Electoral Math: Crunch Time Begins

Looking at some polls tonight, it occurred to me that the map is beginning to clarify a bit, and so it might be time to share my electoral math thoughts with Pickle Nation.

Everything you are about to read is preceded by the phrase “In a close election…” Maybe enough people will wake up at least one day between now and Election Day and say to themselves something like “Wait a second, why do I think that John McCain is something other than the unprincipled reckless liar that he has shown himself to be in the last 6 months?” or “Wait a second, there’s a reason I don’t think George Bush is a good President, and maybe I should vote like I’ve learned something from watching his slow motion multi-car pile-up of a Presidency,” and Obama will win with some breathing room. (Pickle Nation – my prolonged absence from these pages has been a result of despondent exasperation.) Maybe America will go all racist on us and McCain will run away with it. But if neither of those things happen, and it’s a close election, then…

I don’t have much hope for Obama winning Florida. And in a really close election, I’m not the biggest Ohio fan, either. Why? Well, I just haven’t noticed Democrats winning presidential elections there recently. This is the principle that has led me to the championship of my fantasy baseball league three times in the last four years.

But don’t despair. If I’m wrong and Obama wins either of them: ballgame. And what does he have to do to win if he loses those states? Hold on to PA, WI, MN, NH, and MI. OK, not so bad. Pick up IA and NM. Fine, those really belong over here.

Lose MO (Bellweather? More like Smellweather!) Lose IN (Never in play.) Lose KS (But he’s a little bit from there!) Lose MT (Insufficient Schweitzmentum.)

So where are we? We’re left with only what I would say are the most marginal states – CO (with 9 votes), NV (with 5 votes), and VA (with 13 votes). There’s kind of good news and there’s bad news here. The bad news is that all 3 violate my fantasy baseball rule – Bush won them all both times. But the good news is that without any of them accounted for, Obama has 264 electoral votes, which is 6 shy. This, of course, is only kind of good news and not just plain good news because NV has only 5 electoral votes, so, keeping everything constant, he basically needs to win either CO or VA.

That’s not a bad shorthand for where I think the math is right now: I think Barack will win the election if he can win either Colorado or Virginia, and it’ll be hard to win if he loses both. If you are looking for a state in which to volunteer and can get to one of those places, go.