Electoral College Math 101
Charlie Cook, a terrific non-partisan election analyst for the National Journal, wrote a column this week that’s been getting lots of attention, and for good reason. (I can’t offer a link because it’s not online. Sorry.)
Cook’s column was in depth look at “Electoral College math.” If this isn’t an issue that interests you, you might as well abandon this post now before I get really into it.
As you know, a presidential candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win. Cook reviewed the last five presidential elections to see which states went with which party’s candidates. The results were fascinating, but necessarily encouraging for those who share Carpetbagger’s love for the Democratic Party.
Looking at each race since 1984, Cook determined that “Republicans have carried 29 states with a total of 273 electoral votes in at least three of the last five elections while Democrats have carried 21 states plus the District of Columbia, with a total of 265 electoral votes.” It’s a pretty closely divided country we have here.
Delving deeper into recent election results, Cook found that “Republicans start off with 16 states that have voted with the GOP in all five elections dating back to 1984: Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming, totaling 135 electoral votes, exactly half of the 270 needed to win.”
In other words, these states are pretty much a “done deal” before the campaign even begins. Unless Bush is caught on video killing puppies for sport, he’s going to carry these 16 states without even trying. (My own additional research shows most of these states haven’t supported a Democratic ticket since 1964, when Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater in one of the all-time biggest popular vote blowouts in presidential history.)
So the GOP starts with a pretty big edge. As a practical matter, they’re half-way home before breaking a sweat. But it gets worse. As Cook explains, “Next for Republicans comes the five states that have voted Republican in four of the last five elections: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia and Montana, totaling another 64 electoral votes. Combined with the 16 states that are 5-0, that makes 21 states and 199 electoral votes, 71 short.”
Not a pretty picture, is it? The GOP basically has almost 200 electoral votes in their pocket. Other than Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and maybe Georgia, you can expect to see the Democratic nominee in 2004, no matter who wins the nomination, skip these states almost entirely.
For comparison, Cook notes that only one state, Minnesota, plus the District of Columbia, have voted for the Democratic candidate in every race since ’84, offering a base of 13 electoral votes. To be fair, including ’84 in the analysis skews things a bit — Reagan won the largest electoral landslide in history in ’84 and that’s not likely to happen again (unless, say, the Dems decide to nominate Sharpton).
But putting that aside, Cook explains that only eight more states have gone Democratic in four of the last five elections: Hawaii, Iowa, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, and Wisconsin. The electoral vote count for these states totals 86. Add that to Minnesota and DC, and you’ve got 99 electoral votes, less than half of what a candidate needs to win.
So all hope is lost? Of course not. Democrats need to realize the significance of these trends and act accordingly. In 1992, James Carville explained that the campaign studied Electoral College math and used it as part of the campaign strategy. “We didn’t break the Republican lock,” Carville said. “We just picked it.”
The Clinton approach to the Electoral College map was perfect. H.W. Bush, and Bob Dole for that matter, won the states that always go with the GOP, primarily in the mountain time zone, the Bible belt, and Texas. Clinton won 370 electoral votes in 1992, and 379 in 1996, with a broad coalition of states including all of New England, the Midwest, and Pacific coast states. This narrows the race to a handful of competitive states that ultimately decide the presidency.
Al Gore, oddly enough, was the first candidate in history to win New York, California, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, but still lose the election. As has been well documented, the Gore/Lieberman ticket needed just one more state — any state — to win. (Just for the sake of being annoying, I’d like to add that Gore won the popular vote and should have received Florida’s electoral votes that would have given him a victory. But I digress…)
Why does all this matter? Because rank and file Dems need to consider Electoral College Math as a key factor while voting in the primaries. The nominee has to be someone who can win all of the states Gore won, plus one more. Recent polling data suggests Bush is definitely vulnerable nationwide, Dems just need to “pick the lock.”