Interesting Electoral College Scenarios

Here is today's electoral college map, making the assumption that all swing states go to the person currently leading, no matter the margin. According to this, Barack Obama wins the election 273-265. In order for this to happen, McCain will win Ohio, Virginia, Florida, and Nevada - he doesn't have comfortable margins in either Nevada, Virginia, or Ohio. However, this assumes Obama will retain his very uncomfortable leads in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Minnesota (all under 3%). Keep in mind that McCain is likely to keep Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and Nevada, meaning he needs to turn over only one other swing state to win (with the exception of New Hampshire). Pennsylvania, Colorado, or another dark horse state could easily go McCain's way.


According to recently released data, Obama could lose roughly 6 percentage points on election day because he is black. In other words, when the pollsters call folks, they feel comfortable being "progressive" because it is not their real vote. However, when they actually get in the voting booth and have to make that critical decision, they will vote for the safe candidate, which is John McCain. Anyway, assuming Obama loses 6 percentage point in each state, above is the resulting electoral victory for McCain - an absolute sweep (this is also assuming McCain gains no points and being very generous towards Obama - just dropping Obama's percentage 6% and keeping McCain's the same, even though that's not really realistic). It's fascinating that Washington currently has Obama leading McCain 49-45, which is an extremely small margin for a state like Washington. Consider New Mexico, a reasonably red state, having Obama leading 50-44. It is unfathomable that Washington is a narrower swing state. Also consider solidly Blue Minnesota, the only state to have not voted for Ronald Reagan, having a 47-45 lead for Obama - that's only 2%, also unfathomable. The point is that if polling behavior is really slightly different from voting behavior, it's going to be a very tough race for Obama.


What if everything is near the current status quo come election day, except McCain wins New Hampshire, in which he is only trailing by a little over a percentage point? That would give both candidates 269 electoral votes. In that case, the House would cast their vote for Obama (for President, the constitutional responsibility of the House), and the Senate would cast a tie for the VP vote since Lieberman (no longer a Democrat), would cast his vote for Sarah Palin. This 50-50 tie would then go to Vice President Cheney, who would most certainly vote for Sarah Palin. Boy, the Democrats were stupid for crossing Joe Lieberman. He's already spoken at the RNC, and now he might swing a VP election to Sarah Palin, with president Barack Hussein Obama! It's called karma Democrats - karma for swinging so far to the left that you oust absolutely respectable, honorable, and moderate Joe Lieberman. Horrible!