BATESVILLE — It is inaccurate to say that the popular vote for the presidency doesn’t matter, because what will occur on Nov. 6th will be 51 separate popular votes that definitely matter.
As such, there is a lack of clarity at this point regarding which direction the Electoral College points-the RealClearPolitics website has President Barack Obama leading 221-170, but the latest Rasmussen poll based on a state by state survey of “likely” (as opposed to “registered”) voters has Mitt Romney up 269-243 (just one short of clinching the thing).
Some of this confusion can be cleared up by introducing several factors that tend to often be ignored.
The first of these is that Romney is likely to hold all 22 states that John McCain won in 2008. Romney’s Electoral College base is thus smaller, but considerably more secure than Obama’s. Obama has lots of vulnerable states to defend, Romney probably none. About the only states that went for McCain that Obama has any shot at turning are Arizona and Missouri, neither of which seems likely.
Second, the value of McCain’s states has gone up, from 173 to 187, due to the reapportionment flowing from the 2010 census, reflecting the long-term trend of people (and thus electoral votes) moving from high-tax “blue” (Democratic) states to lowertax “red” (Republican) states.
Bottom line: The election will be determined by how many 2008 Obama states Romney can pick off.
Although he is likely to get a lower percentage of the vote in every state in 2012 than he did in 2008, certain states of great electoral value still remain safe for the president, including California, Illinois, New York and probably New Jersey. One could also safely put Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Rhode Island, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland and Vermont in his pocket. Even though the polls call them toss-upsat this point, recent history suggests Pennsylvania and Michigan will eventually break narrowly for Obama as well.
But that won’t be quite enough, because when you turn to Romney’s column, you find a fair likelihood that the GOP will reclaim Florida and Ohio and almost certainly Indiana. That will leave him with 245 electoral votes, just 25 shy of the magic number.
There is obviously some uncertainty in all this, particularly regarding Obama keeping Pennsylvania and Michigan (Romney actually appears to be ahead in the latter at this point) and Romney taking Ohio and Florida (he has a slight lead in both for now), but it suggests that the election will basically come down to a range of small- and middle-value states: Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, all states that Obama carried last time around, in some cases handily, but which are now up for grabs. It is also by no means certain that Obama can “hold” traditionally Democratic-leaning states like Oregon, New Mexico and Minnesota, either.
Under such circumstances, all Romney has to do is win two or three from that list to put himself past the required 270 (just North Carolina and Virginia would together do it).
To this mix must be added a couple of other considerations, including the historical pattern suggesting that incumbents seldom get a higher percentage of the popular vote in the general election than their approvalratings six months before it, usually a bit less. Obama’s current approval rating of around 48 percent suggests that is about the maximum of what he’s going to get in November (and that probably won’t be enough).
Also worth remembering is that any state in which the incumbent is below 50 percent in the head-to-head match-up with the challenger is a state the incumbent has a good chance of losing. No incumbent can feel confident of carrying a given state unless he is polling above that 50 percent threshold in either approval rating or head to head with his opponent.
What this means is that Romney is almost certain to win every state in which he is currently leading, highly likely to win those states in which he is running roughly even, and has a reasonable chance of taking those in which he is only six or seven points down.
We are, of course, still 134 days from the actual vote, and journalists love to focus on the “horse race” part of campaigns; the twists and turns and bad and good debate performances and gaffes make for more excitement and good copy. But in races involving incumbents, the significance of much of that is exaggerated because the outcome is invariably determined by just two factors: the record of the incumbent and the ability of the challenger to present himself as a credible alternative if that record is a bad one.
Pundits continue to talk about an Electoral College “blue wall” protecting Obama, based on his more than two-to-one margin over McCain in 2008. But a closer look suggests that the fabled “blue wall” is actually more akin to a 3-foot tall chicken-wire fence.
Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial, Pages 13 on 06/25/2012