It is a hot topic on the media waves, and after a few months of the 2008 Presidential Primary season, we now focus on what the actual numbers say. There has been a challenge that states needed in order to win the General Election are more in favor of Hillary Clinton and John McCain; negating the overwhelming number of states that Senator Barack Obama has won, along with the delegates that his campaign has brought in.
With the help of the running tally listed on msnbc.com, from the exit polls of real voters, the following below facts are laid out. We have analyzed not only the delegates in the states, we have also looked at the Electoral College counts themselves since they ultimate decide the outcome of the office and Florida and Michigan Delegate counts are not counted.
Texas - The state that saw a statistical deadheat between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (Obama took the Caucus, Clinton the Primary, and Obama the delegates by 99-94).
If we further break down the numbers, we have 2,050,000 (rounding down) votes for Barack Obama in a General Election, assuming that only ½ of Hillary Clinton supporters come over for Barack, and the other ½ vote for an alternate candidate. If we get very (Santa Claus) generous, we can give John McCain that ½, raising his total to 1,410,000 (rounding up). This leaves a short-fall of over 600,000 votes, the likes of which cannot even be made up for by Huckabee’s total that rang in at 532,000.
Result? Obama takes Texas, and its 34 EC votes.
California is the big heavyweight, and we’ll go ahead and get it out of the way, right away. An analysis of the Golden State reveals the following; 52% Clinton – 42% Obama – 4% Edwards. Being generous again, we look at a 50% split for the two, giving Clinton 54% and Obama 43%; total vote counts of 2,200,000 for Clinton and 1,830,000 for Obama..rounding them both down slightly. Adding the conservative 50% from Clinton to Obama again gives Barack 2,881,013 total votes to McCain’s 3,564,047 with all the GOP vote + ½ of Hillary’s count. That’s a difference of 683,034.
Result? McCain takes California, and its 55 EC votes.
Florida has been perhaps the single-most controversial state in electoral news over the history of the United States; far eclipsing any vote rigging that ever occurred before (it is the information age, and should be theft-proof and fool-proof) As we all know, the Florida Democrat Primary will not be counted toward the delegate totals. However, it does deserve mentioning here. A breakdown of the actual vote shows that another statistical dead-heat! (word is getting familiar, yes?) With Senator Clinton receiving 50% of the votes cast, Barack Obama took 33% to John Edwards 14%, with an additional 1% left-out. Now, we’ve been more than generous to both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain, so let’s give Mr. Obama the benefit in round number three. Even if we add all the votes cast in the Democrat Primary, we have 1,684,390 votes for Democrat Candidates to 1,916,212 for the GOP. It is not likely that either Hillary or Barack are going to pull away nearly 250,000 Republican voters from McCain, which means that the Democrat nominee will need to bring in new voters. Barack Obama has brought out record numbers of new voters by every account given. Can he find more than 300,000? With over 17million people reported as living in the state of Florida, that means that only 21% of the population actually voted. The trends show that there is only one candidate who picks up big clumps of new voters. That candidate is Barack Obama. Adding just 4% of the population to the numbers for Obama, and we get 2,364,390 for Barack; leaving McCain with 448,278 new voters he will need to find in order to just tie. With all eyes on the Sunshine State, not even the Bush machine can hoodwink the population this time. Advantage – Obama.
Result? Obama takes Florida and its 27 EC votes (that makes it 61 – 55 in favor of Obama, so far)
As long as we are speaking about Florida, let’s go ahead and look at her sister Michigan; a state where Barack was not even on the ballot. To keep it simple, and short, let’s look at ½ of Hillary’s totals again, and the rest coming from those uncommitted and the remainder of the field that was on the ballot. Rounding down Senator Obama by a few again, he totals 429,699 with only ½ of Hillary’s voters. McCain draws in more than 2x that number, at about 866,436. However, Democrats have won the state in both 2000 and 2004, and there really was no election held at all in Michigan. Sorry Johnny, we have to give this one to Senator Obama. Romney and the rest of the GOP field creamed you here, and even with all the GOP vote, you simply will not move the Democrat mid-west.
Result? Obama takes Michigan and its 17 votes (while we’re up here, let’s go ahead and throw in MN, IA, and WI, bordering states where Barack easily wins over all with the numbers: EC totals = 27)
So far, we have Obama v. McCain – Big States, with Big Numbers at:
As this starts to look like a run-away election, let us go ahead and allow our candidates to go back to their home states to pick up support. Just to pre-face, both New York and Illinois carry a large number of votes; 31 and 21 respectively, while Arizona brings in 11. We will start with Arizona.
McCain takes 480,351 votes with every GOP number cast during the primary (he only won 47% in his own state, far below both what Clinton and Obama brought in from their respective states!)
Looking at the Democrat side, we will give Obama everything from his party for 379,642. The GOP has had this state on lock-down 3 of the last 4 Presidential Elections. And though Mr. Gore did lose his own home –state during the 2000 election, we’re going to give the Cactus State to John McCain.
Result? McCain takes his own state, and its 11 EC Votes.
You have to go back to 1984 to find a Republican Presidential Candidate who won in NY. Most of us are familiar as well with Illinois’ history with Presidential production. Giving both states to Obama, we now have the following EC totals:
Obama – 157
McCain – 66
From here, we will narrow things down to just the states where Democrats have dominated during the last four Presidential cycles; going back to 1992 and forward to look at the total Electoral College votes for the two main candidates for the General Election; Barack Obama and John McCain:
Adding in the states of OR, WA, NH, NJ, CT, RI, ME, VT, DE, and MA, we get 70 more EC votes for Barack (if my math is correct…) That gives Senator Obama 227 votes in the College; just 43 shy of what he would need to secure victory. With 293 votes still on the table, John McCain would need 204 of them to Barack’s 89 in order to come back and secure victory.
Given the numbers where McCain actually won convincingly during the Primary, here is how it should pan out by the trends:
Victories in Miss, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, UT, WV, KY, and Montana, for McCain place him at 133 Electoral College Votes.
With the landslide victories that Barack saw in the following contests, we give those to the respective Illinois Senator: Alabama, Alaska, D.C., HI, Idaho, KS, LA, MD, Nebraska, ND, SC, VA, WA, WY, and he picks up 106 more votes.
Our new totals
Obama – 333
McCain – 133
With 72 votes still on the table, Senator McCain can have all the rest, and will still need 65 back from Barack out of those above numbers!! States where Barack not only won big, but many of which McCain did not do so hot at all.
Elect-ability? What do you think?
Comments are closed for this post.
