As I’ve noted in a series of posts, the budget deficit this year will be gigantic. Indeed,it’s already reached almost $1.3 trillion. That’s big money, even in Washington.

As Stan Collender points out over at Capital Gains and Games, however, the absolute amount of the deficit is not the only thing that matters politically. Also important is how the deficit stacks up relative to expectations. And, as Stan says, there’s good reason to believe that the deficit will come in less than original forecasts.

Back in May, the Obama administration projected that this year’s deficit would come in at $1.84 trillion, assuming enactment of the President’s policies. In June, the Congressional Budget Office came up with a very similar estimate.

Now it’s looking as though the deficit could come in several hundred billion dollars lower than that.

The evidence for this is two-fold:

• Primary dealers — the folks who purchase bonds from the Treasury — estimate that the deficit will come in around $1.64 trillion, about $200 billion less than the earlier OMB and CBO estimates. (This estimate is reporting in the charts that Treasury released in conjunction with its recent quarterly refunding analysis.)

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