In the midst of all of the public opinion polls about popularity of the Presidential candidates, one is tempted to forget that the Electoral College will decide who the next President will be, and the Democrats have a vast advantage since they have a clear edge in most of the larger states with many more electoral votes.
If one candidate wins the top ELEVEN electoral vote states, he wins the election, even if he were to face a massive defeat in popular votes in the other 39 states!
Of course, no one is likely to win all of the top eleven states, but the point is that the Electoral College gives great power to the larger populated states, and all that is required is to win one more popular vote in a state than your opponent to win all of the electoral votes of that state.
So if one looks at the top eleven states, we discover that the Democrats and President Barack Obama have a guaranteed win in California (55), New York (29), Illinois (20), and New Jersey (14) for a total of 118 electoral votes.
Obama also has an edge to win in Pennsylvania (20), Ohio (18), Michigan (16), and North Carolina (15) for a total of 69 electoral votes.
If Obama wins these eight states, he has 187 electoral votes already, not counting other Northeastern, New England, and Pacific Coast states that he is widely expected to win.
The three states that might go Republican are Texas (38), Florida (29), and Georgia (16), but Florida could go Democratic, and even Georgia is considered a long shot for the Democrats.. These three states together have 83 electoral votes. If Obama won Florida, as he did in 2008, and the eight states he is expected to win, which he also won in 2008, he would have 216 electoral votes from just those nine states!
So together, the top eleven states have 270 electoral votes, EXACTLY what is needed to win the White House!
So forget popular vote public opinion polls, as the odds of Mitt Romney winning the election in the Electoral College, let alone the popular vote totals, is not worth betting on, once one realizes the reality of the Electoral College.
Further proof of the difficulty for Republicans to win a vast majority of the Electoral College is the fact of the massive Electoral College wins by Bill Clinton twice (370 and 379) and Barack Obama once (365), while George W. Bush could not hit over 271 and 286 in electoral votes in 2000 and 2004!
The odds are much greater that Barack Obama will surpass his 365 electoral votes of 2008 in 2012, just as Bill Clinton improved his second time around!