Without getting into the Florida recount debacle, Al Gore came up one state short of the presidency in 2000. When the votes were tallied, Bush had 271 electoral votes and Gore had 266. (Gore’s total was supposed to be 267, but a DC electoral cast a protest vote to bring attention to the fact that DC does not have representation in Congress. She later said that she would note have done so if her vote would have influenced the outcome.)
With this total in mind, many election watchers, including me, have been looking at the map and thinking that next year’s Dem nominee simply needs Gore+1 — that is, winning all the states Gore won and any other state.
In fact, as Tom Schaller noted in the Washington Post two weeks ago, Howard Dean’s campaign manager, Joe Trippi, “likes to remind reporters that winning all the Gore states plus New Hampshire would put Dean in the White House.”
That’s not quite so. As Schaller noted at the time, “Because the Bush states gained seven electoral votes as a result of the 2000 Census, Trippi’s math is a bit off — in 2004, that combination only yields 264 electors, six shy of the magical 270 threshold.”
The New York Times had an interesting article today that expands on Schaller’s point, noting that the electoral changes that came as a result of the 2000 Census put Dems in a weaker position going into next year’s race.
The 2000 Census factored in population shifts nationwide and adjusted various states’ electoral votes accordingly. Unfortunately for Dems, the changes work in Bush’s favor. As a result, the Times noted, if “Bush carries the same states in 2004 that he won in 2000, he will win seven more electoral votes.”
The post-Census changes caused 18 states to either win or lose electoral votes. Seven Bush states picked up votes, including Florida and Texas, which each gained two, while four Bush states lost one vote each. The net gain, therefore, is a seven vote swing in Bush’s favor.
The Dem candidate, therefore, needs to win all the Gore states and then find seven more votes somewhere. Winning New Hampshire, as Trippi suggests, won’t be enough — the Granite State only has four electoral votes.
There are, of course, other possibilities. Schaller noted that Arizona may be slowly opening up to Dems, and it has 10 electoral votes. The same can be said for Colorado (9 votes), Louisiana (9 votes), Arkansas (6 votes), and possibly Tennessee (11 votes).
Nevertheless, the new map will make things harder for those of us who want to see a new president elected next year. As Matt Dowd, the Bush campaign’s chief strategist, told the Times, “Before a vote is cast, we’ve increased our margin. In a race that’s very close, those small readjustments in the electoral map will have significance.”
Unfortunately, that’s true. It also makes it all the more important for the Dems to nominate a candidate with broad national appeal.
By the way, if you wanted to play around with various election scenarios for next year’s race, Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections has a handy-dandy “Electoral College Calculator” that reflects the post-Census map. Give it a shot; it’s fun.