Here’s how the electoral math favors Obama
August 11th, 2008 at 08:01am Pat Cunningham
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Just for the fun of it, I performed a mathematical exercise this morning to see how the electoral votes would break down if I gave John McCain more than the benefit of the doubt.
Using FIGURES from the independent Web site Pollster.com [Note: The numbers may have changed a bit by the time you click on the link, but probably not so much as to refute my hypothesis] I did the following:
I gave McCain all 122 electoral votes in the states where he’s running strongly.
I also gave him all 35 electoral votes in the states that are leaning his way.
And, in a generous gesture, I gave him all 97 electoral votes in the states that are considered toss-ups.
But wait. In an even more generous gesture, I gave McCain 20 percent of the electoral votes in the states that are leaning toward Barack Obama.
So, the only electoral votes I’m giving Obama are the 224 in the states where he’s running strongly and 48 of the 60 in the states that are leaning his way.
The winner: Obama by a score of 272-266.
This dramatizes the fact that the national poll numbers are less important than the state-by-state figures. As the election of 2000 demonstrated, you can lose the national popular vote and still win the presidency in the Electoral College.
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22 Comments Add your own
1. David Barrett | August 11th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Shhh! Don\’t give the game away. There\’s a lot of money to be made by preserving the illusion that the race is excitingly close.
2. Pat Cunningham | August 11th, 2008 at 11:33 am
David: Actually, the race is still fairly close, despite my electoral calculations. Neither candidate has opened a really big lead in the polls. Obama still could lose, especially if a really terrible scandal were to arise. I don’t think that will happen, but you never know. But, then, McCain also could be vulnerable to scandal. Obama has the organizational advantage by a wide margin. He’s got more volunteers, more paid staff, more money and more enthusiasm on his side. Then, too, he’s more likely to outshine McCain in the debates. The choice of running mates could be important on either side. It’s going to be fun. There are only 85 days to go — less than that, really, if you consider that some states, including Illinois, have early voting.
3. susan | August 11th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
The real issue is not how well Obama or McCain might do in the closely divided battleground states, but that we shouldn’t have battleground states and spectator states in the first place. Every vote in every state should be politically relevant in a presidential election. And, every vote should be equal. We should have a national popular vote for President in which the White House goes to the candidate who gets the most popular votes in all 50 states.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC). The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral vote — that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
Because of state-by-state enacted rules for winner-take-all awarding of their electoral votes, recent candidates with limited funds have concentrated their attention on a handful of closely divided “battleground” states. In 2004 two-thirds of the visits and money were focused in just six states; 88% on 9 states, and 99% of the money went to just 16 states. Two-thirds of the states and people have been merely spectators to the presidential election.
Another shortcoming of the current system is that a candidate can win the Presidency without winning the most popular votes nationwide.
The National Popular Vote bill has passed 21 state legislative chambers, including one house in Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, North Carolina, and Washington, and both houses in California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland. These four states possess 50 electoral votes — 19% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
See http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
4. Pat Cunningham | August 11th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Susan: Thanks much. I’m with you.
5. Mike Carroll | August 11th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
David Barrett -you wouldn’t be from Eau Claire, Wisconsin by any chance?
6. Pat Cunningham | August 11th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Hey, Mike. For reasons I can’t ethically disclose, I believe David Barrett is a progressive. Don’t try to corrupt him. But seriously, while I’m required not to compromise the privacy of commenters by giving out their e-mail addresses, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with my advising you to Google the dude’s name along with a cleverly chosen word or two that might help you find him via other Web sites. Or you could bribe me (but the price is sky high).
7. Mike Carroll | August 11th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Pat-I went to High School with a Dave Barrett and we roomed together when I was in grad school and he was working off his C.O. status. We are still in contact and I was just wondering if he had stumbled across your blog. BTW, he was and is a Progressive/Liberal.Imagine 180 degrees from me. I still hold out hope for him however.
8. hokumboy | August 11th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Mike,
David’s blog says he’s from Moline:
http://molinedemocraticmaverick.blogspot.com/
He probably just wishes he was from Eau Claire.
I wish I was from Eau Claire. Of course that’s ’cause the two sweetest grand-daughters in the nation live in Eau Claire.
5 more years and we may very well make the move.
9. hokumboy | August 11th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Hell,
we all might wish we were from Eau Claire:
Latest 2006 Crimes per 100,000 People:
Eau Claire, WI Rockford, IL National
Murder: 0 12.4 7
Forcible Rape: 12.74 85.86 32.2
Robbery: 20.7 361 205.
Aggravated Assault: 125.8 738.3 336.5
Burglary: 621 1942.3 813.2
Larceny Theft: 2718.2 4862.8 2601.7
Vehicle Theft: 149.7 506.1 501.5
10. David Barrett | August 11th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I live in Moline and have never been to graduate school, but it’s nice to know there are other progressives Dave Barretts around
11. Mike Carroll | August 11th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Hokumboy- we may not agree on anything else but we agree on Eau Claire. God’s country.
Dave-thanks-just checking. Your namesake is one hell of a good guy despite his unfortunate political philosophy.
12. Menlo Bob | August 11th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Let’s revisit mid-summer polls and how closely they predict winners.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/108676/July-Leader-Lost-Last-Competitive-US-Elections.aspx
13. Jason C | August 11th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
I recall seeing that both Obama and McCain list baseball as their favorite sport. Maybe they can live with the Electoral College using the Baseball analogy of the World Series: The championship winner is the team that wins the most games, not the team that scores the most runs.
14. Mr. Baseball | August 11th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
I completely agree with Susan. I want Obama to win, but not if he doesn’t win the popular vote. Actually, if we have the same outcome as 2000 with the winner of the popular vote losing the election, maybe then we’ll finally have the law changed.
15. Kaus | August 12th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Perhaps you should think about what could happen when eliminating the electoral vote if we have a strong 3rd party candidate.
1992 Clinton beat Bush Sr. by only 5.6 percent of popular vote but 37 percent of Electoral. Perot captured 19 percent of popular that year and 0 electoral votes.
1996 Perot received 9 percent popular but 0 electoral in a race where Dole lost to Clinton by 9 percent.
16. Craig Knauss | August 12th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
The Electoral College is an insult to the concept of “one man, one vote”. Why should some Wyoming cowboy’s vote be worth three times as much as an Illinois school teacher’s? Are people in Alaska so valuable that their votes are worth three times what a Texan’s vote is worth? There are several states that have so little population that they get the baseline three votes, regardless of voter registration or turnout. And why should potentially ONE popular vote determine who wins all electoral votes in a large state, and maybe the entire election? Especially if the opponent wins the popular vote? Does that truly reflect the will of the people? In the 2000 election a half-million people were essentially told their votes didn’t count!
17. Jason C | August 12th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
There are several ways to reform the election process, but the electoral college reflects the very real constitutional sharing of powers between the individual states and the central government in our federal form of government. Bypassing the states for a national unitary system would run against the principles of federalism upon which the constitution was established.
Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe not. But the National Popular Vote Bill doesn’t get rid of the Electoral College, it merely perverts it.
18. Craig Knauss | August 13th, 2008 at 8:47 am
The whole purpose of the Electoral College was to remove the actual election of the President from the riff-raff. The EC is supposed to be a more informed body capable of making a more informed decision. In reality, that’s crap. They’re just a bunch of political hacks and rarely does even one of them make an informed decision. The best way to reform the EC, other than abolish it, would be to prorate the electoral votes in EVERY state. I truly doubt that everyone in California or New York voted for Kerry. Or that everyone in the mountain states voted for Bush. Or that everyone in Florida or Ohio voted for Bush. And I find it offensive that a single popular vote can deliver all of a state’s electoral votes.
19. Jason C | August 14th, 2008 at 12:38 am
I agree, Craig Knauss, the Electoral College is a structure based on representational democracy, e.g. a republic. One of the reasons it still exists because the 50 states still like to think of themselves as nominally sovereign states instead of mere provinces… even after the US Civil War gave lie to that belief.
Unfortunately, you’re right that the Electors are partisan. I would not trust them to act conscientiously if they discovered that their elections were due to “voting irregularities”. That’s about the only pragmatic argument left from the old days when communication and travel times were slow.
If we’re going to reform the system for a national unitary system then we should do it via constitutional amendment, but I’m a constructionist. I think that an Electoral College reform by the states on their own behalf would be better done by apportioning their own electors in alignment with the votes of their own resident citizenss, not the resident citizens of other states, as the National Popular Vote bill would do. I agree that a good EC reform would use either proportional elector selection, but even geographical districts would be better than the current EC or the NPV Bill.
20. Craig Knauss | August 14th, 2008 at 8:40 am
“by apportioning their own electors in alignment with the votes of their own resident citizens…
Jason, that’s exactly what I meant. Each state’s electoral vote should be apportioned based on the popular vote in THAT STATE. I know that not everyone in Montana voted for Bush. Or even close to it. (Their governor is a Democrat.) Yet, Bush got all of their electoral votes. And we know that not everyone in California voted for Kerry, yet he got all the electoral votes. The system stinks. But it won’t be reformed by individual states. Do you really think that Utah, for example, will reform a system that currently gives the Republicans all of the electoral votes in every election? Not hardly.
21. Jason C | August 15th, 2008 at 1:49 am
True, Craig, I think we agree. The states have their own motivations that can often be at odds with the desire of the total voting population in the US. I suspect that these motivations could also derail the National Popular Vote Bill during any given election if a key state or a combination of signatory states suddenly decide that it’s not in their best interest (read: in the best interest of the political party that holds the state legislature). Last minute legislating and post-election lawsuits would probably plague the legitimacy of the NPV. Even if the NPV were to stand constitutional review, we may be stuck with another case of “The election was given to Candidate X by 9 people in black robes.” I think we’d need an amendment to the US Constitution so to take it out of the hands of 50+ state assemblies once and for all.
22. Craig Knauss | August 15th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Amen, Brother!
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