We are now a little more than six and a half months until the Presidential Election of 2012.
The latest estimates on the Electoral College, which will decide who takes the Oath of Office as President of the United States on Sunday, January 20, 2013, make it clear that President Obama has a clear edge to be re-elected.
According to the Associated Press, the Democrats have solid leads in 14 states and the District of Columbia, leading in five New England states, four Mid Atlantic states and the District of Columbia, plus Illinois, and the three Pacific Coast states and Hawaii, for a total of 186 electoral votes.
Obama also leads in four “swing states” in the crucial area of the Midwest (Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota), along with Pennsylvania, with a total of 56 electoral votes.
So when you add these 18 states and the District of Columbia, it adds up to 242 electoral votes, only 28 short of the number needed to win the election.
So to believe that Obama will not gain 28 electoral votes as a minimum out of a grand total of 296 remaining electoral votes requires true delusion by those who predict a Mitt Romney and Republican victory!
Nine states are said to be “Up For Grabs”, all “swing states”, including Colorado, Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia, for a grand total of 105 electoral votes
So if Obama wins Florida, he has won the election. If he wins Virginia and North Carolina, he has won the election. If he wins Ohio and Colorado, he needs only ONE more vote to be elected, which could come about from New Hampshire’s 4, New Mexico’s 5, Nevada’s 6, or Iowa’s 6.
Obama will probably not win all of the “swing states”, but to imagine he will lose all of them, or enough of them to lose the election, is a figment of a person’s imagination!
Were Obama to win all nine of these states making for a total of 27 states plus the District of Columbia, he would have 347 electoral votes.
Three states lean Republican, but could go to Obama theoretically if everything worked out in an ideal fashion–Arizona, Indiana, and Missouri. Indiana went to Obama in 2008, while Missouri went to John McCain by fewer than 5,000 votes. Arizona could go to Obama because of the rapidly rising Hispanic-Latino vote in a state which has promoted discriminatory laws against them. These three states have 32 electoral votes among them. Were everything to break right, it would allow Obama a grand total of 379 electoral votes and 30 states and the District of Columbia.
The other twenty states are solidly Republican, but with the possible exception of Georgia, with its growing number of Hispanics and Latinos Were the unbelievable but possible win by Obama in Georgia, it would mean 16 more electoral votes and a final grand total of 395 electoral votes in 31 states and the District of Columbia!
One might ask why Obama could end up with fewer electoral votes than 2008, if winning all of the states he won then. The answer is that states that are anti Obama have more electoral votes than they did, under reapportionment that goes into effect once a decade. These states include South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Arizona and Utah.
Meanwhile, states which went for Obama in 2008 lost seats–New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Iowa.
Three states that went for Obama in 2008 gained seats–Florida, Nevada and Washington, while two states which went for McCain in 2008 lost seats–Louisiana and Missouri.
So this is the state of affairs regarding the Presidential Election of 2012 with a little over 200 days left in the Presidential campaign!
Hello Professor,
Well as this is comforting information for those of us who support the President, but I have to ask, how does it look for the Senate and Congress? If the President wins as your numbers presented would suggest, will he have a Congress and Senate available to him to work with to solve this country’s problems?
As we all have seen these last two years, all the man has had to work with are those whose main objective is to be nothing more than a contention and obstruction to the President. Sometimes even countering policies they had once brought forth themselves.
I was speaking with a young man who is on Congressman Andy Harris’s staff. (Republican in the 1st district of Maryland) I am working with him his Masonic Work in the 3rd degree. I took the opportunity to pass on that the Tea Party within the Republican Party really concerned me and not anything my family would have supported in the 150 year legacy of my family being members of the Republican Party. I stated that I was quite sure that there were plenty of “Brown Shirts†and “White Hoods†within the demographics of that group.
With all due respect as we were speaking in confidence with each other, I cannot pass on his reply nor the Congressman’s views. As there are still a large part of the “O’l South†prominence voting block in this 1st district of Maryland, I see him as the incumbent wining his seat once again.
For several years we did have a Progressive Moderate Republican Congressman, Wayne Gilchrest, who lost his Republican Primary 6 years ago to this Conservative Andy Harris. I knew and worked with Wayne Gilchrest on several environmental projects fighting the polluters whom through their intentional and criminal negligence cause the miscarriages and poisoning deaths of several people.
Upon the act of voting out the Moderate Republican for the Extreme Corporate Conservative Republican, the people in the area lost any protection from the abuses of any corporation’s future criminal acts harming citizens in the area.
Thanks for your input. As time goes by, analysis of the House and Senate will proceed, by myself and others, but right now, the odds of a Democratic takeover in the House (needing 25 seats) increase, although if that is all they gain, a bare majority, then there will be stalemate, as one cannot expect total party loyalty in either party.
The Senate is more complex, with most seats up for contention being Democratic, and the party having only a four seat edge in the Senate for now, so it might be that the GOP will take over the Senate, while the House would go Democratic, the opposite of what is now in place, but if that happens, which is the common thing historically (5 times in the past century), the likelihood of more cooperation with the President is somewhat greater, since the House has the budget power.
It could be argued that the Senate is always a barrier, with the requirement that 60 Senators basically have to agree on anything for it to move forward, but the budget is the bigger issue, and the House, therefore, arguably, is the more important body to control for the Democrats and President Obama, to allow any real progress in the next term.
In any case, do not expect that Obama would have a free hand in the next term, but most significant is his power to appoint Supreme Court Justices and other judges, a lifeterm appointment, and he would keep a balance on the Court, because otherwise, it will become extremely right wing for the next two generations!
Hello Professor,
Well noted the importance of the House verses Senate plus I agree that it is very important as the President, he has the power to appoint Supreme Court Justices and other judges. This matter needs to be sealed up tight for the population’s benefit for a while.