PHILADELPHIA — A few hours before Hillary Clinton addressed the Democratic convention here, Virginia Reps. Bobby Scott and Don Beyer were standing in a hallway of the Wells Fargo Arena, in front of a big screen set up by Microsoft. The screen had an electoral map of the United States on it. The operator set it to a neutral position where each party begins with about 200 electoral votes and all the swing states — Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, etc. — are in gray. Then you touch each swing state to turn it blue or red until you have a final electoral guess.
Beyer went first. He made most of the swing states blue and came up with a final prediction of Clinton 320 and Trump 218. Going next, Scott came up with an exact replay of the 2012 numbers, with Clinton 332 and Trump 206.
