Thursday, September 11, 2008

Rove: Watch Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, Colorado

Karl Rove penned a very interesting electoral analysis last month where he suggests that the race is likely to hinge on the outcome in four key states: Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado. Since the decision is made on the basis of electoral votes and not popular vote, and since several states award all their votes rather than proportional distribution of electoral votes, certain states will matter where others are pretty much a given for either McCain (e.g. Texas) or Obama (e.g. New York).

I see Ohio as pretty much the key battleground state. Ohio was key in 2004 when GW Bush's narrow victory there gave him the win over John Kerry. Although the 2004 race there was not as close as Florida's (where the butterfly ballot fiasco created a super narrow win for Bush even though the intention of several thousand voters was to to vote for Gore but ballot design meant they voted for both Gore and Buchanon and thus had the ballot spoiled. As I've note before Florida 2000 is usually analyzed strangely and wrongly - either as a Supreme Court "coup" or as a real "win" by Bush. It was neither, rather it was a fluke of our terrible electoral system (which should award electors proportionally) and ballot irregularities (which are hard to fix but won't matter nearly as much if we use a national vote count).

So, Ohio probably holds the key to the election, and if you live there get ready to watch more TV ads than you've ever seen on a single topic in your entire life...

No comments: