2008 Election: Electoral Anaylsis

[bandbfan]

Why should states matter? Does 1 person in Alaska not equal 1 person in New York?

[bandbfan]

Oops

[George008]

Yeah, our constitution does not allow the people to directly elect the president, but we do elect the electorates.

[bandbfan]

Wow, lots of posts.

[George008]

yeah, mine posted twice too...weird..

Yeah they do, but Alaska's 600,000 does not equal New Yorks 18,000,000. The issues that are important to Alaskans are not alwats equal to those that are important to New Yorkers.

If it were just between Alaska and New York persay...New York would be well represented every time, while Alaska would not.

States matter because were are actually a representative republic and not a democracy.

Its in the name...United States of America.

[Adam]

Its called proportional representation, which I wish my country Canada would seriously look at.....

[Roman]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/worl...icle4662774.ece

[bandbfan]

I can see where that is true by saying we're a republic. But nobody can say we're truly a democracy with the system in place. But in every other vote, senate, house, state, or local vote, the majority does rule.

I guess I'd have to see an example of the state vs. state thing.

[George008]

I found a neat website where you can build your own electoral map.

I feel like the guy on CNN.

Check it out.

[George008]

I might have to change my mind about the state that worries me the most. I am now worried about Colorado too! More so than Ohio. Most sources have McCain in the lead in Ohio while Obama has taken a large lead in Iowa, enough to make it a lean Obama state.

Now according to the map I have built, if polls turn out to be correct, McCain MUST win the close race in Colorado. McCain has to win Colorado if Obama wins Iowa and NM which are both lean Obama states now.

[Max]

Casey, you could not be more right about Colorado: I really think that whoever wins Colorado will win the election. Unfortunately, I feel that Obama currently has the edge in CO (in large part due to the fact that he is spending far more time and money there than McCain is).

Although this is just mere speculation, I am beginning to think that the final outcome of the election could very likely be a 269-269 electoral vote tie between McCain and Obama. Here's how I think this scenario could happen:

In 2004, Bush won the election with 286 electoral votes. One state that he did not carry was New Hampshire, which I believe that McCain will narrowly carry this time. Because NH has 4 electoral votes, our total is now up to 290.

Unfortunately, there are two states that Bush won in 2004 that I don't think McCain will carry: Iowa (7 electoral votes) and Colorado (9 electoral votes). Subtracting these 16 EVs from 290 now leaves McCain with 274 EVs, which is still enough to win. Yet, I also believe that McCain will lose one of the two other southwestern battleground states--Nevada or New Mexico--as well. (Note that Bush carried both NV and NM in 2004.) Since either of these states has 5 EVs, McCain's electoral vote total would shrink to 269. Of course, Obama would also have 269 electoral votes as well, given the fact that a total of 538 are available.

This 269-269 tie would be nothing short of a disaster for the country. (Indeed, it may even cause the 2000 election to look tame by comparasion.) That's becuase the House of Representatives would then have the responsibility of choosing the next president (while the Senate would decide who becomes vice president).

Before I continue, it is important to note that it would be the newly elected House (as opposed to the current House) that will determine the presidential election winner. Of course, since everybody expects the Democrats to retain control of the House (as well as the Senate), it sure looks like a 269-269 tie would result in a win for Obama.

However, even with a Democratic House, an Obama victory is not 100% guaranteed. That's because the procedure the House follows is not a straight up-or-down vote. Rather, the House delegations in each state hold a vote, and whoever wins is proclaimed the winner of that state; then, each state gets one vote, and whoever wins the most votes (i.e., the most states) becomes the next president.

Unfortunately, there are two complications that still could arise under this scenario: First, it cannot be assumed that each Republican in the House will vote for McCain and that each Democrat in the House will vote for Obama. That's because there may be Republicans who would choose to vote for Obama (and Democrats who would choose to vote for McCain) in the event that their own Congressional District vote heavily for Obama (or McCain, in the case of Democratic House members). (The reason why a Republican Congressman from a district that heavily voted for Obama would choose to support Obama would be due to the fact that a vote for McCain could cause the Congressman to lost his next race for re-election.)

Secondly, even if you assume that all House Republicans will support McCain (and all House Democrats will vote for Obama), a major problem will arise if a state's Congressional delegation is evenly split between the two parties. To be honest, I do not know how this state's "vote" would be counted (in the final tally where each state gets a single vote, and the candidate who wins the most states becomes president). Perhaps that state's vote would be forfeited, but that unfortunately creates the problem of disenfranchising all of the residents of that particular state.

I'm sorry for this long explanation, but I just wanted to explain how truly complicated it would become if the House ends up deciding the next president. Hopefully, the 269-269 electoral vote tie will not happen, and the country can avoid this chaos.

[cct]

This is rather interesting and different way of looking at the electoral votes. Done by Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1000261611

[bandbfan]

Well if the vote is tied, 269-269, it's pretty much guaranteed that Biden will be VP, since the Dems will have about a 10 person majority. Lol and if McCain was voted in by the house, that'd be an interesting relationship.

[Max]

Because the stock market crash completely changed the dynamics of this campaign, McCain has decided to stop campaigning in Michigan. I applaud McCain for this decision, as I think it is a wise move on his part. However, I have always believed that--even before the stock market crash--it was virtually impossible for a Republican to win a statewide election in that state. (That's because Michigan is the most unionized state in the country, and because Detroit--which has a huge minority population--is home to a very powerful Democratic machine.) Therefore, I am very upset that McCain already spent so much time and money (about $8 million) in Michigan prior to last week.

Unfortunately, McCain is still foolishly spending resources in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Wisconsin--three states that are just as hopeless for Republicans as is Michigan. As a matter of fact, because of this decision--and because he had already spent so much time and money in Michigan--I think that McCain has made a huge series of blunders in this campaign. What McCain needs to do is to focus all of his efforts on Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. Yet, with the exception of Ohio, McCain has appallingly spent zero resources in any of these states up until now, carlessly assuming that they were "in the bag" (while concentrating most of his efforts on the lost causes of Pennsylvania and Michigan).

[jcar03]

I love the realclearpolitics.com website that Casey mentioned a few posts above. You can make your own map and look at past years and see pretty much daily (and sometimes more then that) changes in the electoral college from new polls.