My sense is that Obama will win the popular vote 52-48 percent, but since that’s also what the Evans-Novak Political Report is forecasting, I’ll make a more daring projection of 53-47 percent for the Democrat. Even that might be conservative, since I see little reason to think that undecideds (somewhere between 7 and 9 percent of voters) will break heavily for McCain. Obama will win just about every state that’s in contention: Pennsylvania (which isn’t really in contention), Virginia, Ohio, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Florida. Missouri will have an asterisk — Obama wasn’t wasting words when he said in Springfield recently that things are going to get ugly. Expect some kind of shenanigans in St. Louis.

To get a sense of how bad things are for McCain, just look at what’s happening in RealClearPolitics’ battleground states round-up. Their polling averages have Arkansas, South Carolina, and even Arizona (where Obama has recently made a TV ad buy) softening up for McCain — his home state is even listed as a toss-up. But I don’t think any of them will flip. Indiana? Maybe. Georgia should stay red at the presidential level, but I think Sen. Saxby Chambliss is a goner.

My Senate guesses aren’t anything outside of the mainstream: Democrats will pick up Virginia (of course), Colorado, Alaska, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Oregon. I suspect Al Franken will pull through in Minnesota. Landrieu will persevere in Louisiana, as will Republican Sen. Roger Wicker in Mississippi.

The youth vote won’t be vastly larger than it was four years ago, but the African-American vote will be.

Looking ahead to 2012, neither Sarah Palin nor Mike Huckabee will be a serious contender. This year, both Palin and Obama were inexperienced, yet plainly there was a vast gulf between them in terms of presidential readiness. That gulf will be chasmic in four years, when Obama is the incumbent commander in chief. Even if his administration has wound up like Jimmy Carter’s, Republicans will need someone highly competent to oppose him. Carter didn’t lose n ’80 just because he was unpopular, but because his opponent, Ronald Reagan, was the most appealing figure the GOP could have fielded. Similarly, in 1992 the Democrats nominated a masterful politician, Bill Clinton, to take down Bush the First. The GOP will be looking for someone with that degree of political acumen. Failing that, they’ll settle, as they did in 1996, for an establishment placeholder. In 2012, that might be Mitt Romney, who secured the goodwill of the GOP kingmakers by bowing out of the primary fight after Super Tuesday.

The GOP’s dream candidate in 2012 would be someone like General Petraeus, and I think there’ll be a strong but unsuccessful effort to draft him. The Bush family name will still be radioactive, so no Jeb. Conditions will be propitious for an insurgent candidate in the primaries, but it won’t be Palin and it won’t be Huckabee, whose future lies in talk shows and diet books.