Barack Obama seems extremely likely to win the entire Northeast from Maine to Maryland and Washington, DC in 2012, with possibly New Hampshire and Pennsylvania as exceptions. So that would be 112 electoral votes, or without Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, 88 electoral votes.
He is expected also to win the Pacific Coast states of California, Oregon and Washington as well, which would mean 74 electoral votes.
In the Midwest, Illinois is a certainty, and the upper Midwest seems strongly Democratic too, including Michigan, WIsconsin, and Minnesota, which means these four states are together a total of 56 electoral votes.
So far, that adds up to 218 electoral votes, without New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, and with them, it is 242, 28 short of the number needed, 270 electoral votes, to win the Presidency.
So what is needed to guarantee an Obama victory?
1, The state of Florida with 29 electoral votes would put Obama over the top with all of the above states, and add Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado, all with growing Hispanic and Latino populations, and supportive of Obama the last time, and you get 26 electoral votes, to replace a possible loss of New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
2. Another scenario is to win Ohio and Missouri, the two states most representative of the winning Presidential candidates, with Ohio being with the GOP nominee every time he has won in US History, and Missouri wrong only twice on the Presidential winner since 1900–1956 and 2008–with their combined 28 replacing Florida or Iowa and the three Southwestern states.
3. Another strategy is to try to win in Georgia and Arizona, along with Missouri, three states won by John McCain in 2008, but all susceptible to moving to Obama with growing Hispanic and Latino populations. This way one gains 37 electoral votes, replacing either Florida OR Iowa and the three Southwestern states.
4. Also, if Obama wins Virginia and North Carolina, he wins 28 electoral votes and does not need Florida, OR Ohio and Missouri, OR Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado!
The point is that Obama has many scenarios to win, and it is very hard to imagine that all of the above combinations of states will go to a Republican party as right wing and divided as it now is, demonstrated even more by the debacle over the middle class tax cut continuation, leading to a split between Republicans in the Senate and the House of Representatives.
So Obama supporters need to work hard, but the future looks bright!
My prediction — at this point — is that President Obama will win re-election in 2012.
The Republican field doesn’t come across as serious threat; otherwise, a heady candidate would have tossed his name into the race.
Historical voting pattern considered, the country doesn’t tend to flip the party in the White House (as it did in 2008), only to turn around four years later and welcome back the party that had been flipped out. No matter the claims of unemployment, the 2008 exit polls showed the GOP was rightly getting the blame for that and the economy. And they couldn’t even hold Indiana, which went blue second time since the first two elections of Franklin Roosevelt.
If it turns out that Obama wins a second term, look for a gain in electoral votes. It’s the norm; Woodrow Wilson is the only president elected to a second term with a decline. (In 1912, he won 435 electoral votes. In 1916, he was reduced to 277 of then-available 531.)
If Obama gives up any of his nine pickup states, from 2008, Indiana is more likely than Democratic convention-hosting state North Carolina. And there is Nebraska #02. But that would be countered with at least three of the following four flipping from the 2008 Republican to 2012 Democratic column: Arizona, Georgia, declined bellwether Missouri, and Montana.
In a case where the GOP really bombs — and this is not unusual, given past cases, with an opposition party that is lost (via realignment) — Obama would not lose a single state. He would essentially win a 40-state-plus landslide — the 28 he carried, in 2008, plus a pickup of at least 12 — that are Ariz., Ga., Mo, Mont., and a cluster of other states one thinks wouldn’t flip from Republican to Democratic: Texas, South Carolina, Nebraska, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota. Along with, say, five that used to commonly carry for prevailing Democrats: Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, West Virginia. And if he’s that strong, Alaska might be poised as well for a flip.
I won’t go too deeply into all this. Presidential campaigning nowadays basically are motivated to just wrap a victory with enough states that string together a winning-enough map. A variation — not an exact duplicate — from the first-term result. That — right now — is what I’d bet on. If the Republicans implode — then we’d see a national level Electoral College not experienced since the 1980s.