Opinion crossposted from Brainstorm
These are halcyon days for Barack Obama, right? A successful trip to Europe and the Middle East. A steady 5-point lead in the polls. An opponent who can’t seem to get his campaign in gear.
Having spent the morning crunching — that is, adding, dividing, listing, typing, and checking — a wearying array of political numbers, I’m not so sure.
My purpose was to find out what I could learn by compiling a list of all the states ranked according to how much support they gave to the Democratic presidential nominees in 2000 and 2004. Scroll down a few clicks, poke around the data to see what catches your eye (isn’t it amazing, for instance, that Vermont, one of only two states that Alf Landon carried against FDR in 1936, is now the Democrats’ fifth best state?), then scroll back up and see if you agree with the two observations that follow.
1. A good number of the Democrats’ best states in terms of average popular vote margin are large states — their top 16 include New York (ranked 4), New Jersey (ranked 9), Illinois (10), California (11), Michigan (15), and Pennsylvania (16). Of the Republicans’ top 16 states, only one (Texas) is a large state.
That’s bad news for Obama. The electoral college makes the huge popular vote majorities Democratic nominees rack up in the large states “inefficient” — a lot of those votes are, to be crass, wasted. In 2004, for example, John Kerry carried New York by 1.4 million votes, way more than he needed to earn its 31 electoral votes. Republicans carry their best states inefficiently, too, but their best states are so small that the number of wasted votes doesn’t add up to much.
The significance for 2008 is that Barack Obama’s lead in the current national polls — pumped up as it is by his mega-margins in California, New York, and Illinois — is several points less than he’ll need to win a majority of electoral votes in November.
2. University of Maryland political scientist Thomas Schaller drew considerable fire when he argued that the Democrats should just forget about the South in his 2006 book Whistilng Past Dixie: How the Democrats Can Win Without the South (Simon and Schuster). Sure, critics argued, the Republicans dominated presidential elections without carrying the South during the half-century between Reconstruction and the Great Depression, but the South is bigger now. When John W. Davis swept the region against Calvin Coolidge, the 117 electoral votes he received didn’t keep Coolidge from winning overall by 382 to 136. But the South today has 152 electoral votes — a big lead to spot your Republican opponent if you’re a Democrat. Kerry, for example, won the non-South 252-133 but still lost the 2004 election to Bush, who carried all 11 southern states.
Point taken. But look at the table below to see how Obama gets to 270, which is the number of electoral votes he needs to win. Of the Democrats’ 22 best states, precisely none are southern — and those states alone get him to 264. To be sure, Florida (the Democrats’ next best state) could put him over, but so could Ohio (the next best after that) or either of two others that rank about as high on the list: Missouri and Colorado.
I emphasize this because recent news reports indicate that Obama is already making a serious play for several southern states that are far less winnable than Florida — namely, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia. Some Democrats even want to add Alabama and Mississippi to Obama’s list based on his primary victories there and their large African-American populations. Curiously, Arkansas seldom gets mentioned by Democratic strategists, even though it supported the party’s recent presidential nominees to the same degree Colorado did.
Glance down the list below and here’s where you’ll find those southern states Democrats want to put in play: toward the bottom. North Carolina? Gore and Kerry both lost it by 12 points. Georgia bas been a 14-point Republican state in recent elections, Mississippi an 18 point-state, Alabama a 23 pointer — even Virginia is +8 for the GOP.
Sure, if Obama wins the kind of 49-state landslide Richard Nixon won in 1972 and Ronald Reagan won in 1984, he’ll carry all sorts of unlikely states for a nominee of his party. But Obama’s strategy can’t be based on that hope, any more than Reagan’s was based on sweeping New England. Unless his lead in the polls reaches well into double-digits, Obama needs to focus exclusively on getting more electoral votes than John McCain. Among the southern states, only Florida offers much chance of helping him to do that.
State (EVs)/Dems’ avg. margin, 200-2004 (%)/Cumulative Obama total (EVs)
01. Dist. of Columbia (3)/ +78.1/ 3 02. Massachusetts (12)/ +26.2/ 15 03. Rhode Island (4)/ +24.9/ 19 04. New York (31)/ +21.7/ 50 05. Vermont (3)/ +15.5/ 53 06. Maryland (10)/ +14.7/ 63 07. Hawaii (4) / +14.5/ 67 08. Connecticut (7)/ +13.9/ 74 09. New Jersey (15)/ +11.3/ 89 10. Illinois (21)/ +11.2/ 110 11. California (55)/ +10.9/ 165 12. Delaware (3)/ +10.3/ 168 13. Maine (4)/ + 7.1/ 172 14. Washington (11)/ + 6.9/ 183 15. Michigan (17)/ + 4.3/ 200 16. Pennsylvania (21)/ + 3.4/ 221 17. Minnesota (10)/ + 3.0/ 231 18. Oregon (7)/ + 2.4/ 238 19. Wisconsin (10)/ + 0.3/ 248 20. New Hampshire (4)/ 0.0/ 252 21. Iowa (7)/ – 0.2/ 259 22. New Mexico (5)/ – 0.3/ 264 23. Florida (27)/ – 2.6/ 291 24. Ohio (20)/ – 2.8/ 311 25. Nevada (5)/ – 3.1/ 316 26. Missouri (11)/ – 5.3/ 327 27. Arkansas (6)/ – 6.6/ 333 27. Colorado (8)/ – 6.6/ 341 29. Virginia (13)/ – 8.2/ 354 30. Arizona (10)/ – 8.4/ 364 31. Tennessee (11)/ – 9.1/ 375 32. West Virginia (5)/ – 9.6/ 380 33. Louisiana (9)/ -11.1/ 389 34. North Carolina (15)/ -12.6/ 404 35. Georgia (15)/ -14.2/ 419 36. South Carolina (8)/ -16.5/ 427 37. Kentucky (9)/ -17.5/ 436 38. Indiana (11)/ -18.2/ 447 39. Mississippi (6)/ -18.3/ 453 40. South Dakota (3)/ -21.6/ 456 41. Alabama (9)/ -23.1/ 465 42. Texas (34)/ -22.1/ 499 43. Montana (3)/ -22.8/ 502 44. Kansas (6)/ -23.1/ 508 45. Oklahoma (7)/ -26.6/ 515 46. North Dakota (3)/ -27.5/ 518 47. Alaska (3)/ -28.4/ 521 48. Nebraska (5)/ -31.2/ 526 49. Idaho (4)/ -38.8/ 530 50. Wyoming (3)/ -40.0/ 533 51. Utah (5)/ -43.4/ 538
