An Election Run Down
11.24.2012
The manner in which the presidential election is decided at the mercy of the electoral college is a real conundrum. After splicing through numerous articles, charts, and commentary about the outcome of Obama's victory two weeks ago, it further bewildered me over how a nation of many millions of people, whom a majority go to the polls to vote can be so quickly tabulated and electoral counts awarded to determine the rightful winner accurately. With the exception of Florida, who's popular vote was reported to be astoundingly close and official results announced one week after election day, all other states determined nominations for their state's winner in very short time. Deriving a conclusion in the matter of hours when thinking about the volunteer workers, who contribute to the process of sorting through ballots, counting votes, and reporting numbers, it's is hardly fathomable particularly when you take into account the so many more ballot items appear like deciding on state or local politics.
Admittedly, I'm naive of how the whole process of tabulating works but finding a realistic method to the madness seems simply impossible.Not quite as vexing are the political analysts on TV who apply the newly announced state data results to theorize the most likely outcome given the consantly updating numbers. One commentator on CNN that I saw had the state of the art media touch screens with the colorful map. He'd look at the total count of electoral votes won up to that point and on contingency logic devise about six different scenarios to play out that all seemed to assure Obama of a White House victory. This moment of live election TV that I'm describing occurred around 11:00 pm EST as Californiahad had just announced their 55 electoral votes as democratic.
Of course it's a given that California will emerge Democratic just as it is that New York, other northeastern states and the Pacific Northwest will too. Those state's historical tendency to lean that direction is just birds of a feather and lots to do with the similar stances on issues like global warming, redistribution of wealth, social welfare, homosexuality, and interventionist government. So understandably mark those as Obama supporting components of our nation. On the other side, its comprehensible that conservative regions of our country and from the looks of the maps, there tend to be more conservative regions than there are democratic, that they would associate similarly to represent a sure thing for the Romney campaign. Use Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi although many more exist as examples of the sure fire Republicans states. The more contentious states, or so called battle ground states illustrate state demographics of households living in a balanced coxistance of others that favor the opposite candidate or may have just not yet decided who to vote for.
Pragmatically speaking an emphasis for the candidate's resources will be deployed greatly on the oh so important battle ground states based upon our winner take all electoral college. To name some of the most important of these in the recent election were Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Colorado, New Hampshire, Iowa and Virginia. By snapping up all of the battleground states, albeit a near impossible feat, a candidate stands to gain a maximum of 89 to go toward the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Surprisingly all of these votes did in fact go to Obama. When combined with the total of the the three West coast states, New York plus solid Obama supporters in Illinois and Hawaii you get (123+89)=212. That figure doesn't count the other Northeastern states that all generally tend to vote also democratic. With the mid Atlantic Coastals and Northeasterns, the president adds another 63 bringing his total to 275.
Obama ultimately ended with 332 of which the difference seventy-one electoral votes came as a result of Obama leaning territories in Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Minnesota, Michigan, and Nevada representing their 57 total votes.
The sea of Red as it's called maintained all of it's early forecast of twenty-seven states with Texas being the largest number at a total of 38 electoral votes. These nearly assured Republican votes going into Tuesday amounted to 206 . And as it happened they did prove to be loyal Romney supporters, however in the end not any other votes went his way. So there, the final results stand at 332 to 206.
Trying to think hypothetically had Romney been more sensitive to the large demographic of Latino voters who hold sway in FL and CO, the potential for 38 votes could have gone the other way. That alone wouldn't have been enough to bring Romney victory but likely also a more compassionate pandering to the middle class would have. For the voters who likely showed up in sizable numbers in the five battleground states mentioned earlier, he could have conceivably picked up Ohio and either Virginia or Wisconsin to have barely received the 270.
The importance of both Florida and Ohio really played a critical role for Obama on a defensive stance and Romney on a offensive stance. Given the make up of the presumed democratic vs. Republican states, Obama had the clear advantage heading in. But the electoral college results didn't show much sympathy for Mitt Romney. Why he didn't fair any better than he did in claiming the hearts and minds of the dissatisfied in the way of our economy is likely due to more people feeling that Obama sided more in their favor financially than Mitt Romney. Also the demographic shift during the last several decades as women who are more sensitive to the democratic social issues now represent the gender majority. Their tendency to vote with Obama 55% helped mostly in securing those undecided states before the election. The ethnic minorities of blacks and Asian-Americans felt more inclined along immigration, racial identification to an African American president and economic issues to vote again for Obama.
What seemed to be a landslide vote in terms of the 332 electoral votes he received was actually generated on a slight majority of the popular votes. So close were the popular vote numbers in fact that calling it a 50 to 49% is were most sources had tallied it. So why does the electoral college reign supreme as the system we use to elect our president? It's been in place since 1787. It's intent was to declare a decisive political conclusion even when the country was more or less evenly split as was the case this year. For these large electoral vote states the importance of a campaign eeking out a slight advantage makes all the difference in the final outcome.