Well, I don’t know exactly how it happened, but Election Inspection has, once again, found itself in strong disagreement with Al Giordano concerning the final outcome of the presidential election. Now, even though Election Inspection was able to accurately project the final delegate outcome (despite several misses on the district level) that doesn’t mean that my projection is going to be the right one this time around, in fact I suspect that Al will be more right about Indiana, and I’ll be more right about North Carolina.

Al believes that Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” is going to move a significant number of Republicans and right-leaning Independents to vote for Clinton in both states in order to artificially boost her numbers. I think Al may be on to something in Indiana, which has an open primary and no other competitive primaries to draw Republican trolls away from the Democratic race. Now, I’d like to think that Limbaugh doesn’t have that kind of reach, but if you take a look at the exit polls from Mississippi and Alabama, you find that, even though Obama did better among whites overall in Mississippi than Alabama (and, notably, made improvements among White Democrats and White Independents) he actually did worse among Republicans in Mississippi than in Alabama (not to mention that in Mississippi, they magically made up twice as much of the total vote than they did in Alabama). That alone makes me more likely to believe that I’ll end up being wrong with Indiana.

North Carolina, on the other hand, is a different story. First of all, the fact that North Carolina is a modified primary (only open to Democrats and Independents) will probably filter out the obvious Republican trolls. Now, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t right-leaning Independents or even Reagan Democrats (registered Democrats who consistantly vote for Republicans anyways) who wouldn’t jump at the chance to cause chaos in the Democratic primary, and while I can’t speak to those Reagan Democrats, I do believe that the right-leaning Independents will also be kept to a minimum because of the competitive gubenatorial primary happening in North Carolina today. Even if I’m being overly optimistic in North Carolina (and that’s always a possibility) I still don’t buy that Operation Chaos is going to be a big factor in North Carolina (at least compared to Ohio, Texas, Mississippi, and potentially Indiana).

Still, one (or both) of us will be proven wrong in at least one contest, and even though Al was a bit off in Pennsylvania, I still take his analysis very seriously and I won’t be surprised if I end up wrong this time.