All serious judgment about the Presidential Election of 2012 demonstrates that President Barack Obama should have no problem winning the Electoral College, since he won nine “swing states” in 2008, and is expected to win a majority, if not all, of those nine states again.
But a doomsday scenario has emerged, of what COULD happen if everything went awry!
And that doomsday scenario would lead to a 269-269 Electoral College tie, when 270 electoral votes are needed to win the election, no matter what the total popular vote is!
This 269 electoral vote total for Obama assumes he would win one of the five Nebraska electoral votes as he did in 2008,. when he won the Second Congressional District around Omaha. Nebraska and Maine are the only two states that allow splitting of electoral votes, although such an idea has been broached before, but not adopted elsewhere.
Without Nebraska’a one electoral vote of five, Obama could lose to Mitt Romney 270-268!
This whole scenario is based on the idea that Obama loses Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, and New Hampshire, all of which he won in 2008, while keeping Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada.
This whole scenario is a long shot, but with a country so evenly divided in Congress, who can say that it is not a possibility, as terrible as it sounds!
And if a tie developed, the House of Representatives in January would pick the President, with each state having one vote, so which party controlled the new House and had at least 26 state delegations of their party would choose the President, while the Senate would pick the Vice President, with each state having one vote, but a 50-50 tie a potential in the Senate. Imagine if that happened, and if 25 states had a Republican majority in their House delegation, and the other 25 states had a Democratic majority in their House delegation, keeping in mind that seven states have only one House member–Vermont, Delaware, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming!
What a mess, but again the likelihood is quite low of such a scenario occurring!