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Electoral College Picture Favors Obama (For Now)
Posted 12:22 a.m., June 25, 2008
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According to a new poll in Tuesday's L.A. Times, Barack Obama is supposedly ahead by 12 points in a two-way race aginst John McCain. Add in third-party candidates Bob Barr and Ralph Nader, and the lead increases to 15 percent.
That's all fine, but the election isn't going to be determined by any nationwide popularity polls. The electoral college--a far different measure of popular sentiment--will determine the outcome.
But there is electronic aid available to us political junkies. It takes the form of a calculator on the L.A. Times Web site, available again this election cycle, which allows readers to play around with the various potential outcomes for each state in the 2008 presidential election.
The calculator is represented as an interactive American map, on which you can click any state and make it either red or blue to indicate either a Democratic or Republican victory. (It's here if you want to mess around with it.)
So I played around with it a while, and performed a quick little exercise. After calling up the Times' interactive map, I opened a second Web browser and called up RealClearPolitics.com.
There I surveyed all the latest statewide election polls, to show which candidate leads in the individual states. I tracked polls back only though early June, discounting any polls taken before Hillary Clinton exited the race.
Once I had the polling information, I went back to the other browser and clicked on various states on the Times' interactive map. I made the ones where recent polls show Obama leading blue, and made those where McCain is ahead red.
There is nothing definitive about this exercise -- the opinion polls can and probably will change tomorrow. It's just a measure of where things have stood at a snapshot in time over these last few weeks.
So, all caveats aside, here's what the exercise concludes:
If the election were held today, and if the polls are accurate reflections of voters' present preferences (always an iffy prospect), I show Obama winning the election handily by a 331-207 tally in the electoral college, based on the present lay of the land.
That's just a little less than the wide margin by which Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole in 1996.
Here is a breakdown of the states where polls currently show Obama leading (listed not alphabetically, but going roughly clockwise across the map):
- Washington
- Montana
- Minnesota
- Wisconsin
- Michigan
- New York
- Vermont
- New Hampshire
- Maine
- Massachusetts
- New Jersey
- Connecticut
- Rhode Island
- Delaware
- Maryland
- Washington, D.C.
- Oregon
- California
- New Mexico
- Colorado
- Iowa
- Missouri
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- Virginia
- Hawaii
These are the states where McCain currently is leading:
- Alaska
- Idaho
- Wyoming
- North Dakota
- South Dakota
- West Virginia
- Nevada
- Utah
- Nebraska
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- West Virginia
- Arizona
- Oklahoma
- Texas
- Arkansas
- Louisiana
- Tennessee
- Mississippi
- Alabama
- Georgia
- North Carolina
- South Carolina
- Florida
To overemphasize the point, it obviously is possible if not likely that some of the current polls are way off base. So not all these states will end up going to the candidates as I've indicated here. But if somehow they did, the election would, again, end with this electoral-college result:
Obama 331
McCain 207Note that the current polling -- and the result above -- assumes that McCain has won the perennially critical state of Florida, with its 27 electoral votes.
Of course, a lot of people say it's really all about Ohio. So even though this goes against the current polling, let's say that McCain takes the Buckeye State and its 20 electoral votes.
All else being equal, it doesn't materially affect the outcome. In that case, your total electoral college tally is:
Obama 311
McCain 227
But let's be generous and give McCain the state of Indiana, too, since it almost always votes Republican, no matter what the polls now say.
So now it's:
Obama 300
McCain 238
Now, let's add Virginia to McCain's ledger, even though Obama is running slightly ahead there right now. It is after all a southern state and Obama was leading by just 1 point on June 17. Support from Sen. Jim Webb, Gov. Tim Keane and former Gov. Mark Warner might not be enough to tip the scales to Obama, especially in the rural areas (unless Obama names one of them his running mate).
Now it's:
Obama 287
McCain 251
It's getting close, but Obama still wins.
Obama leads Ohio by 6 percent in the polls at the moment. As noted earlier, Ohio could very well switch over to McCain easily. But let's say it actually goes to Obama. And just for the sake of argument, let's instead award Missouri to McCain, while giving Obama Ohio. In that scenario, assuming all our other switches to McCain remain the same, you get this result:
Obama 296
McCain 242
Now, let's say you really don't think Obama can take either Ohio or Missouri. Give both of them to McCain. You still get:
Obama 276
McCain 262
A squeaker, but a win for Obama.
What all that means, to me, is that a lot can go wrong from Obama's point of view, and he still can win the election. The constant is that he has to hang onto Pennsylvania (where he now leads by 4 percent). And he has to take Colorado, New Mexico, Montana and Iowa away from the Republicans, which I think there is a very good chance he will do.
In fact, Obama doesn't even have to win all those western states mentioned in the previous paragraph. In this scenario, he could lose New Mexico's five electoral college votes and still win the presidency--with exactly one vote to spare, 271-267.
If he were to lose Montana, too, however, we'd have ourselves a 270-268 McCain victory.
Bottom line, while he'd be unwise to cede them to McCain, it appears that if Obama manages to run strong in the West, he possibly can afford to lose both Ohio and Florida--rendering those states' alleged voting-machine chicanery moot.
But there are a whole lot of plausible scenarios that have Obama taking this election in a near landslide. (As could McCain, if you add up alternative scenarios in his favor. Just not based on current state election polls.)
No, given the way the tea leaves are pointing at this moment, if I were betting in Vegas today on the presidential race, my money would be on Obama.
As this exercise shows, he is in great shape now, and he can afford to have a lot of things go wrong and still eke out a win.
-- Kevin Featherly
Copyright 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 -- Kevin Featherly