JUSIPER

 
JUSIPER electoral maps #2: Obama in March

Posted by Sini

As we saw yesterday, Clinton begins the race only able to count on 163 electoral votes of the 270 needed for victory, ceding 216 to John McCain. Since yesterday, new polling has come out showing her within the margin of error in Connecticut, while Obama is 13 points ahead. So now she can only count on 156.

Clinton cannot yet count on the states ordinarily central to a Democratic victory (OR, NM, MN, WI, MI, IA, PA, NJ). Ohio and Florida, meanwhile, are an uphill struggle; Rasmussen has her 6 points behind in the first and 7 in the other.

Note that Washington and Iowa are red in her map. That's 18 electoral votes that every Democrat has won since 1988 but that at this point polling indicates she is simply not competitive with McCain in.

Where does Obama start? My estimates have Obama starting at 225 electoral votes, while he holds McCain to just 123. Clinton starts out needing 107 EV's of the 190 she can make a race of (the yellow, undecided portion of the map) to get to 270. Obama needs just 45 and is able to expand the playing field he is competitive in to 190.

How is that possible? Well, the first thing is that Obama doesn't have to compete for Minnesota, Wisconsin and Oregon. These 27 electoral votes come from Midwestern states Hillary is behind in that Obama is so far ahead in that he won't have to spend resources contesting them.

Furthermore, he is substantially ahead of McCain in five states that are not yellow but red on the Hillary map, meaning she no longer has a realistic shot at them: Washington, New Hampshire, Colorado and Nevada, Iowa. That's 36 electoral votes that not only go to Obama but that get removed from McCain's total. Note that Nevada and Colorado tend to vote Republican. Colorado has voted for a Democrat just once since 1968 but looks pretty solid for Obama against McCain. Clinton is behind in both states by double digits.

Hillary makes three Appalachian states competitive that Obama cannot: Arkansas, West Virginia and Tennessee. She is certain to win the first, she is slightly ahead in the second, while the last one looks tougher. These add up to 22 electoral votes.

Where, then can Obama get the 45 electoral votes he needs? Well, there's New Jersey, where McCain is surprisingly competitive. But no Republican has carried the state since 1988. That brings the total down to 30. Pennsylvania and Michigan are tied at present. Neither state has voted for a Republican since 1988, but they are much more competitive. Holding on to them would already bring Obama enough electoral votes to make him the next president.

But there are several more states Obama can compete in even without Ohio, Missouri and Florida's 58 electoral votes. One of them is Virginia, in which he has actually been leading McCain in recent polling. He is surprisingly competitive in North Dakota and part of Nebraska (the only state that divides its electoral votes by district), while he has familial ties to Kansas, and is thus able to hold down McCain's lead there to single digits. More importantly, Survey USA has him within a point or two of McCain in North Carolina, Texas. No Republican win without these states' 49 electoral votes.

In short, Obama's candidacy means that McCain will have to spend an enormous amount of time and resources just holding down the base. Republicans haven't had to run a single ad in TX, KS, NE, ND, NC and VA in modern memory. Obama only has to hold New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan to get to 270. But chew on this: he is more competitive in Texas, North Dakota, North Carolina and Virginia than he is in Ohio.

Obama starts out 45 electoral votes from victory. He can pick up 53 EV's from states that have voted Democratic in every election since 1992. He is either ahead of McCain or within a point or two in four red states with 65 more EV's. He has a realistic shot at Ohio and Florida's 47 EV's; indeed, today's Rasmussen poll has him just 4 points behind McCain in Florida, a state he has yet to campaign in. And he is competitive in Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, South Carolina and Alaska, but their 33 EV's would only come into play in a landslide.

There's a reason Obama has won ten times as many superdelegates as Clinton among those who have endorsed since the South Carolina primary. Obama is competitive in states Democrats ordinarily lose by 20 points. While many of them don't have a lot of electoral votes, all of them have two senators. When you're trying to get to a filibuster-proof majority of 60 in the Senate, that really matters.

It doesn't really help Hillary that she cuts down Republican majorities in the Deep South, since she can't win those states anyway. Obama's loss of white support in those states is made up for his strength among white voters where they can actually help win electoral votes: Republican states like Colorado, Nevada, Virginia, Nebraska, North Dakota, Texas and North Carolina. And not having to fight for Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin (where Kerry spent the last week of the race in 2004) means he can take the fight to McCain territory. That's what makes him a force to reckon with in presidential politics.

To summarize our first two maps: Clinton does not have a clear roadmap to victory in the general election at this point in the race. Obama, on the other hand, has several. But does competitiveness in battleground states translate into winning them? As we shall see with our next set of maps, John McCain is a formidable presidential contender.

12:14 PM |