Electoral College: Romney 272, Obama 266

Romney states:  VA, NC, SC, GA, FL, MS, AL, LA, AR, OK, TX, AZ, NV, ID, MT, WY, ND, SD, NE, KS, MO, OH, KY, TN, IN, WV, AK

Obama states:  ME, NH, VT, MA, CT, NY, PA NY, DE, MD, DC, MI, WI, IL, IA, MN, CO, NM, CA,OR, WA, HI

• Fools gold states for Republicans:  Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan 
• Fools gold states for Democrats:  North Carolina, Arizona, Indiana
• True toss-up states:  Virginia, New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, Ohio, and Florida

Periodically I'll keep doing this but honestly, I'm a conservative blogger so naturally I'm going to lean it in Romney's direction.  I'm not going to pretend I'm some newsman.  A couple thousand votes here and there in any of these states will swing this election.

This is just going to be razor-close if things hold to form and no monstrous events or scandals affect this race.

 

Comments

[wannawin]

Agreed. That razor-thin margin is a win, though. Close only counts in horshoes & hand grenades.

[FreeDem]

Your math is wrong. The states you list add up to Obama 272, Romney 266, not the other way around. Or you meant to list Iowa as a Romney state.

[toto]

Presidential elections don't have to be this way.

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections.

When the bill is enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes– enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.

The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for President. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.

In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in closely divided Battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA 75%, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE – 75%, ID – 77%, ME – 77%, MT – 72%, NE 74%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM – 76%, OK – 81%, RI – 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT – 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR – 80%,, KY- 80%, MS – 77%, MO – 70%, NC – 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, TN – 83%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and in other states polled: AZ – 67%, CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%. Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.

The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 states. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions possessing 132 electoral votes - 49% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.

NationalPopularVote
Follow National Popular Vote on Facebook via NationalPopularVoteInc

[Dan]

toto, I think there are some technical problems with your proposal to try to find a backdoor method of eliminating the Electoral College. Unless you further overhaul the election laws in all of the states participating in the scheme then you are going to have electors chosen who are chosen by their respective political parties. These electors can't be compelled to follow your scheme and vote for the candidate of the other party just because you want them to and because he drew more popular votes nationally. And if you try to compel them with criminal sanctions or something I don't think that will pass Constitutional muster. The Supreme Court would scuttle the scheme. As they should.

If you want to change the way the Constitution mandates that we elect our presidents then you are going to have to amend the Constitution. Otherwise you are going to expend an awful lot of effort spinning your wheels and achieve nothing in the end.

I know some people are still smarting over the 2000 election and the fact that Bush lost the popular vote by half a million nationally and still won the presidency. I know, I know. That is muddied by the whole Florida thing. And we will never know what the result really was in Florida since a full recount of the state didn't take place. But it is pointless to fret over that at this point. If, for the sake of argument, we accept that Bush really won the popular vote in Florida then his loss in the national popular vote is irrelevant. The Electoral College is where we elect our presidents. Bush won.

On the other side of the coin, some Republicans look at the Electoral math and national demographic trends and see trouble for their future prospects. The party is becoming older, whiter and more concentrated in the South and other states that don't comprise an Electoral College majority. They reason that you might win a narrow popular vote by running up large majorities primarily in the South while failing to demonstrate the broad national appeal needed to cobble together 270 votes in the Electoral College. I think this reasoning is pretty short sighted. Twenty-five or thirty years ago everyone was talking about the seeming lock on the Electoral College that the Republicans held. This was due primarily to population shifts to states that were previously strongly Republican. But obviously this has changed. and it can and will change again. Blowing up the Electoral College because of a current disadvantage doesn't seem like a terribly good idea.

There were some pretty sound reasons for the creation of the Electoral College.But if enough Americans want to do away with it, so be it. That's why they made the Constitution amendable. But you're going to need to amend it. This too cute by half scheme won't pass legal and constitutional muster. Even it you can get it passed in enough states to make it theoretically operational.

[toto]

There have been 22,000 electoral votes cast since presidential elections became competitive (in 1796), and only 10 have been cast for someone other than the candidate nominated by the elector's own political party. The electors now are dedicated party activists of the winning party who meet briefly in mid-December to cast their totally predictable rubberstamped votes in accordance with their pre-announced pledges.

If a Democratic presidential candidate receives the most votes, the state's dedicated Democratic party activists who have been chosen as its slate of electors become the Electoral College voting bloc. If a Republican presidential candidate receives the most votes, the state's dedicated Republican party activists who have been chosen as its slate of electors become the Electoral College voting bloc. The winner of the presidential election is the candidate who collects 270 votes from Electoral College voters from among the winning party's dedicated activists.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld state laws guaranteeing faithful voting by presidential electors (because the states have plenary power over presidential electors).