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The Electoral Opponent Which Cannot Be Defeated: Math
The website 270towin.com has a fascinating interactive tool for looking at how the Electoral College has voted and conceivably will vote in the near future.
You can look at the 2012 election results and see where Mitt Romney needed to win in order to get to 270 electoral votes (click individual states to change how they voted). He needed to take some 63 electoral votes away from Obama in order to win, by the way.
One of the more fascinating settings on the map is to look at states which haven’t changed their voting habits since 2000. What this setting reveals is the infamous “blue wall” of 242 electoral votes which the Democrats can essentially rely upon come hell or high water. In the Republican column are some 179 electoral votes which also haven’t changed since George W. Bush’s first election.
Obviously, given this state of affairs, Republicans have little margin for error when it comes to the Electoral College — the Dems’ 242 “guaranteed” electoral votes plus just Florida yields 271, and thus the Presidency. Republicans could run the table on the remaining tossup states and still lose if they don’t win Florida, so all electoral strategy necessarily begins and ends with winning that state. From this perspective it seems that some states have their nicknames mixed up — Pennsylvania’s position as the “Keystone State” is easily eclipsed on the electoral map by Florida. It is the eye of a needle through which all electoral success apparently must pass.
So, in order to construct a scenario where a Republican candidate can assemble the requisite 270 votes, there are several roads which can be taken. First, that person must hold all of the Romney states. Next, they must win Florida plus some number states George W. Bush took sufficient to reach 270 or they must begin flipping other states on the map.
I’ll address the last question first: which Blue Wall states could conceivably change allegiance? Wisconsin has shown a trendline which might credibly lend itself to joining the Republican coalition, mainly due to Gov. Scott Walker’s having neutered one of the state’s largest (and hostile to Republican) political constituencies. To a lesser extent, Bernie Sanders’ primary win there indicates that dissatisfaction with the presumptive Democrat nominee might run deep enough for the Republican candidate to scrape out a win. Outside of Wisconsin, the only other state from the Obama slate (and not part of the Blue Wall) showing signs of flipping would be Iowa. Given the lack of a charismatic Democrat candidate, this isn’t totally unbelievable — but that still leaves the Republican candidate with some 251 electoral votes, assuming they won all of the Romney states plus Florida, Wisconsin and Iowa.
The presumptive Republican candidate would still find themselves in the position of having to come up with 19 additional electoral votes – 18 of which would be conveniently located in Ohio, where Gov. John Kasich might be able to help the nominee over the finish line. Yet this scenario leaves that candidate a single vote shy of victory and creates an electoral college tie, whereupon the House of Representatives would select the President.
It should be noted that there are a lot of “ifs” buried in the assumptions of these electoral scenarios. Given how fractured and broken the various party infrastructures are this year, it’s hard to say what, if anything will hold true — but it does seem likely that the 242 votes of the “Blue Wall” will be fairly solid, with the possible exception of Wisconsin. The campaign will be an organizational run to the finish line with the candidate who is best able to marshal their resources to drive voters to the polls being likely to win.
In that sense, the old rules of politics haven’t changed a bit. The Democrats have a huge, structural advantage in the Electoral College — but the Republicans still possess a narrow gap through which they can reach the promised land. What it will take is a candidate who is savvy enough to out-organize the opposition, and shrewdly drive a wedge through the middle of the Democrat coalition in order to ensure that the Blue Wall can’t grow.
Published in General
I wish we could have put Trump into the city of New York, and Carson the city of Baltimore–and maybe similarly with some of our other presidential contenders.
Gary and East Chicago.
The irony of this is that I am working to help turn around a Blue city – but on behalf of Democrats, since Republicans are unelectable.
It may be easier to bring Democrats back into the land of reasonable, than it is for the GOP to win a deeply Blue city.
Got the coveted Daily Shot mention:
As a Pittsburgher I welcome this and I also agree. Pittsburgh, The Tidewater area of VA and Santa Fe are urban areas of good scale to take and all would turn their states Red.
In Pittsburgh, you would need to focus on a few distinct neighborhoods and turn them red to get their council seats. Between 15-20K new republican voters would turn 4-5 council seats red and give a republican majority. It would take possibly 20-30K converts and transplants to turn the Mayors office red. Frankly, I think far less would suffice if a decent candidate ran and the R’s spent more than 2 nickels.
Also, much of the surrounding area is conservative of the Tea Party sort by heavy margins.
The focus on Florida is why I fear a Trump nomination. Florida has gone from Red to Purple/Bluish because of…. immigration from Puerto Rico and Latin America. Trump’s “strong on border enforcement” message is very damaging among this segment of Florida voters.
The older generation of Cuban voters in Miami-Dade County is staunchly conservative and anti-Marxist. They were a key in George W. Bush’s victories in Florida. Times have changed. Recent Cuban immigrants grew up under the Castro regime and most come to the U.S. looking for freebies. The Cuban vote in the 2012 election was split 50-50. As more of the older Cubans pass away, the scales will favor Democrats. Beyond that, Puerto Ricans (many in Orlando) traditionally vote Democrat. South Americans move to Florida from failed Socialist countries like Venezuela and yet they vote for Socialists like Obama. I wish I could explain that, but I cannot.
The only way Trump wins Florida is a HUGE Republican turnout in places like Jacksonville and Tampa along with complete domination everywhere outside of places like Broward (heavily Democrat), Miami-Dade and Orange County (Orlando).
I would much rather talk about a Cruz-Fiorina ticket winning Florida, but that seems like a longshot right now.
Only after we’ve been on the ground there for the last 12 years softening the target.
If the Democrats win the 18 states that they have won in the last six elections in a row, they have 242 electoral votes. All the Democrats have to do is to add Florida’s 29 electoral votes and they have a 271 majority. Trump is leading the Republican party to a slaughter. We will lose the Senate and likely the House. We will also lose the Supreme Court for a generation.
OTOH, it is problematic to plan to basically run the table on the other states. How did that work for Romney?
If Trump can play MI and PA right by hammering trade and coal, he has the chance to flip them. Does any other Republican have a chance of doing this?
That would be a problem for any Republican. If I were interested in Trump winning, I would worry about resources wasted protecting places like Utah that might go wobbly.
No state is lost.
Reagan won 49 states.
Republicans need to stop with this defeatism.
That’s actually hilarious.
We stand on the brink of what could be an historic defeat and you bring “your attitude sucks” to the table? “Just buck up there, champ… we’re going to win California!”?
There’s a difference between “sober assessment of reality” and “garment-rending cynicism.” I would like to think that I err in the direction of “sober” and not “cynic” when I (fairly) point out that there are a plurality of states which haven’t changed their stripes in 30 years, and the reasons for that are reflective of those states’ character and the values of their citizens.
I would bet you a $1 billion that no Republican candidate will win California. The only way this could happen would be a catastrophic third-party run to Hillary’s left. Even then, it’s hard to imagine her losing a place like New York, Massachusetts or California.
There’s nothing defeatist about conceding that this is reality any more than it’s “defeatist” for Democrats to not waste their time campaigning for President in Idaho or Wyoming… Which they basically don’t. Democrats are smart and put their resources where they can make a difference.
Different states have different populations and different ideas about what and who constitute good governance. These trends emerge over time and don’t change overnight. We can either profit from this knowledge or fritter away whatever advantages we have by pretending that we can do things like “win 49 states” – which neither side can reasonably expect to do.
3/4 of states are lost to one side or the other before the election season ever begins. If you believe that you have some secret knowledge that differs from this, you could in fact better than double your money.
I don’t agree.
Reagan did win with 49 states. Why? Because he won nationwide by over 18%, 58.8%-40.6%.
The Cook PVI that I discussed above suggests the same result today. The “bluest” state is Hawaii at D+20, followed by Vermont at D+16. DC is D+40.
A Republican win today by 18% would still probably carry 49 states.
But what Republican is going to pull that off? Let’s face it, we have an evenly divided electorate now, and need to adopt strategies that can win.
A quick follow-up re the Cook PVI and how it can be skewed. I don’t think that Hawaii is really the “bluest” state. I think that Hawaii considered Obama to be a “native son,” so he got an unusually high percentage of the vote. Since the current Cook PVI uses the last 2 Presidential elections, this particular index makes Hawaii “look bluer” than it really is.
When word of his use of city vehicles for his then girlfriend got out, he was toast. I say this as a supporter who dropped him after that. I like to leave the graft to the masters – the Democrat party.
This is encouraging. Thank you.
A Cruz map would have been a loser.
A Kasich or Rubio map would be a loser too. But if a winner, with legalization of illegals followed almost immediately by naturalization under those two, the future maps would be virtually all blue.
I like the prospects of a Trump map.
But keep longing for Rubio, Ricochetti.