This link is a great explanation of the current expectations for electoral college votes. It has been interesting to see how many toss up states there are in this election. Personally, I feel as though there are too many tossups to be able to accurately predict an outcome for this election. Click around on the map, its very informative and interactive. It seems unbiased to me as well. Looking at it makes the electoral college system a little more understandable and raises a lot of questions. Click through the different maps at the top, it shows a lot of the possible outcomes and which candidate it would help. Which are going to be the most crucial states?
http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/electoral-map
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Wow, what a very interesting and informative map! Since Ohio and Florida have the most electoral college votes, I'd say they're the most important states to win, especially seeing as the page says that Ohio has been a good predictor of who will win the election. I predict that Obama will win Ohio and maybe Florida too, although I don't think i'm informed enough to say much. I think it's very interesting that geographically, it looks like republicans have most of the country, but since the democrats have the more populated states, like CA and NY, they actually have the upper hand. Haha. Of course Cali and New York are voting democratic.
Florida is definitely the most crucial state to win due to its electoral college weight, as well as Ohio (as Tina said already). Obama's chances could actually be in danger based on a geographic interpretation of the map: all the states in the South but the two tossups are Republican. If the last two states (Florda and North Carolina) follow that trend, then Obama will lose 44 electoral college votes. And that's not counting any other tossups that Romney could win. But what always surprises me in Democratic victories, though, is that Republicans usually win the most STATES, rather than votes. It just really goes to show how the electoral college doesn't have that big of an impact on presidential elections, and how winning the most populous states matters more.
The President is definitely going to have a tough time winning the swing states that generally voted republican prior to the 2008 presidential election. While these states were won by Obama in 08, the condition of the economy has definitely made voters in these states regret their decision to shift their party support. For example, while Colorado and North Carolina were won by republicans in 2000 and 2004, Obama was able to gain enough support in these states to win them. Now however, polling data from this politico visual http://www.politico.com/2012-election/swing-state/ shows that these states have moved back to the republican side, especially North Carolina. With so little time left in the election, I think it would be best for Obama to maintain his lead in the swing states he is already ahead in. Of course he should still try to win big states like North Carolina, but it seems very unlikely that he will gain such a large comeback in so little time. Resources would be far more useful elsewhere, like Colorado where he really isn't that far behind.
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