How will Barack Obama get to 270?
This November, a Democratic victory will probably hinge on the Electoral College votes of a handful of swing states. Howard Dean's pollster examines 17 fall battlegrounds, one by one.
By Paul Maslin
Read more: Colorado, John McCain, Iowa, New Mexico, Virginia, New Hampshire, Opinion, Michigan, Ohio, Barack Obama, 2008 election
May 16, 2008 | Thanks to John Adams and James Madison, an American presidential election really does begin and end with the Electoral College. Didn't 2000 tell us that? (Well, it ended with Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor, but you get the drift.)
Critics scoff and call it an antiquated and unfair system (it is). Many Democrats -- notably, this year, Obama backers -- would like their party to stop thinking in terms of three yards and a cloud of purple-state dust and instead embrace the beauty of a 50-state strategy. Somehow, they say, 2008 can and must be different.
OK, I'm listening. Different how? In that the Democrats win?
Certain cold realities haven't changed. A candidate must still reach 270 electoral votes to gain the White House. Unless there is a popular-vote landslide in November, the presidential election is still best seen as a collection of 50 statewide contests. Should this fall's election be as close as the last two in 2000 and 2004, no more than one-third of those 50 states will be in serious contention. In fact, only about half of that number will ultimately decide the outcome, since the vast majority of the other "close" states actually lean pretty strongly to one side or the other and are unlikely to shift their preference. Once again we're all going to be spending a lot of the next six months, at least psychically, in the Rust Belt.
To figure out how Obama can assemble the magic 270, then, let's look at the 17 states where this fall's outcome is not a mortal lock. I am a Democratic pollster -- this presidential election cycle I worked for Bill Richardson, and last time I worked for Howard Dean. But my collection of swing states is not based on current match-up polling between Obama and McCain. I mostly ignored the polls -- come on, it's May. Instead, I looked at long-term voting trends and demographics.
1) The number of competitive states has been contracting over the past two cycles. In 2000, 21 states fell into a competitive classification, meaning the winning candidate performed 5 points, or less, better than his national showing. It was 19 in 2004. The closest states, 2.5 points or less away from the national level, numbered 14 in 2000 and only 9 in 2004.
2) The number of states that shift markedly from one election to the next has also been contracting. In 2000 16 states moved more than 4 points away from the previous election's national performance level; in 2004 only 6 states did the same. If both of these first two trends continue, that means fewer, not more, states in play in 2008. (Note: This may be an incumbency phenomenon, since there was a similar effect in Bill Clinton's two wins. Once the winner establishes his level, it's hard for there to be much shift the next time he's on the ballot.)
3) In a non-incumbent year with two candidates from regions that have been unrepresented at this level for a long time -- the Rust Belt and the Southwest -- stronger regional variations could occur. Carter in 1976 (the South) is the archetype of this factor, but Clinton improved Democratic performance throughout the South in 1992, and Bob Dole bucked the national trend in several Plains states in 1996.
4) Every successful GOP candidate since 1968 has hailed from California or Texas. Their last two candidates from small to medium-size states lost badly. On the other hand, the last two successful Democrats came from the South, a region that had underperformed in previous elections. This year the two surviving Democrats live in two of the most reliably blue states. Obama does live in the largest state for a Democratic challenger since, well, Adlai Stevenson in 1956.
5) The choice of a vice-president has had a pretty spotty geographic impact in the past five elections. Bush father and son ignored it when picking a running mate (must run in the family). For the Democrats the impact has been nonexistent (Bentsen), negligible (Edwards), small (Lieberman) and shared (Gore and Clinton were both Southerners).
I. Swing states Obama absolutely, positively has to win
A reasonable projection of the Electoral College results for 2008 would award the Democrats 157 safe votes in 11 states and the District of Columbia. Of the 17 swing states where Obama has no guarantee but a good shot, six are really "must-wins" for him. Defeat in any -- particularly the two biggest -- either signals grave problems elsewhere or puts inordinate pressure on him to run the rest of the table.
Michigan -- 17 votes
If there is a worse state in which Democrats could've botched the primary this electoral season, I'm hard-pressed to think of it. But the primary was well and truly botched; there has still been no decision on how Michigan's delegates will be allotted, if at all. The saving grace could be that Michigan has always run ahead of Ohio for the Democrats, and better than Pennsylvania the past three elections. But Obama's failure to campaign here -- which he is finally correcting -- makes this state worrisome. Three interesting questions: 1) Will there be a "Lake Effect"? Meaning, can the geographic influence travel the 60 miles or so across Lake Michigan and produce better than normal Democratic performance, particularly in Western Michigan? 2) Does McCain's break from Bush on climate change make it difficult if not impossible for him to exploit Obama's embrace of tougher CAFE standards and greenhouse emission standards in this auto-dependent state? 3) Is it "Only a Northern Song"? For many years now, trends in the rural/small-town white vote have been linked to latitude. The closer to Canada one gets, the more white voting patterns diverge from those near or below the Mason-Dixon Line. Lately that has meant stronger Democratic performance in presidential elections in the most northern states and regions. Obama has clearly done better in this wintry tier. Compare his performance in Green Bay to that in Youngstown or Altoona. Will that hold in November, or be enhanced, making states such as Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin more secure? Or will race override this pattern, making the Northern Tier states more vulnerable for the Democrats?
Minnesota -- 10 votes
It's not Walter Mondale's Minnesota anymore. Democrats have been increasingly squeaking by in this state -- it ranked 6th bluest as recently as 1988 in terms of overall Democratic performance, then 12th, 15th, 17th and 18th the next four presidential elections. Plenty of Republicans have succeeded at the state level in recent years, with Tim Pawlenty and Norm Coleman the two latest examples. Is Pawlenty the kind of tactical vice-presidential choice -- in concert with a presumably successful GOP convention in St. Paul -- that McCain could make to steal 10 votes from the Democrats? Or will he eschew state considerations and go with a bolder choice? The Northern Effect reference above does favor Obama, but the volatility that may help McCain is in the suburbs. Small-town Minnesota tends to follow established voting patterns, but the burgeoning Twin Cities metropolitan area produces a lot more variation.
New Jersey -- 15 votes
The Garden State makes the list by virtue of some slippage between 2000 and 2004. Terrorism and proximity to New York City undoubtedly played a role in that. But Obama losing the state of Tony Soprano and Bruce Springsteen and still winning the election? Fuhgeddaboutit. Jersey's Philly and New York suburbs have been slowly and surely turning Democratic for two decades now. It's hard to imagine them swinging back this time. It's also an incredibly expensive proposition for the Republicans to try to make it happen. The GOP will buy ads in the Philadelphia market because of Pennsylvania, but New York airtime is three or four times more expensive and too many of the people who'd be watching the commercials live in the safe blue states of New York and Connecticut.
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