Tuesday, September 16, 2008

OK--Here We Go! 49 Days to Election Day

I am going to attempt daily blogging (except maybe the weekends) until the election. This election (like the three prior) is VERY IMPORTANT for so many reasons, and I feel I must get my thoughts down on virtual paper!

My friend, DJ McGuire in his latest post about the election has broken it into three main points. His blog is worth the read. I suggest that he is correct that the election is much closer than the conventional wisdom has been willing to mention (at least until lately) and that the election now seems to be trending toward McCain ever since the excellent selection of Governor Palin to be the VP candidate.

I have made no secret that I have not been a fan of the Republican presidential candidate. My longstanding view is that when conservatives do not have someone to vote for, the Republicans lose elections. Governor Palin gives us someone to vote for--perhaps McCain has snatched victory from the jaws of defeat! Over the next few days I will give my opinion on the candidates, the issues, and the current events swirling around the campaigns.

For this post, I will give my estimation of where we are currently...

I am a fan of Electoral-Vote.com and use this site to follow the election. The person who maintains this site is left-leaning, but he tends to give relatively good analysis. It has been this site that has helped me predict the last election.

As you should know, it is the Electoral College vote that counts, not the popular vote. There is a good chance that Senator Obama (who I will refer to as "The One") wins the popular vote by a greater margin than Mr. Gore in 2000, but loses the electoral vote.

I have the following 16 states solidly in The One's column: CA, CT, DC, DE, HI, IA, IL, MA, MD, ME, NJ, NY, OR, RI, VT, and WI. This is a total of 207 electoral votes.

I have the following 25 states solidly in Senator McCain's column: AL, AK, AR, AZ, FL, GA, ID, IN, KS, KY, LA, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, WV, and WY. This is a total of 227 electoral votes.

The nine swing states (at least as I see them now) are CO, MI, MN, NH, NM, NV, OH, PA, and VA. Right now, CO, MI, MN, NH, and PA are leaning toward The One (total of 61 EVs), and OH, NM, NV, and VA are leaning toward McCain (total of 43 EV's) . With leaning states in the respective columns, McCain leads 270 to 268. My opinion of the swing states is that CO, OH, PA, and NM are the most volitile and will be the ones to watch...

Interesting thought...if McCain takes PA and The One takes OH and all others stay in their respective columns, we get a 269-269 tie (there are several ways this could happen) and it is off to the House of Representatives where each state gets one vote for President (so the congressional delegations for each state vote...this could make for some interesting deal making) and to the Senate, where each Senator gets a vote for VP. Electoral-Vote.com had an analysis of this scenario on September 11 this year.

2 comments:

Jodi said...

Three things One-I will let my blog readers know you're back, but I took Sitemeter off my site- I don't think I have much of a readership. Two-I didn't realize that the VP would be elected separately from the President if there is a tie. That might be really cool to see, although if the process takes that long I might want to slit my wrists. And three-I think it's childish for you to call Barack Obama "the one." I know you think it's funny, but it is immature.

P.S. No medication needed to get through this post- I'm sure that that will change. Should we agree that we are all going on vacation together now while we're still talking?? :)

jpb2525 said...

Who is that annonymous person???? Jimmy - c'mon! are you seriously kidding me? I thought you were more intelligent than that? You honestly believe that Palin is a good pick? WHAT POSSIBLE REASONS?