wiping out Kerry's win in IL, a much bigger state; 1.1 million votes in LA--the only person since Reagan and Edwin Edwards to do that.

StatesRights was correct in looking at Bush's margin of victory in IN to see what kind of night Bush would have.

[Clay]

Nothing really stood out to me as *that* surprising, except maybe Wisconsin.  I thought it would go to Bush.

[jokerman]

I wasn't suprised by West Virginia.  That's what happens when we nominate a dove who spends too much time complaining about Iraq and Bush's judicial nominees and other social liberal agenda issues than focusing on the economic needs of the poor and middle class and having a full, hawkish plan for national security.

[MissCatholic]

The biggest shock to me was Fairfax County, VA. Unbelievable!

Teton county, WY LOWERED MY JAW FOR A WHILE.

On the state level i just wanted to Kerry to win Wisconsin. I have never campaigned so hard. I was happy the following morning despite the result. I never saw it as the most important election of our lifetime. I just saw it as i hope Kerry wins but if he doesnt he better not lose any democratic stronghold. I like the thought of saying to Republicans the last time you won Mn was 1972. Wi 1984, Or 1984.

So disappointment was Iowa - another 84 state that went.

[frenger]

The biggest shock to me was Fairfax County, VA. Unbelievable!

Teton county, WY LOWERED MY JAW FOR A WHILE.

On the state level i just wanted to Kerry to win Wisconsin. I have never campaigned so hard. I was happy the following morning despite the result. I never saw it as the most important election of our lifetime. I just saw it as i hope Kerry wins but if he doesnt he better not lose any democratic stronghold. I like the thought of saying to Republicans the last time you won Mn was 1972. Wi 1984, Or 1984.

So disappointment was Iowa - another 84 state that went.

OMG, I LIKE TO TELL DEMOCRATS THE LAST TIME THEY WON UTAH IDAHO AND WYOMING WAS 1964!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

[MissCatholic]

Well the day a democrat wins Wyoming is the day when i'm playing with the devil!

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

You played with the devil in 1964?

Well the day a democrat wins Wyoming is the day when i'm playing with the devil!