As a result of changes in the Electoral College, due to population growth, in theory eleven states, if won by one candidate for the Presidency, can determine the election, no matter what the popular vote totals.
The eleven largest states add up to exactly the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House lease for the next four years.
In order, these states are:
California 55
Texas 38
New York 29
Florida 29
Pennsylvania 20
Illinois 20
Ohio 18
Michigan 16
Georgia 16
North Carolina 15
New Jersey 14
Therefore, 3 Northeastern states, 3 Midwestern states, 4 Southern states, and one Western state make up enough electoral votes to determine the winner.
Of course, no one can expect in this or any election that either candidate will win ALL of these states, but at this point a year before the election, only Texas seems out of reach for Barack Obama.
The states that seem certain for him would include: California, New York, Illinois and New Jersey.
The states that he won in 2008 that are “battleground” states in 2012 are Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and North Carolina.
Georgia along with Texas went to John McCain in 2008, but Georgia, with its growing Hispanic population, could go to Obama in a close race, although Texas still seems a few elections away before the Hispanic vote can tip the state “blue”
Of course, other states NOT in the top eleven will be important, including Virginia (13), Wisconsin (10), Minnesota (10), Indiana (11), Missouri (10), and Washington (12), all of which Obama won in 2008, except for the very close election in Missouri.
So out of all the states mentioned above, Obama ONLY lost Texas, Georgia, and Missouri (closely).
So Obama ONLY lost three of the top 17 states, with a 2012 total of 64 electoral votes, in 2008
If Obama wins all of the states he has won before, he would have a total of 272 electoral votes, and this does NOT include states such as Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland, Delaware, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, and Hawaii, all of which he won in 2008!
Any way one looks at it, Barack Obama has a great electoral vote advantage for 2012, one year before the election, and it is hard to imagine him losing enough states to a divided, confused Republican Party that has no strong, knowledgeable, principled leader found in any one person running for the nomination!
A candidate winning the plurality of the vote in the 11 most populous states, containing 56% of the population of the United States, would win with a mere 26% of the nation’s votes.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. There would no longer be ‘battleground’ states where voters and policies are more important than those of other states.
When the bill is enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes– enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.
The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for president. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in closely divided Battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA 75%, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE – 75%, ID – 77%, ME – 77%, MT – 72%, NE 74%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM – 76%, OK – 81%, RI – 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT – 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR – 80%,, KY- 80%, MS – 77%, MO – 70%, NC – 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, TN – 83%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and in other states polled: CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%. Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.
The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in AR, CT, DE, DC, ME, MI, NV, NM, NY, NC, and OR, and both houses in CA, CO, HI, IL, NJ, MD, MA ,RI, VT, and WA. The bill has been enacted by DC, HI, IL, CA, NJ, MD, MA, VT, and WA. These 9 jurisdictions possess 132 electoral votes– 49% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
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