People ask, “Who’s gonna win in November,” and then they talk about national polls or national issues or national debates. All those things are absorbing. But if you want to know who’s gonna win, there’s only one thing that really matters, and that’s the state-by-state electoral vote count.
That’s why the electoral-vote.com site is such an election-year essential. (It started up in 2004.) All you need to do is look at the map as it stands, roughly, now, and you can see what the election’s faultlines are.
The first thing you may notice is that the split between blue Democratic states and red Republican states follows the greatest divide in American history. It’s Civil War time all over again. East of the Mississippi, the old Dixie states go to McCain, and Obama takes Lincoln’s Union states — with the very-close Ohio (now leaning McCain-ward) as the only break from the pattern.
Couldn’t have anything to do with this being the first credible presidential run by an African American, could it? Nah…
West of the Mississippi, the pattern’s a little less even; Obama gets the coast, McCain gets much of the heartland, but there are Democratic inroads here — in recent elections New Mexico has often voted Democratic, but Colorado’s new to the blue roster.
Much can change between now and November, of course. But if you look at the count today, you see that a lot of conventional electoral wisdom just doesn’t hold this year: Obama could lose Ohio and Florida and still win the election handily. He can even win it, closely, if he also loses Indiana, which is currently in his column on electoral-vote but is very much up for grabs (it’s been a reliable Republican state in the recent past).
There’s just a lot of fluidity in a lot of these states. Ohio could still go to the Democrats. Obama has a shot in Montana, of all places. And even Virginia might be in play. Colorado’s plainly up in the air. The Republicans might have a chance in Nevada and New Hampshire. McCain trails by 5-7 points in all the upper Midwest states (Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin), as well as in Pennsylvania and Michigan; a lot has to happen for these states to get more competitive, but it’s entirely possible.
This is the stuff Obama’s strategists are poring over right now. They did a superb job during primary season in managing a tough, long campaign across 50 states in sequence. Now they’ve got to do the same thing all at once.
Post Revisions:
- December 12, 2008 @ 10:43:41 [Current Revision] by Scott Rosenberg
- August 13, 2008 @ 22:33:16 by Scott Rosenberg