Tag Archives: electoral votes

GOP Looks to Win Ugly

The GOP plan to win presidential elections by allocating electoral college votes based on congressional districts rather than winner-take-all in states Obama won twice is finally getting attention.  Rachel Maddow has been raising the alarm, and here’s Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

“Rather than going by the overall vote in a state, they’d allocate by congressional district. And this is where it gets real good, or bad, depending on your point of view. Democrats are now increasingly concentrated in urban areas and Republicans did an extremely successful round of gerrymandering in 2010, enough to enable them to hold on to a substantial House majority even though they got fewer votes in House races than Democrats.

“In other words, the new plan is to make the electoral college as wired for Republicans as the House currently is. But only in Dem leaning states. In Republican states just keep it winner take all. So Dems get no electoral votes at all.

“Another way of looking at this is that the new system makes the votes of whites count for much more than non-whites — which is a helpful thing if you’re overwhelmingly dependent on white votes in a country that is increasingly non-white.

“This all sounds pretty crazy. But it gets even crazier when you see the actual numbers. Here’s a very illustrative example. They’re already pushing a bill to do this in the Virginia legislature. Remember, Barack Obama won Virginia and got 13 electoral votes. But… if the plan now being worked on would have been in place last November, Mitt Romney would have lost the state but still got 9 electoral votes to Obama’s 4. Think of that, two-thirds of the electoral votes for losing the state. If the Virginia plan had been in place across the country, as Republicans are now planning to do, Mitt Romney would have been elected president even though he lost by more than 5 million votes.

“Remember, plans to do this are already underway in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and other states in the Midwest.

“This is happening.”

Got that?  Mittens would be president today with five million fewer votes than Obama.  If the GOP can’t win with women and minorities, they’ll just win with gerrymandering.  Be afraid, be very afraid.  They know demographics are against them, but if they soften their crazier stands, they will lose their base.  So desperate times call for desperate measures, and this is pretty damn desperate.

Ohio Looks to Get It Right — Far Right — In 2016

Y’all remember John Husted, the GOP Secretary of State in Ohio, and all his efforts to suppress the presidential vote and help Mitt, first by pushing Voter ID and then by trying to restrict early voting.  It took federal judges to rein this zealous moron in.

But Husted is nothing, if not tenacious.  His new bright idea is that Ohio’s 18 electoral vote be allocated by congressional district, rather than winner-take-all.  Ohio’s districts have been so insanely gerrymandered to favor the GOP that even though Obama won Ohio’s votes, if Husted’s proposed system had been in place, Obama would have gotten only 6 electoral votes, and Mitt would have gotten 12.

Instead of stopping people from voting or allocating their votes unreasonably, why doesn’t the GOP try to win by, oh, I don’t know, maybe offering some good ideas, maybe not pissing off women and Hispanics and African Americans and people who live in cities or on a coast?  Just a thought, people.

 

Never-Ending GOP Delusion and Denial

The nut job who founded UnSkewedPolls.com, Dean Chambers, hasn’t given up and isn’t going away.  He now claims that President Obama won Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Florida (a total of 80 electoral votes) through voter fraud, so Mitt really won.

If you want a good laugh (or cry) check out his new site, Barack O’Fraudo.

Your Friday Laugh

Go to Karl Rove’s web site, http://www.rove.com/election.

It still has a big map up with all the states colored red and blue (mostly red), showing Karl’s prediction that Mitt will get 285 electoral votes and Obama will get 253.

You’d think Karl would have had that taken down as soon as the Fox News “decision desk” told him and all of America (ok, all the Fox News viewers) that he was full of shit.

How can Karl not have minions?  All evil geniuses have minions.

Did the Polls Over-Count Dems?

Did the pre-election polls over-count Dems?  We’ll know in a few hours if 2012 more closely resembles 2004 or 2008:

From “I’m Calling It for Mitt,” Kimberley Strassel, WSJ:

“Many of the battleground polls assume the electorate will look somewhat like 2008, when Democrats had a seven-point partisan voting advantage over Republicans. This is inconceivable. The Obama turnout machine will be good, and probably bring out Democrats at about the party’s historic average; they will make up 37% to 38% of the electorate. The difference is that the GOP turnout machine, fueled by voter intensity, will likely equal (as it did in 2004) or even exceed that Democratic turnout. If that is the case, this election turns on independent voters, who are now behind Mr. Romney by a comfortable margin.

“My final prediction is that at a minimum, Mr. Romney wins 289 electoral votes, a tally that includes Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Colorado, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Wisconsin. If it is a big night, he also picks up Pennsylvania and maybe Minnesota.”

Is This Anything?

A “test map” for NBC’s election results tomorrow night somehow got released.

It shows the Prez winning with 280, and Mitt with 257.  Don’t know about that missing electoral vote.  The separate vote available in one of Maine’s districts?

The map gives Obama Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Iowa.  Mitt gets Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and Colorado.

So if you’re doing a test map, do you just throw up any old results, or do you use what you think is most likely to happen?

Where’s Nate?

Nate is currently projecting that Obama will get 307 electoral votes and Mitt will get 231 tomorrow.

He gives the Prez an 86.3% chance of winning, and Mitt a 13.7% chance.

As for the Senate, he projects 52 or 53 seats for the Dems and 47 or 48 for the GOP.

He gives the Dems a 91.5% chance of keeping their majority and the GOP an 8.5% chance of taking it.