Chillizza puts a plausible floor for Romney electoral vote performance at 191 electoral votes and a ceiling at 292 electoral votes:
Romney would win 292 electoral votes if he replicated the Bush 2004 victory. But New Mexico seems like a very tough place to win — not to mention the fact that he would again need to carry Ohio, Florida, Colorado and Nevada as well as North Carolina and Virginia...
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) won 173 electoral votes in 2008. If Romney carried those same 22 states under the 2012 map, he would win 180 electoral votes. Add Indiana, which McCain lost but which will almost certainly go for Romney in 2012, and the former Massachusetts governor’s electoral floor sits at 191.If Romney fails to collect just 23 of the electoral votes that are part of Romney's best case scenario, then Obama wins. About 101 electoral votes are plausibly in play in this election.
As Colorado Pols notes, it is very hard to imagine a plausible scenario in which Romney wins the Presidency without winning Colorado's 9 electoral votes. We are one of the key swing states in this election. New Mexico have 5 electoral votes, Nevada has 6, Florida has 29, North Carolina has 15, Virginia has 13, Ohio has 18, Pennsylvania has 20, New Hampshire has 4, Iowa has 6, Wisconsin has 10, Michigan has 16, Delaware has 3, and West Virginia has 5.
One recent poll has Obama and Romney tied in Colorado, with 47% each and 6% undecided.
Presidential elections don't have to be this way.
ReplyDeleteThe 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. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in more than 3/4ths of the states that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after the primaries.
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.
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If we went to a straight popular vote system, then the big cities would be picking the president. The founding fathers were wise with the electoral system.
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