{"id":2799,"date":"2012-10-12T06:54:39","date_gmt":"2012-10-12T06:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=2799"},"modified":"2012-10-12T06:54:39","modified_gmt":"2012-10-12T06:54:39","slug":"romney-has-a-tough-road-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=2799","title":{"rendered":"Romney has a tough road ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The American electoral college system means each state is assigned a certain number of electoral votes, dependent on population, and whoever wins a majority of these electoral votes – 270 or more – will be the next president.<\/p>\n

For states with a large population, such as California or Texas, therefore have more influence, and tiny ones like Rhode Island or Maine less<\/p>\n

It means campaign tactics limit the presidential candidates in states that are swing states. American states tend to lean strongly toward one political ideology at the presidential level.<\/p>\n

Massachusetts, for example, is a strongly liberal and Democrat state, while Texas leans toward the Republicans. Democrats will not win Texas in this election cycle, and Republicans stand no chance of winning Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

This leaves about eleven swing states that are usually competitive. For this election however, it’s down to eight with Michigan and Pennsylvania leaning towards the Democrats, while Missouri will likely vote Republican.<\/p>\n

These eight are Florida (29 electoral college votes), Ohio (18), New Hampshire (4), Virginia (13), North Carolina (15), Colorado (9), Nevada (6) and Iowa (6).<\/p>\n

The balance of power in these states gives a decisive advantage to President Barack Obama. With 538 electoral college votes at stake, 270 votes will secure victory, and, according to reasonable projections Obama can pretty much bank on 247 while Republicans have a total of only 191 probable votes.<\/p>\n

This means only one thing: If Romney loses Florida he cannot become president, as its 29 votes will put Obama ahead of the 270-victory threshold. It also means Romney can’t afford to lose any combination of votes that add up to anything more than 22.<\/p>\n

The problem for Romney is that swing state polls are not kind to him as things stand, although they have narrowed in recent days. The polling average has Obama up in all swing states except North Carolina. And Romney is less than a percentage point ahead in North Carolina.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, if Obama does only win 22 of the 100 available electoral votes, both candidates will be tied at 269. If this happens the Constitution points to the House of Representatives to decide who becomes president, and that chamber will likely have a Republican majority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The American electoral college system means each state is assigned a certain number of electoral votes, dependent on population, and whoever wins a majority of these electoral votes – 270 or more – will be the next president. For states with a large population, such as California or Texas, therefore have more influence, and tiny … Continue reading “Romney has a tough road ahead”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2800,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-united-states"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/electionusa.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2799"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2802,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2799\/revisions\/2802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}