“If you add from the bottom up for Obama or the top down for Romney, the one state they both need is New Hampshire to cross the 270 electoral vote finish line. Obama doesn’t need a single state above it. Romney doesn’t need a single state below it.”
Nice work, but I predicted as much months ago:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2872829/posts?page=50#50
New Hampshire may indeed play a pivotal role this time around, as may Nebraska and/or Maine. The reason for the latter is because both NE and ME are “split states”, that do not assign electors by “winner take all”. I’m guessing that Obama will win ME in its entirety, but that NE may “split”, giving Obama 1 electoral vote and giving Romney the rest. If so, it could throw the election into the House. Or perhaps it will be ME that splits, giving Romney one or two votes extra...
One thing of which I’m absolutely certain: this is NOT going to be “a landslide” for Romney. He will either win with a small but respectable margin, or, it will be as squeaky a squeaker as was 2000.
Prediction:
The era of “landslides”, at least conservative ones, is over for a while. For the next couple of decades, the trend will be towards close, bitter contests. In order to have “landslides”, you need a large enough cohort of voters willing to join together to create one. The only demographic group capable of producing such numbers are the Euro-Americans, and they have been shrinking as an overall percentage of the population for some time now. Couple this with the reality that the Euro-Americans are bitterly divided amongst themselves politically, and also that their “middle” is shrinking as the left and right become more polarized. This makes it challenging for Republicans to persuade a sufficient number of “the white middle” to come to their side to achieve a “landslide win”. It’s all they can do just to win, period.
It’s a matter of changing demographics, as much as anything else.
The demographic “America” that gave landslide victories to Ronald Reagan simply doesn’t exist any more. It won’t be coming back.
I’d enjoy being proven wrong come November, but that’s the way I see it….
Remember, the legislation wasn't introduced by some back bencher, but by the senate majority leader. The GOP enjoyed healthy majorities in both houses and our governor was pledged to sign it. It was only last minute lobbying by Gleason, who also arm-twisted a few GOP legislators from RINO friendly districts, which scuttled the plan.
Just based on results from the 2008 blow-out, we'd be winning 13 of 20 electoral votes. Two districts which elected jackasses in the SW part of the state also voted for McCain. So I'm counting the newly combined district among the 13. Of the remaining 7, two are at large (statewide), three are safe Democrat and the remaining two are leaners. So the 13 could actually grow to 15 or, in the case of a moderate 1988 style blowout, even 17.
You've got to wonder what Gleason was thinking in trading 13 fairly winnable electoral votes for the once in 20 years or more chance to win 20, rather than 17.
Most likely, he was thinking of his own outsized influence in the national GOP which places too many delegates with states with potential electoral votes and too little with states which actually deliver electoral votes.