SALON

Monday, Nov 5, 2012 12:30 PM UTC

The Obama landslide scenario

Yes, he could still lose. But he could also end up with almost as many electoral votes as he won in his 2008 rout

By

Topics: Opening Shot,

The Obama landslide scenarioPresident Barack Obama applauds at a campaign rally at the Community College of Aurora, in Aurora, Colo. (Credit: AP/Brennan Linsley)

It’s definitely possible that Mitt Romney will be elected president on Tuesday. And there’s also a chance that Romney will fall short in the Electoral College but still receive more popular votes than Barack Obama, an officially meaningless achievement that would nonetheless let Republicans claim that Obama had been rejected by the majority of voters and had gained a second term only through a constitutional quirk.

But another possibility has come into focus in the race’s closing days: a clean Obama victory, more thorough and sweeping than just about anyone expected.

Romney’s path to 270, as I wrote last week, can be split into two phases. The first requires him to sweep five traditionally Republican states that Obama won in 2008: Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia and Colorado. Do this (and hold onto all of the other states that John McCain took in ’08) and Romney will have 257 electoral votes. From there, he could win the election by taking Ohio, or Pennsylvania, or some combination of Wisconsin and New Hampshire, Iowa or Nevada.

In other words, a lot has to go right for Romney if he’s going to win on Tuesday. And the best indicators available – multiple polls from all of the contested states – suggest he’s not going to get the breaks he needs. Consider how the race now stands in that first bloc of states that Romney must win on Tuesday. Indiana is in the bag for him, and hasn’t been seriously contested by either party, but the other four are all tight. As of this writing, the Real Clear Politics polling average shows:

North Carolina: Romney +3.8 points

Florida: Romney +1.4

Virginia: Romney +0.3

Colorado: Obama +0.6

These states are all winnable for Romney, but they’re also winnable for Obama. That they’re this competitive on the eve of Election Day is somewhat surprising. After all, the national horse race is basically dead even, down from the 7-point margin that Obama enjoyed nationally in ’08. If his support had fallen by that same level in North Carolina, Florida and Virginia, those states would be safely in Romney’s column now. (Colorado, which Obama won by 9 points in ’08, is a different story.)

What’s kept Obama in the game in these states is demographics. In Florida, for instance, a rising non-Cuban Hispanic population and an increase in the number of African-American voters have helped offset erosion Obama has suffered with other groups of voters. And in North Carolina and Virginia, as Nate Cohn has pointed out, Obama wasn’t that reliant in the first place on support from white working-class voters, a demographic group that has abandoned him in large numbers nationally.

It’s not hard to imagine Obama picking off some of these Romney must-win states. He’s actually ahead (barely) in Colorado, practically tied in Virginia, slightly behind in Florida and within striking distance in North Carolina. If there is stronger than expected turnout among Obama’s core groups, particularly black and Latino voters, it could boost his position. There’s also the issue of the ground game, with Obama’s campaign better organized than Romney’s; this could potentially pad Obama’s tally in these states, and elsewhere. It’s also conceivable that Obama’s response to Hurricane Sandy, which received loud public praise from one of Romney’s top surrogates and resulted in a surprise endorsement from Michael Bloomberg, could cause a small but significant shift in his favor at the last minute.

This creates the possibility of a sizable victory for Obama. Currently, he’s favored in all of Romney’s phase two states. If he wins all of these states – Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania – he will have 281 electoral votes. The more he then eats into Romney’s phase one states, the higher that number will climb. Win Colorado, and Obama would be at 290. Add Virginia and he’ll be at 303. Throw in Florida and he’s at 332. And if he could somehow grab North Carolina too, he’d be at 347 – not far off the 365 he secured four years ago.

If Obama does win some or all of Romney’s must-win states, it will probably mean he’s performing better than expected in the national popular vote too. Right now, the Real Clear Politics average has him up by 0.5 points nationally, which is actually a slight improvement from a week or two ago. One factor that may be weighting down Obama’s national standing is markedly lower enthusiasm among Democrats in safely blue states, a problem that could be exacerbated by Sandy, which hit the Democratic-friendly Northeast. But if Obama has gotten a small post-storm bounce or if his ground game delivers, it’s conceivable he could win the popular vote by a few points.

Again, this shouldn’t be taken as a prediction of an Obama landslide. It’s unlikely he’ll take all (or most) of Romney’s must-win states, and there’s always the possibility that the state-level polls that have been so friendly to Obama lately are flawed and that Romney is on the verge of victory. Plus, the term “landslide” is relative; if Obama were to win, say, 332 electoral votes and beat Romney by 2 points nationally, it wouldn’t exactly measure up to the Reagan ’84, Nixon ’72 and Johnson ’64 triumphs.

But Obama has been seen as politically imperiled since early in his presidency, and was in genuine danger of losing to Romney in the middle of October. Right now, conventional wisdom holds that he’s probably going to scrape out an Electoral College victory and (if he’s lucky) a narrow popular vote one as well. In that context, a 2- or 3-point national win with well over 300 electoral votes would feel a lot like a landslide – the kind of unexpectedly strong performance that the political world might even regard as a mandate.

Steve Kornacki

Steve Kornacki writes about politics for Salon. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki More Steve Kornacki.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 114 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Alex Pareene surveys the burgeoning and bloated world of political news and opinion and explains the day's most essential story in Opening Shot, posted by 8:30 a.m. each weekday. Bookmark this page; follow @pareene on Twitter.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
From global warming to fluoride: Why do people deny science? An interesting question.
42 points43 points | 60 comments
vote
Developers evict historic women’s shelter to build luxury hotel - The 104-yr-old Anna Louise Inn has ended its 2-year legal battle with a Fortune 500 company & will now move. Many view the victory of the insurance company over a community touchstone as a major blow to the city.
33 points34 points | 2 comments
vote
Anonymous rallies behind Kaitlyn Hunt
27 points28 points | 34 comments
vote
The GOP Is the 'Party of Crybabies' for Demanding No One Criticize Their Policies or Donors
23 points24 points | comment
vote
Illinois' fracking and coal rush is a national crisis: Illinois and its Mississippi River banks are becoming another ground zero in the war over climate change.
17 points18 points | comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations