I personally felt that McCain ran a very poor campaign in 2008, hopefully whoever the repub candidate is will do much better. You would think with an economy and UE this bad that Obama would be toast, but I wouldn't count any chickens. The repubs also need a majority in the Senate too, as well as keeping it in the House. One wonders how the gop will do in their primaries if the TPers push unqualified candidates into the general election.
Galston goes on to discuss the electoral college and how it will play a role (my second link above.)
Here's part...
1. As Gerald Seib rightly reminds us (Wall Street Journal, September 27 2011), presidential campaigns are won and lost state by state in the Electoral College, not in the nationwide popular vote. (Once in a while, this turns out to be a distinction with a difference; just ask not-quite President Gore.) Based on state results from the past five elections, Seib argues that the Electoral College gives Democrats a distinct advantage: they’ve won 18 states plus the District of Columbia, totaling 242 electoral votes, in each of those elections, compared to only 13 states with 102 votes for the Republicans.
2. In 2008, Barack Obama beat John McCain with 365 electoral votes to McCain’s 173. Now let’s do alternative history based on two assumptions: (1) the two-party popular vote was evenly divided; and (2) Obama’s margin in each state was reduced by the same amount—7.26 percentage points—yielding an equal division of the popular vote. Under that scenario, Obama would have lost five states that he actually won—Indiana, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia—with a total loss of 86 electoral votes. Under this scenario he still would have prevailed in the Electoral College, 279 to 259. That would seem to validate the hypothesis that Democrats enjoy a structural edge: they get 10 more electoral votes when the popular vote is evenly divided.
3. But not so fast: the 2008 presidential election was the last to be carried out based on the 2000 census, and the distribution of Electoral College votes did not reflect population shifts that have occurred in the ensuing years. The 2012 presidential election will, and it makes a difference. Reapportionment shifts 6 electoral votes from Democratic to Republican states. If we rerun the 2008 election with the 2012 electoral vote allocation plus an even split of the popular vote, Obama wins by a very narrow margin—273 to 265. So the current Democratic structural advantage is 4 electoral votes—not nothing, but not much either. The probability that Obama could win reelection without a majority of the popular vote is extremely if not vanishingly low.
Yeah, I read that analysis when it first came out. All very true, it's hard to see Obama getting the support from the independent voters this time, I suspect he'll lose some swing states.
One wonders if the increasing numbers of unemployed will stick with Obama thinking they'll keep getting their gov't handouts or instead vote GOP thinking they'll have a better chance of getting a job. Big Gov't vs Small Gov't. And the OWSers could have a detrimental impact on the repubs if Obama can paint them as the party of the rich guys. I think it's gonna get nasty.
The OWS is going down in flames fast and with them goes the Democrat's chances.
Somehow they have to create separation from them or Obama and many others will be sent packing.
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