Tomorrow the next great batch of states
including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania
and Connecticut will vote.
There will be two things of broad interest to look
out for – Mitt Romney’s percentage and the
turnout.
The polls themselves have narrowed some since Romney emerged as the GOP ‘unofficial’ nominee. That of itself is not unusual. Some in the commentariat have got over-excited about the polls. For example Toby Harnden’s blog on in Daily Mail purports to analyse recent polls to demonstrate Romney will win in November. He drills down to the detail of the polls whilst failing to mention the fact that there is a considerable debate in the USA over the sampling methods employed by pollsters and the the slant provided by for example the number of Hispanic voters in some national polls.
Thus, in April it may well be sensible to be cautious about all the polls and most especially the National Polls. It’s a long, long time from May to September…let alone the mists of autumn and November. And, as those who remember the events of 2000 will recall in the US Presidential Elections are not directly won by a plurality of the total of votes cast.
Instead there are fifty separate contests in each of the states of the Union & another election in Washington DC. Moreover, in each of these elections the popular vote doesn’t directly elect a president. Rather it determines the slate of electors who will, in due time, elect the president in what the constitution terms the Electoral College. Most states allocate electors on the basis that a winner takes all in a first-past-the-post style election. Nebraska And Maine allocate their electoral college votes by congressional district and thus though Nevada voted for McCain – last time round Obama also picked up a single electoral vote from the state’s second congressional district.
The Electoral College elects the president on the Monday after the second Wednesday in December – approximately six weeks after the election itself. The electors from different states never meet one another since they assemble in their respective state capitals and from there each state’s electors cast their vote for the president and vice president.
The total number of electors for each state is determined by the total number of elected representatives it returns to Congress (both the House and Senate).
There are 435 Members of the House of Representatives and 100 Senators. Every state has two senators regardless of its size. The composition of the House of Representatives reflects the population. The larger the population of a state the more Congressmen or Congresswomen it returns to the House. Each state has at least 1 representative in the House. This means that even the smallest state has at least 3 votes in the Electoral College.
In addition, although Washington DC returns no voting members to the Senate or House it is also allocated 3 electors in the college – before 1961 residents of Washington DC could not vote in a Presidential election. Congress remains the district’s ultimate ‘state legislature’ but the President is no longer as it were its ‘Governor’ as the city has its own Mayor and council of sixteen.
There are thus 538 electoral votes in total and a winning candidate needs to obtain 270 of them to be elected President. The effect of this weighting of the college is to increase the power of the smaller states relative to the larger states since even the smallest of states population-wise has a the minimum three votes in the college.
The constitution also provides for the election of a president and vice president in the case where no candidate obtains the necessary 270 votes in the Electoral College. In this case the congressional delegations caucus together state by state and voting by a simple majority. Then each state casts a single ballot on the floor of the House. These arcane procedures have been used only once to elect the sixth president, John Quincy Adams in 1825.
John Quincy was the son of the second president, John Adams. Before Bush father and son these were the only father and son to have served as US Presidents. In the event that the electoral College fails to elect a president the Constitution requires the House to immediately elect a president. This means it is the outgoing House that elects the new president and not the one elected in the previous November.
In the events of such a tie in the Electoral College, simultaneously, the Senate elects the vice president. In addition to 1825 the Senate also elected the Vice President in 1836 when President Martin van Buren’s Vice President Richard Johnson failed to be elected in the Electoral College by a single vote.
It is implied in all this that the electors themselves may not necessarily be mandated under law to vote for any particular candidate. Certain states do have a statutory mandate placed upon the electors – others do not. The Holy Roman Empire could hardly have devised a process of election more fraught with so many uncertainties.
Since 2008 there has been a census in American that adjusted the number of House seats across the USA according to population and as a consequence where there has been either an increase or decrease in the number of representatives, the legislature of the state in question will re-district – that is redraw the boundaries of each of the congressional seats. This obviously also affects the votes in Electoral College. Thus if President Obama now won exactly the same states as he did in 2008 instead of 365 votes he would receive 359.
On the basis of what we already know it broadly may be assumed that there are 227 safe votes in Democrat (Blue) states for Obama and 170 votes in safe Republican (Red) states for Romney. That leaves the so called toss-ups states where, rather like in British marginal constituencies, the outcome of the election will be decided one way or another.The tossups are:
Arizona (11)
Colorado (9)
Florida (29)
Iowa (6)
Missouri (10)
Nevada (6)
New Hampshire (4)
North Carolina (15)
Ohio (18)
Pennsylvania (20)
Virginia (13)
Of these only Arizona and Missouri were taken by McCain for the Republicans in the last election the remainder (and in addition Indiana which now seems likely to be a Republican gain) were taken by Obama. It is as yet too soon to see routine state by state polling but on the basis of what we have the marginal states remain marginally in the President’s column. This means nothing definite. It merely reflects the polling data to hand. For example a poll yesterday in New Hampshire showed Obama 9 points clear of Romney; two in Ohio show the President ahead by 4-6 points and one in Florida by 2 % points.
There’s yet too much water to cross to see any candidate safely home. But Romney despite his small National poll lead is as yet placed at a disadvantage for the moment in state by state battle that will determine the election. Until that math changes his likelihood of graduating from the Electoral College remains slim.
Meanwhile the battle for control of the Senate and the House slowly continues to clarify. In the Senate the Republicans need to pick up 4 seats to take control. As the Democrats are defending 23 seats and the Republicans only 10 – on paper this should be their easiest task. But suddenly the task has been made rather more difficult by the fact that they may lose three of their own seats to the Democrats – Olympia Snow’s in Maine; Scott Brown’s in Massachusetts and Dean Heller’s in Nevada. Polls in these three states show the Democrats with a narrow but consistent lead. This means the Republicans may need to pick up 7 Democrat seats in order to take the Senate. And if Obama wins the presidency then the Democrats may lose 3 seats and still retain control of the Senate with the vote of the Vice President – who is President of the Senate.
In the House it looks as if there are around 214 seats safely in the Republican column which means they need to find only another 2 to hold the majority there. And the Speaker of the House is these days the third in line for the Presidency after the Vice President. The Democrats need the economy to turn more decisively in their favour if they are to make significant progress in Congress.
And so, four months in from where we started it still looks most like the deadlock in Washington that has marred and marked the last two years is most likely set to continue and that American’s political division will not resolve itself for at least another 2 years….
And that of itself is interesting….and of course Europe’s crisis looms larger and who know which waty that will blow political events in the USA…
Update: Romney has swept all five contests in the latest primaries but only in Connecticut did he actually take almost two thirds of the votes cast. In New York almost 40% of Republican ballots were cast for another candidate although none of those on the ballot are viable candidates. Turnout was low throughout the entire North-eastern corridor. Indeed in Pennsylvania an unopposed President Obama garnered some 150,000 votes in the Democratic primary whilst whilst the Romney and Santorum votes together in the simultaneous Republican Primary did not reach the total cast for the President.
These turnout figures are the spectre at Romney’s delegate feast. The are the steady discordant descant to Romney’s inevitable nomination. If he cannot even out poll the President in a contested Primary what’s going to happen in November?
This is the unremarked but quite remarkable electoral tale of this primary season.
Yesterday, Newt Gingrich finally ‘officially’ withdrew from the race for the GOP nomination. His name is likely to remain on the ballot in Texas and it will be interesting to see how Gingrich polls without an active campaign.
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