The 2012 Electoral Math Looks Good for the GOP

May 5, 2011 05:28


Karl Rove: The presidential election will likely be decided in 14 states. – WSJ

Karl Rove at the Wall Street Journal

EXCERPTS:

Two hundred seventy is the number of Electoral College votes needed to win the White House. Strategists on both sides will obsess on how to cobble together enough states to reach that total.

Mr. Obama narrowly won three traditionally Republican states in 2008: Indiana, Virginia and North Carolina. Democrats last carried the first two in 1964 and the third in 1976.

The president will be hard-pressed to win these states and their 39 electoral votes next year, especially Indiana and North Carolina.

Ohio, with 18 electoral votes, and Florida, with 29, both went Democratic in 2008 (they went Republican in 2004), but the swing in each was less than the national average. This indicates some weakness for Mr. Obama that has persisted: A recent Quinnipiac University poll in Florida shows the president losing to a generic, unnamed Republican by three points.

There are nine other states that have frequently been battlegrounds in recent contests. There is every reason to believe they will be so again.

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