News from the Votemaster          

Gingrich Quits--Really     Permalink

Last week, Newt Gingrich leaked the possibility that he might not go all the way to Tampa as he promised. Yesterday, he made good on his leak: he suspended his campaign. He gave a ringless endorsement of Mitt Romney, saying that he was better than President Obama. What Gingrich didn't say is that his campaign is $4.5 million in debt and now that his only serious backer, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, has closed his wallet, he simply is not able to continue and is unlikely to ever pay off his debts. For someone who wants to build a colony on the moon, this exit has to be categorized as going out with a whimper, not a bang. Few people even bothered to show up to hear his swan song.

With Gingrich now officially out, Romney's only remaining opponent is Ron Paul and Paul is running to lead a movement, not be the Republican nominee. So we have essentially entered the general election already and it promises to be an exciting and very nasty one.

Initial Analysis of the Presidential General Election     Permalink

While a lot can and will happen between now and Nov. 6, some of it unprecedented, even in politics there are things you can usually count on. For starters, take a look at this Excel spreadsheet or .csv file showing the percentages the Democratic and Republican candidates received in all presidential elections from 1900 up to and including 2008. We will now focus on the most recent five elections (1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008), which the Democrats won three times and the Republicans won twice.

What can we learn? To start with, There are 13 states the Republicans carried five out of five since 1992. Romney is certain to get all 102 of their electoral votes. However, there are 18 states plus D.C. that are five for five for the Democrats since 1992. Let's assume Obama wins these 19 and pockets their 242 electoral votes. Given that only 270 are needed to win, Obama starts out with a very solid base if he can hang onto the traditionally Democratic states.

But that is not the whole story. The other states are not all swing states. In particular, a number of states in the South are traditionally Republican but voted for Bill Clinton and there are a few other anomalies (such as Obama winning Indiana, something he is unlikely to repeat). Here is the breakdown.

Now let's look more closely at the three middle columns. Arizona is an interesting special case. The demographics are similar to Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico, which are trending Democratic, but there also are quite a few Mormons in the north and Latinos in the south. With a Mormon (Mitt Romney) running for President and a Latino (Richard Carmona) runing for the Senate, turnout is likely to be high, but the state still leans Republican, as do Indiana and Montana. Obama won Virginia and North Carolina in 2008, so these have to be classified as tossups.

Not all the states in the middle column are tossups because the southerner Clinton won Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, and West Virgina twice and all are probably out of reach for Obama, so let's give Romney another 38 electoral votes. Colorado, Florida, Nevada, and Ohio are more-or-less tossups. The states in column 4, Iowa, New Hampshire, and New Mexico, lean somewhat Democratic. So if we now get something like this.

Now we have 170 EVs solid for Romney, 11 leaning to Romney, 100 tossups, 15 leaning to Obama, and 242 solid for Obama. Let's leave the analysis at that for the moment. Suffice it to say that nearly all the action will be in the 11 states in the middle three columns. More next time.

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