Jim Cramer's Crazy Election Prediction

So, it has achieved a fair bit of notoriety that Jim Cramer predicted that Obama would win 440 electoral votes. This is pretty patently ridiculous. How ridiculous, you ask? Well, I've taken the 538 state popular vote estimates from a few days ago (when they provided a convenient chart of that figure for all 50 states in one place), and given Obama states in descending order of his margin in them until he hit 440. Here's what the map looks like:

That's, um, ridiculous. It's also 451 electoral votes, which is not 440. In fact, I can't see any good way to hit 440 on the dot. You could subtract an 11, like Arizona or Indiana, but c'mon, we're giving Obama Texas, there's no way AZ/IN are marginal states here. Or you could take away South Carolina and one of the 3's, probably one of the Dakotas, but that's -12, not -11, giving 439. I suppose you could add the next state on the list, West Virginia, which gives an extra 5, and then try to subtract 16, probably just by taking away Georgia. That's 440, but the world in which Obama wins WV but not GA is a really weird one.

Although I suppose that's not such a disqualifier, since we're talking about a world in which he wins Texas, so "weird" is kind of a given. The point here is really that it's clear beyond a reasonable doubt that Jim Cramer did not have a map of states won and states lost in mind when he made his prediction. He couldn't have. Not only does the magnitude of his ridiculousness become apparent when you have to draw up a map, actually getting to that specific number is really, really hard. This is not so much a prediction, in other words, as a blancmange--no, wait, that's something different. Not so much a prediction as an expression of the sense that Obama is going to win, probably by a decent margin, but with no idea what that actually means.

I should add that there were times during this campaign when I thought a map like that one might be possible. If, say, Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain had been the nominee. Maybe if Newt had won the primary, though I'm a bit skeptical that such an enormous landslide would've materialized. In any event, we've had six close elections in a row now, with neither candidate getting 400 electoral votes unless Mr. Cramer knows something the rest of us really don't. That's weird. As best I can tell it's only happened once before that six consecutive elections have been highly competitive, in roughly the 1876 through 1896 period. I have a feeling it has to end eventually, though I'm not sure what will make that happen. But I think the above map is an interesting one to look at as a possible configuration of a latent Democratic landslide. It would be a really fun map.