With just 8 days to go until the big day, one often hears members of the media and the public alike saying “Ooooh it’s going to be close, no one can call the election this year!”. Well let me pop their bubble of suspense. I can call it. On November 6th, it will be Obama making the victory speech and Romney conceding defeat. How can I say this when most polls have both Obama and Romney neck and neck? The answer is simple, you don’t have to be popular to win.
One of the many quirks of the Electoral college voting system is that you don’t have to have the popular vote to win the electoral vote. The prime example of this is the Bush v. Gore election in 2000, where even though Gore had a larger percentage of the population voting for him, he still wasn’t made the President. All a hopeful President needs to do is convince a certain number of states to vote for him and grant him 271 Electoral College votes.
As of writing this entry, when one looks at the way each of the ‘solid states’ are leaning towards, Obama has 237 votes and Romney has 191, leaving 110 votes up for grabs. All it would take for Obama to win re-election is to win 34 of those votes and in my opinion this is an easy task for him. The states of Ohio, Iowa and Wisconsin are, according to current polling, between 95-99% likely to go in Obama’s favour and considering these three states make up 34 Electoral college votes one can easily claim, as I am doing so here, that Obama is extremely likely to win.
Oh, I forgot to mention, New Hampshire, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada are all leaning towards Obama as well. Factor these into the equation and Obama could be in store for a huge victory gap.
So barring anything huge happening, (What’s that you’re saying about a storm….) I really cant see any way for Romney to overcome these numbers. He could find a cure for cancer, instil world peace and rid the world of hunger, but if Obama wins those three states I mentioned, then it’s game over for the Republicans.
Steven Buckley