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Electoral College Destiny?

M

mshan

Diamond Member
"So if Pennsylvania is off the boards, let’s look around. Imagine it’s election night, say 10:45 east coast time. Four eastern states haven’t been called yet: Ohio (18), Virginia (13), North Carolina (15), and Florida (29). Also, in some Western states, the polls haven’t closed, or the races are too tight to project just yet—Colorado and Nevada, say.

Arizona has just been called for Romney. At this point, Romney actually leads, 188 to 182. In this scenario I’m assuming Obama has won Iowa (6), which is admittedly close but where his lead has been stable at three or four points, and New Hampshire (4), where Obama has a similar fairly small but stable lead, and Michigan (16), where the gap appears to be opening up a little.

So it’s a six-vote Romney edge. They’re feeling great up in Boston. Especially with the big Eastern four still up in the air. Right?

Not really. Let’s look at these West Coast states. Even though they’re still voting in California, obviously Obama is going to win it (55). And equally obviously, he’s going to win Washington (12) and Oregon (7), where neither side even bothered to spend a dime. Throw in Hawaii (4). Those 78 votes haul Obama up to 260. That’s something to keep in mind for election night: Whatever Obama’s number is at 10 pm Eastern, add those 78 EV’s—they’re a mortal lock, and a hefty insurance policy. If he wins Nevada (6) and Colorado (9), it’s over.

In other words, Obama can lose the big Eastern four—Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida: all of ’em!—and still be reelected.

And barring some huge cataclysm, he’s not losing all four of those states. If he wins even one—say Virginia, the smallest of the four—then Romney has to win Colorado, Iowa, and New Hampshire; all possible, certainly, but all states where he has been behind, narrowly but consistently, for weeks or months."


http://news.yahoo.com/coming-obama-landslide-025409605.html
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For comparison, the Washington Post's take from 1 year ago (November 2011): (http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...ings/2011/11/06/gIQACdmLtM_story.html?hpid=z3)
 
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Yes, as it is right now the electoral map is extremely favorable to Obama. He is significantly outperforming his national numbers in most swing states. With two months to go, Romney definitely has a pretty significant uphill climb to make.
 
Same article:
"All this explains the interesting little chart toward the lower right-hand corner of Nate Silver’s home page, headed “Electoral Vote Distribution.” It rates the probability that Obama receives a certain number of electoral votes. Most outcomes, in a range running from 150 EV’s up to 400, rate around a 2 percent chance of Obama receiving that number. The highest spike on the chart? It’s at around 330 EV’s, which Silver reckons Obama has a 14 percent chance of hitting.

Now, most political journalists would chuckle derisively at the idea that Obama is going to carry home 330 EV’s. Deride away. And while you do, bear in mind that Silver called 50 out of 51 states last time (counting D.C.; he missed only Indiana) and every single Senate race."
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Nate Silver ("Poblano") was not part of the establishment then, just a Baseball Prospectus statistician dabbling in electoral college projections as a hobby then (http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/5780/)
 
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eskimospy said:
Yes, as it is right now the electoral map is extremely favorable to Obama. He is significantly outperforming his national numbers in most swing states. With two months to go, Romney definitely has a pretty significant uphill climb to make.
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Eskimo is right. President Obama should be comfortably re-elected.
 
I just read an article that shows that Obama is only doing ads in like 7 states and Mitt in 9 (Mitt has far more money)

And, as the election draws near we might see Obama go down to only 4 states and Mitt 6-7.

I haven't seen an ad yet for either in my surely Blue state.
 
I'll still be surprised if Obama loses, but he's far out-raising Obama, at least at this stage of the game. There will be one holy hell of an ad campaign.
 
werepossum said:
I'll still be surprised if Obama loses, but he's far out-raising Obama, at least at this stage of the game. There will be one holy hell of an ad campaign.
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I agree to a certain extent, but what's interesting is that I was reading about the diminishing returns of more cash past a certain (fairly high) point that both candidates are likely to reach. There comes a point at which you simply run out of good venues to place ads in.

Romney will have tremendous, unprecedented resources for this election I agree, and I don't think Romney has made his big push yet. He has a big hill to climb though, especially in the electoral college.
 
IMO, winner take all should be abolished and replaced with proportional EC votes. It would make the elections more interesting.
 
cybrsage said:
IMO, winner take all should be abolished and replaced with proportional EC votes. It would make the elections more interesting.
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I agree, but id go one step further and just do away with EC all together. Proportional voting is no different then popular voting really. Proportional voting would still skew the numbers a tad. For example if a state has 5 EC points but has to give 75% to a candidate. Do you round up to 4 or just use 3.75 EC points?

Its so close to straight popular vote that id rather see that.
 
soulcougher73 said:
I agree, but id go one step further and just do away with EC all together. Proportional voting is no different then popular voting really. Proportional voting would still skew the numbers a tad. For example if a state has 5 EC points but has to give 75% to a candidate. Do you round up to 4 or just use 3.75 EC points?

Its so close to straight popular vote that id rather see that.
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You beat me to it.🙂
 
For political reasons a straight popular vote won't happen anytime soon. Proportional allocation of EC votes is much more realistic.
 
ichy said:
For political reasons a straight popular vote won't happen anytime soon. Proportional allocation of EC votes is much more realistic.
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It would need to be an all or nothing thing though in my opinion. Every state would have to do proportional to make it work. It is far better then the EC is set up currently, but still so close to straight voting you may as well go that route and abolish the useless EC.
 
I think the Seventeenth Amendment did quite enough damage to the states without also repealing the Electoral College. With a direct popular vote, less populous states would be totally screwed, and the incentive to manufacture large numbers of votes would be huge.
 
werepossum said:
I think the Seventeenth Amendment did quite enough damage to the states without also repealing the Electoral College. With a direct popular vote, less populous states would be totally screwed, and the incentive to manufacture large numbers of votes would be huge.
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Less populous states wouldn't be any more screwed than they are now. The amount of attention paid to states currently has little to do with how many people are in them, it is simply their partisan makeup. As our system exists now if you are a swing state you have attention lavished on you. If you are not, you get shit.

I can see no rational reason to prioritize the concerns of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and a few other states to a greater degree than anywhere else. I believe a more realistic concern would be that rural areas would get the shaft over urban ones due to their lesser population density, but rural areas are already given a heavy institutional advantage in other areas of our government. Why make it even larger?
 
I think the election should be won with a popular vote, minimum 5/9ths, if less than that then it falls back to a republic vote based on 1 vote per state based on state voter's majority vote.
 
eskimospy said:
Less populous states wouldn't be any more screwed than they are now. The amount of attention paid to states currently has little to do with how many people are in them, it is simply their partisan makeup. As our system exists now if you are a swing state you have attention lavished on you. If you are not, you get shit.
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The difference is that swing states change fairly frequently over time. Population centers never do.

With a straight popular vote, big cities are all that will matter to the candidates -- forever.
 
Wtf makes you believe that it matters if Obomney or Romneybama wins? Name one thing you actually think will be different 4 years from now depending on who wins? They are both bought, both controlled, both exactly the same in every metric that matters. They are like two runningbacks on two NFL teams, to someone who doesnt give a damn about football. You have allowed pop politics to replace real politics. Do you give a crap? Probably not.
 
CharlesKozierok said:
The difference is that swing states change fairly frequently over time. Population centers never do.

With a straight popular vote, big cities are all that will matter to the candidates -- forever.
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Rural voters are ALREADY ignored in our current system. Swing states are generally less rural than average, and when candidates do campaign there they tend to campaign in heavily populated areas for obvious reasons.

Really what it comes down to though is that while both solutions are imperfect, presidential elections currently swing on states that comprise a fairly small percentage of the US population. Instead of competing so hard for 20% or whatever of the US population's support they would have to compete for 51%.
 
eskimospy said:
Rural voters are ALREADY ignored in our current system.
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Actually they are over represented. Way over represented. The two Senators per state gives the low population states a huge over representation. Each Senator from Vermont represents 310 thousand people while each Senator from Texas represents 19 million people. Yet each have one vote in the Senate.
 
CharlesKozierok said:
The difference is that swing states change fairly frequently over time. Population centers never do.

With a straight popular vote, big cities are all that will matter to the candidates -- forever.
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This is true. If we're to fix something electoral, I'd much rather see a weighted voting system geared toward avoiding the plurality election wins which by Eskimospy's link is 17/3 more common.

techs said:
Actually they are over represented. Way over represented. The two Senators per state gives the low population states a huge over representation. Each Senator from Vermont represents 310 thousand people while each Senator from Texas represents 19 million people. Yet each have one vote in the Senate.
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Because the purpose of the Senate was to represent the states. Representing the people was the purpose of the House, which is why it got the purse strings.
 
werepossum said:
Because the purpose of the Senate was to represent the states. Representing the people was the purpose of the House, which is why it got the purse strings.
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What does that have to do with the argument that under our system of government small population states have a greater say per person in our laws? Arguing that the popular vote would give them less say, imo, doesn't even begin to redress the disparity.
Oh, and the Senate has as much say as the House when it comes to the purse strings in reality.
 
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