It’s the ultimate nightmare scenario that nobody wants to
talk about. What if on election night
both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney end up tied with 269 electoral votes. Who gets to decide the winner?
According to the 12th amendment, the House of
Representatives gets to decide. Each
state will cast one vote. Whoever gets 26
votes wins the election. Just in case you
haven’t looked at a current map of the House of Representatives lately, let me break
it down for you. There are a few patches
of blue, primarily in the northeast and west coast, along with some sprinkles
in south Texas, southern Florida, northern New Mexico and a couple of Midwest
states, but mostly a shit-load of red just about everywhere else. I’ll spare you the suspense. If the election
ends in a tie, Barack Obama is toast.
But isn’t a 269 tie improbable? Well, that depends. Is it likely to happen? Probably not, but, the more I look at the
battleground states, the more concerned I get that it might just happen.
The states that concern me most are Florida, Ohio and
Wisconsin. I believe that Obama will get
a split in the mid-Atlantic states, winning Virginia, but losing North
Carolina. I am less than enthusiastic
about the Russ-belt states. Ohio is
within the margin of error and I don’t trust what I’m seeing in Wisconsin. Obama could lose both states. And then there’s Florida, Democrats’ favorite
state. The race is a dead heat there. Expect Rick Scott to pull out all the stops
to secure the state for Romney. Obama
should easily win New Mexico and Nevada, with a close pickup in Colorado. Assuming Pennsylvania’s voter ID law doesn’t
tip it into the red column, and all the other states go the way they’re
expected to, that’s 269 Obama, 269 Romney.
Game, set, match.
Any which way you look at it, Obama has to take two out of
three in the Midwest. Either Michigan
and Wisconsin or Michigan and Ohio or Ohio and Wisconsin. I deliberately omit Iowa mainly because I don't think Obama will carry it, despite holding a 3-point lead. As for Indiana, let's just agree that if Obama needs Indiana, he's in deep trouble. Of course he could also lose both Virginia and
North Carolina. In that event he would
have to sweep all three of the aforementioned Midwest battleground states, a tall order.
That’s why I’m a little confused and somewhat concerned that Obama is
spending considerable sums of money running ads in Florida. While he won the state in ’08, it will more than
likely flip this year. Everything
north of the I-4 corridor is a sea of red and his support among seniors has
eroded some. He would need huge turnouts
in the Miami / Broward areas to have any chance. That’s asking a lot.
If I were running his campaign, I would concede the state
and divert the resources to Wisconsin and Michigan to shore up support there. Leave the advertising in Ohio and Virginia
alone and run some additional ads in Colorado.
If he takes those states, Obama wins reelection. Period.
Of course there’s just a little over three months to go and no
one knows for certain how all this will play out. But the cynic in me just can’t shake this
nagging feeling that we could be headed for a scenario that would make Bush v.
Gore look like a couple kids fighting over crayons.
Oh, shit!
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