Posted on 11/21/2012 4:42:38 PM PST by neverdem
A funny thing happened as I was looking at the political map of this year's presidential election: It began to look like the map of the presidential election of 2004.
I'm not talking about the superficial similarity, the fact that in both elections an incumbent president beat a challenger from Massachusetts by a 51 to 48 percent popular vote margin.
I'm talking about the fact that the large majority of states voted just a little bit more Democratic in 2012 than they did in 2004.
Enough to give 2012 nominee Barack Obama 332 electoral votes, far more than 2004 nominee John Kerry's 252. But not enough to change the political balance of the nation or the various regions very much.
At current count -- the numbers may change a bit as California and a few other states waddle in with late tabulations -- Barack Obama's 50.73 percent of the popular vote exceeds John Kerry's 48.26 percent by 2.47 percentage points. (Eerily, George W. Bush's final percentage was 50.73 percent).
Using rounded-off whole percentages, Obama ran 1 or 2 points ahead of Kerry in nine states and the District of Columbia with 81 electoral votes. They include target states New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, which Kerry won, and Ohio, which he lost.
Obama ran 3 or 4 points ahead of Kerry in more states, 20. These states have 243 electoral votes. They include 2012 target states Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada and Wisconsin.
George W. Bush carried all of those target states in 2004 except Wisconsin, which he lost by 11,384 votes. Clearly, Hispanic voters, and the differences between Bush and Mitt Romney on immigration and in attitude, helped move Colorado, Nevada and, by a very narrow margin, Florida from the Republican column in 2004 to the Democratic column in 2012.
But Obama's winning percentages in these three states -- 50 percent in Florida, 51 percent in Colorado and 52 percent in Nevada -- don't suggest that Republicans will never be competitive there again.
As for Iowa and Wisconsin, they were both exceedingly close in both 2000 and 2004, both were solid for Obama in 2008, and this time they gave him 52 and 53 percent of their votes.
What about the other 21 states? Some produced big increases for Obama over Kerry -- 17 points in the president's birth state of Hawaii, 8 points in increasingly liberal Vermont.
Obama also improved on Kerry's percentage by 6 points in Maryland and Virginia, the two states most positively affected by increases in federal spending. His percentage went up only 2 points in the District of Columbia because it's hard to improve much on Kerry's 89 percent there.
The Democratic percentage also went up 5 points in California, where high taxes are driving out middle-income families, and in North Carolina, which the Obama campaign shrewdly targeted in 2008. Obama carried it by 1 point then and lost by only 2 points this time.
The Republican percentage increased by 8 points in coal-country West Virginia and in the now Clintonless Arkansas. It also increased in other states with the warlike Jacksonian tradition -- Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Louisiana and Oklahoma.
Obama ran 1 point lower than Kerry in the latter's Massachusetts and in Utah and Wyoming. His percentage was almost exactly the same as Kerry's in Arizona, evidence that its increasing Hispanic population is not tipping the state Democratic.
I draw two conclusions from these figures, one with some certainty and one tentatively.
One is that Democrats have a structural advantage in the Electoral College. An extra 2.46 points of the popular vote netted Obama 80 more electoral votes than Kerry. Obama won 58 percent or more in 11 states and D.C. with 163 electoral votes. He needed only 107 more to win.
In 2004, the 16 states Bush won with 58 percent or more had only 130 electoral votes. He needed 140 more to win and barely got them.
My tentative conclusion is that we may be back to the nearly even balance between the parties we saw between 1995 and 2005. Since then, we've been in a period of open-field politics, with big swings to the Democrats in 2006 and 2008 and a big swing to the Republicans in 2010.
Both sides hoped those swings would prove permanent. 2012 suggests both sides were disappointed. It looks like we're back to trench warfare politics at the national level.
Michael Barone,The Examiner's senior political analyst, can be contacted at mbarone@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears Wednesday and Sunday, and his stories and blog posts appear at washingtonexaminer.com.
Nope. Once Obama makes citizens out of twenty or even ten million illegal aliens, they will turn most of the swing states solidly blue in 2016 and beyond. Barring a catastrophic economic collapse or foreign policy debacle, 2016 won’t be nearly as close as 2012 was.
i don’t think this guy knows what he is talking about so why read or believe anything from him
The problem with Barone’s analysis is that Obama has been a terrible president and the economy under Obama has been horrible.
If the Democrats can win with this margin with such lousy economic conditions, then if the economic conditions had been better they would have won with much bigger margins.
This means the Democrats are in a much stronger position than in the 1995-2005 period, and the country is not evenly balanced between the two parties.
Barone’s analysis gives hope to those who think if Republicans just do a little bit better political wizardry they will be back in power.
Wrong. The problem is more fundamental, and the battle must be waged at a cultural level in the schools and in media and entertainment.
Slice it, dice it, cut it any way you want. The real issue is that concentrated metro areas often carry whole states, relegating the hinterlands to a ‘lesser’ status.
The solution is more states, or more countries.
A secondary issue is that the Congress hasn’t added to it’s headcount for over 80 years. We’ve been locked at 435 representatives (except of a couple of years) since early in the last century. That number should be nearly 5000 if we were to pay heed to the founders notion of the population numbers a congress-critter should represent.
More state and more electoral votes would do a lot to level the playing field, and bring some sanity back to the whole (currently) sordid process.
Barone misses something huge year. Based on the economy, 2012 was a wave year for Republicans. They lost their own wave election. Badly. If Republicans can’r win with the wind at their back, they are in serious trouble. I agree, if the economy was good, this result wouldn’t be a big deal.
Get a clue, Barone. We’re toast. There will be no more fair federal elections; the fix is in.
Sorry, I still don’t buy all of the negative talk.
Romney ran a good campaign right up until the end of the first debate. If the election had been a few days after that debate, it would have been a Romney blowout.
But instead Romney chose to sit on his lead and coast to victory. I’ve listed 10 things that went wrong for him (starting with a TOTALLY BOTCHED get out the vote effort) and he still managed to keep the election reasonably close.
Yes, Demographics are trending against us...but that is slow, and this country is far from lost - be we need a candidate that isn’t afraid to campaign hard to the very end - rather than trying to pull in that non-existent independent. I have one of those “independents” at work. She owns a gun...she’s married - to a guy...she is far from a flaming liberal. But she saw one commercial that said that Ryan supports no exceptions to banning abortion, and that was it - Obama got her vote...and, at the same time, 5 Evangelicals sat home (because of Romney at the top of the ticket) and didn’t vote.
When the Senate can stay in the control of a guy who despises the United States only slightly less than he loves his own navel, the Senate is no longer in play. Again, sorry, things are what they are.
In the next four years we will certainly get a Supreme Court with an utterly illiterate majority, so the trifecta will be complete. If Boehner has even one testicle, he will make sure we go off the fiscal cliff. Then the liberals who want the United States to collapse can get what they want.
I doubt the microscope exists that can find a Boehner testicle. So, we will only collapse when we get to the hyperinflation that obama wants.
The question is: Will all the eunuchs and female children who wanted obama then be happy? Ecstatic will likely be the story.
Fighting reality is a prescription for boundless sorrow.
The Marxists have a much better Organization both in Breadth and Depth. Literally thousands of organizations from very small neighborhood types to massive nationwide ones, ie SEIU etc.Tens of thousands of volunteers are ready to hit the phones and ring the doorbells and they are increasing the numbers daily in the colleges, universities and yes, even the high schools. This isn’t a game of potsy and the Pubbies had better learn it damn fast or they are history.
I have dug into the trench and the GOP is AWOL.
I have been thinking about this for some time, and I think you are right - I don't think it is the whole answer (primary process rigged toward liberal states as another instance), but it is a fairly true statement.
However, your solution is not necessarily the only one: The electoral college is established in order to give lesser states some equality during elections at the federal level... What if the same were done within a state, at the county level... the same basic idea would apply. The winner of the state-wide electoral college would be awarded the electoral votes at the federal level... More populous counties would still have a lot of swing, but limited so that lesser counties still matter.
I agree with you and have been saying essentially the same thing. Having said that overcoming structural impediments in educational brainwashing & MSM indoctrination is a long term proposition at best and may be lost. In meantime we have no choice but continue trench warfare albeit with better candidates.
Conservatives themselves split the vote in the primaries and allowed Romney to get in. Conservatives must unite around a candidate and accept that reality. Of course we need a strong candidate to rally around. We desperately need a strong Reaganesque candidate for 2016. However next up is House in 2014 where we need pick up seats and replace Boehner.
I once gave states allocating proportional electoral votes by congressional district short shrift. Now I think it is the only way to fight big city corruption and 120% voting tallies.
If you look at the red blue map of this country, red lands far exceed the blue coastal areas and major cities. We can never win all of California’s electoral votes, but we can take a chunk under a proportional system.
We have 30 GOP governors. They should be looking at an electoral college proportional voting system to fight against demorat vote stealing.
With a proportional system Philadelphia can vote 200% of their registered voters; they will only win Philadelphia.
I would like Barone to do a study. I’m sure we can take more electoral votes from them in such a system than they can take from us.
One is that Democrats have a structural advantage in the Electoral College. An extra 2.46 points of the popular vote netted Obama 80 more electoral votes than Kerry. Obama won 58 percent or more in 11 states and D.C. with 163 electoral votes. He needed only 107 more to win.
In 2004, the 16 states Bush won with 58 percent or more had only 130 electoral votes. He needed 140 more to win and barely got them.
LAME.
I call on the PA and MI GOP state governments to wake up and divide electoral votes by congressional district (PA considered this before this election). There is no reason for them not to do it. This would have netted us at least 15 or so E votes.
“In play” like an NCAA football game is when Northern Illinois takes the field against Nebraska.
Seriously..no, Michael ... the White House isn`t “in play” for the GOP anymore. However, Republicans still need to fundraise and go through the motions of a nomination, because down-ticket candidates who have a chance to win could benefit from their efforts.
FWIW, The suburban vote is almost half of the electorate, and rural voters are about 20 %.
The simple truth is that a Mormon can never win the presidency.
a strong conservative would have easily unseated O,
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