Coach E-Bill:
I spent an hour and a half this afternoon crunching Electoral College numbers. A few weeks ago, when Gore started to pick up a little ground, either you, Allen Wrench or Ishkabibble told me to concentrate on the individual states rather than 47% vs. 46% national figures. That was excellent advice. The bottom line, which surprised me, was that Gore could win the election by winning just 18 states and D.C.
If the election were held today, Bush would probably have these 22 states in his column:
Texas, Alabama, N.H., S.D., N.D., Montana, Alaska, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Kansas, Utah, Nebraska, Alabama, Mississippi, S.C., Idaho, Indiana, Maine, Virginia, Georgia, Nevada and Kentucky.
Total of 166 electoral votes.
On Gore's side are: Calif., N.Y., Mass., D.C., Illinois, Conn. Maryland, Hawaii, R.I., Iowa, Minnesota, Delaware, Vermont, N.J., Pennsylvania and Tennessee. Total of 222 electoral votes.
We can argue about individual states in the list, but I tried to be fair. For instance, I tossed Kentucky and Nevada into Bush's column and Minnesota and Iowa into Gore's camp. Portrait of America, for instance, still lists Iowa as leaning to Bush, but the latest Des Moines Register Poll showed Gore ahead.
That leaves as toss-up states the following:
Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, W. Va., Louisiana, Arizona, N.M., Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Arkansas and Missouri. In recent weeks, various polls have listed all these states as either on the fence or sliding from one candidate to the other.
Out of these 13 states, Gore would need to pick up 48 Electoral College votes to win. He could do this by winning in Florida, Michigan and say either Washington or Missouri. In other words, he'd only have to win Florida and two or three of the remaining dozen states.
That's why I asked Neocon the other nght if this election couldn't possibly see the popular vote winner actually lose the race, as happened twice in the late 19th century.
This is just food for discussion. I'm sure others can come up with their own lists and make cases for them. But the bottom line is this: With California and New York already on the Democratic side, Bush has the harder task ahead of him to capture the White House. And he may need something like 52-53% of the national vote in the general election to accomplish such. |
