Posted on 02/03/2012 6:35:28 AM PST by raccoonradio
The headline news item on Drudge report says "RASMUSSEN: Obama 45% Romney 45%... Developing... "
What I'm wondering is why is this significant overall, because...what about the electoral college? Obama could just barely beat Romney or Gingrich in the popular vote, yet lose the election. Just ask "President Gore".
"Gore Got More" was one of the sayings, and he did.
According to Wikipedia, Al Gore got 50,999,897 votes. 48.4 per cent. Bush got 50,546,002 votes or 47.9 per cent.
If this country elected a President on popular votes, Gore would have been sworn in on 1/20/01. But we use electoral votes. Wiki. said Bush won 30 states. Gore won 20 states plus D.C. (Obama is probably wondering how the other 7 states voted.)
No wonder they argue for a "National Popular Vote" on the Left.
Anyway, you see polls like this but isn't what matters the state-by-state vote?
"The election was noteworthy for a controversy over the awarding of Florida's 25 electoral votes, the subsequent recount process in that state, and the unusual event of the winning candidate having received fewer popular votes than the runner-up," says Wikipedia.
And as I like to point out, Gore COULD have won by electoral vote if he had ONE more state, one won by Bush.
His home state of Tennessee. Bush won 271 EV, Gore 266. If Tenn. went for Gore it would have been Gore 277, Bush 260.
Electoral college...what really should matter in these polls. Yes, popular vote is a good indication of how the race is going, but not the only one.
HC list ping
For the record in ‘04 Bush did win the popular as well as the electoral vote. W got about 62 million, Kerry about 59 million. W got 31 states, Kerry 19 states plus DC
http://electoralmap.net/2012/myPrediction.php
>>Click on a state repeatedly to change it between gray (tossup), red (Republican victory), and blue (Democrat victory). The total number of electoral votes won by either party will update automatically. When you are done creating your forecast you can share it with your friends by sending them the URL shown below the map.
You can use Dave Leip’s website, which has the proper colors for the parties, not the Orwellian newsspeak ones.
http://www.uselectionatlas.org/
On the link above you can go back and forth between 2004 and 2008 and see what states changed their political
colors. The following states went from red to blue:
NV, CO, NM,IA, Ind., OH, NC, VA, FL.
There is also a page for an “Intrade forecast” and it mentions states that gained or lost electoral votes since 08.
MA lost one; FL gained two, Ohio lost two etc.
We are a representative republic.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
Under the left’s plan, how would they have liked this scenario:
Gore wins 49 states with a 50,000 vote margin in each one, Bush wins Texas with a 3,000,000 vote margin. Bush wins!
That’s one reason we have an electoral college.
You can thank Section 8 housing used to import Democrat voters.
That is the entire purpose of Section 8.
Exactly—I think YouTube has some old election night footage and you can see “Democrat red” and “Republican blue”. (Did they switch because they wanted the Dems to be associated
with “blue collar workers”?
Wiki:
>>This unofficial system of political colors used in the United States is the reverse of that in most other long-established democracies, where Blue represents right-wing and conservative parties, and Red represents left-wing and social democratic parties...According to another source, in 1976, John Chancellor, the anchorman for NBC Nightly News, asked his network’s engineers to construct a large illuminated map of the USA. The map was placed in the network’s election-night news studio. If Jimmy Carter, the Democratic candidate that year, won a state, it would light up in red; if Gerald Ford, the Republican, carried a state, it would light up in blue. The feature proved to be so popular that four years later all three major television networks would use colors to designate the states won by the presidential candidates on Election Night, though not all using the same color scheme. NBC continued to use the color scheme employed in 1976 for several years. NBC newsman David Brinkley famously referred to the 1980 election map outcome as showing Ronald Reagan’s 44-state landslide as resembling a “suburban swimming pool”. CBS, from 1984 on, used the opposite scheme: blue for Democrats, red for Republicans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states
Most of the states will stay in the “as is” column. There are only a few “in play” states, Florida, Ohio, etc.. that have to change in order to sway the election one way or the other.
Electoral College is REALLY bad when the “wrong” man wins.
Other than that, people don’t seem to care or mind it.
Exactly.
The idea of the EC is to give a bit more power and say to the smaller states. Otherwise, the candidates would just campaign in the states with high EC votes, right? A candidate can
win with a coalition of small states—or more likely one with some big states and a whole lot of small ones. “Flyover
country”
In some elections it looked like the Northeast/East and California/West Coast went solid Dem. These “red states”
were often scoffed at as “flyover country”. What was interesting was a county by county map of the U.S. In
2000 it was a sea of red with some blue splotches.
In my song parody of “Massachusetts” (Bee Gees) about the 04 election, I wrote:
(Kerry) Got a lot of votes in San Francisco
New York and L.A., they loved you too
But you’re still going back to Massachusetts
The Swift Boat hero, left Democrats so blue.
I have brought up your argument before: it could backfire
on the Dems in the way you say.
THOSE red states, I meant
Kind of like how the national debt only matters when a Republican is in the White House.
And American military deaths don’t happen during Democrat administrations.
Interesting that he shows Virginia as a red state.
That and voter fraud.
Think also of the illegals in Calif. who must somehow get on the voter rolls...and how they’d vote. And, voter ID? You must be joking, eh?
Ever notice the Occupy movement seems to go to Dem-leaning cities? Boston, NY, Oakland, Portland (both ME and OR),
etc. Mostly Dem leaning cities, it would seem, likely lefties.
Exactly but unfortunately the media will stick with it. The networks will have their maps: “So we color Texas in red...Vermont in blue...” They try to use a bit of a mnemonic
device to shove it in: “The state turns Republican Red” (OK,
so R, R, I guess we’re to be told it’s a good way to remember the color scheme...)
If Willard hijacks the GOP nomination AND presuming no 3rd party Conservative runs (and his coronation may almost ensure one does), this is about what I expect him to carry (although I may be being generous)... slightly better than McCain, maybe, but do the math and he still loses to Zero by 280 to 258 EVs. I may be being too generous here. If a 3rd party candidate runs, Zero will carry a large number of states with pluralities (a la Woodrow Wilson in 1912).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.