August 28, 2003

So, here's a first preliminary survey of the ground.  The Political State Report, a sub-site of Daily Kos, has an electoral vote calculator (requires Javascript).  Assign a state to the Dems or GOP, and it will total up the electoral votes. 

We'll start by giving each state to the side that won its electoral votes in the 2000 election:

State        D            R

AL                         9
AK                        3
AZ                       10
AR                         6
CA        55
CO                        9
CT          7
DE          3
DC          3
FL                        27
GA                       15
HI          4
ID                           4
IL         21
IN                         11
IA          7
KS                          6
KY                         8
LA                          9
ME         4
MD       10
MA       12
MI         17
MN       10
MS                        6
MO                     11
MT                        3
NE                         5
NV                        5
NH                        4
NJ         15
NM         5
NY        31
NC                      15
ND                        3
OH                      20
OK                        7
OR          7
PA         21
RI            4
SC                         8
TN                       11
TX                       34
UT                         5
VT          3
VA                      13
WA       11
WV                       5
WI        10
WY                       3
           ___         ___

           260         278

The result, in this direct repeat, is that Bush wins the electoral vote by a bit more than his 271 / 266 margin in 2000.  The 2000 Census tipped a net 6 electoral votes into red states.  The significance is that a single small-state Dem pickup is not enough.  For example, Bush won New Hampshire by about 7000 votes in 2000, but if NH went Dem in '04, while all other states were a wash, Bush would still win by 274/ 264.

However, several states in 2000 came down to razor-thin margins.  Here are five of the closest ones, with winning margins of fewer than 10,000 votes, based on a quick look at the Federal Election Commission website.  I've given the percentage margin, the (rounded-off) difference in votes cast, and the percentage that Ralph Nader won in that state:

IA - 0.3 pct Dem (4000 votes) - 2.2 pct Nader
NH - 1.3 pct GOP (7000 votes) - 3.9 pct Nader
NM - 0.06 pct Dem (350 votes) - 3.5 pct Nader
OR - 0.4 pct Dem (7000 votes) - 5.0 pct Nader
WI - 0.2 pct Dem (6000 votes) - 3.6 pct Nader

It turns out that Al Gore actually won more states by razor-thin margins than Bush did - a mere 350 votes for New Mexico's five electoral votes.  However, Ralph Nader got over 3 percent of the vote in all of these states except Iowa. 

Presumably, all but the hardest-core Greenies have learned by this point that there really is a difference between the major parties.  Even if Nader runs again, he's likely to fall back into the Libertarian range of 1 percent or less.  Nader got 22,000 votes in New Hampshire, and a third of those would have tipped it to Gore.   However, as we saw, in 2004, NH alone would not be enough to change the national outcome.

More relevant is that Nader forced the Gore campaign to put precious resources into several states that would have been safe states otherwise - on this list, notably Wisconson and Oregon, but also Minnesota, where Gore's 2.4 percent margin was less than half of the 5.2 percent Nader vote.   

And - oh, yeah - I forgot one other state that was pretty close in 2000:

FL - 0.01 pct GOP (500 votes) - 1.6 pct Nader

Florida was actually not one of Nader's strong states in 2000.  Still, the nearly 100,000 votes he got there were about 200 times the margin by which Katherine Harris certified Bush as winning the state.  Thanks a bunch, Ralph!

Also, largely forgotten in the smoke of the recount battle is that Pat Buchanan got 17,484 votes in Florida - and a large chunk of them came from heavily Jewish precincts in Palm Beach County, via the infamous butterfly ballot.  Now, GOPers can argue forever about the recount, but it is as certain as anything in politics can be that those people did not intend to vote for Pitchfork Pat.  If the Florida voting had reflected voters' intentions, Al Gore would be President, and we would not be bogged down in Iraq.

But that was then, this is now, and 2004 is next year.  Our concern is where the Democratic nominee can make pickups. 

Florida is the most obvious one - and in some moral sense not even a "pickup."   With 27 electoral votes, it's enough by itself to tip a state-by-state 2000 repeat to 287 / 261 in favor of the Dem - enough to cover the sins of several small states.   However, Jeb Bush held the governorship pretty handily last year, and his plug-uglies will stop at nothing to hold Florida for la famiglia next year.   It remains an important target of opportunity, but still somewhat iffy.

Other than Florida, forget the South.  Southerners have many good qualities (my people, on my grandmother's side, came from Mississippi), but their politics suck.   Only if Gen. Wesley Clark is on the ticket is Arkansas (6 EVs) a just-possible pickup.

Down East, New Hamshire (4 EV)remains a target of opportunity, since only Nader held it for Bush.  Also, they're close to Dover Air Force Base, which maybe will remind them of the steady trickle of flag-draped coffins coming back from Iraq. 

Ohio.  Without Nader, Bush would only have carried it by about one percent.   I was born there, but haven't lived there since I was six, have no ties there, and not a clue to its politics.  But to the extent that it has one foot (Cleveland) in the industrial belt, it might be in reach - and with 20 EVs, it packs quite a punch.   Missouri (11 EVs) went for Bush by a similar margin, though with a smaller Nader vote.  It might also be a possible.

The other targets of opportunity are in the Southwest.  People in most of the country think of Texas as Southwestern (cowboys, Tex-Mex, and all that), and presume a regional affinity for Bush.  However, Texas has been more accurately described as a Southern state pretending to be a Western state.  The only part of Texas that really belongs to the Southwest is El Paso - which is about 500 miles from anywhere else in Texas.

In 2000, Bush won Nevada by 3.5 percent (with 2.5 percent for Nader), Arizona by 6 percent, and Colorado by 8 percent (with 5 percent going to Nader).   In the longer run, the Southwest is also the place to work on the goal of marginalizing the GOP as a Southern regional party.  It is libertarian-leaning, big gun country - they might be surprised by Dean's position on guns - but not really Bible Belters except for Utah.  Only Nevada is really in play for 2004, but the whole Southwest deserves the Dems' long-term attention.

Looking it all over, the best "pickup" prospect is still Florida, even with Jeb in the statehouse.  The 2000 election showed that it could be in play, to say the least.  (Also, the GOP can't count on another Elian to fire up the Cuban-Americans.)  

In the Midwest, either Ohio or Missouri would be enough to flip an otherwise 2000-repeat to the Dems.

New Hampshire and Nevada, two small states at opposite ends of the country, could between them have a freaky result.  With a combined 9 electoral votes, tipping them into the Dem column would be just enough to tie up the Electoral College, 269 / 269.   That would throw the election into the House of Representatives, voting en bloc by state delegations.  Alas, while I don't know what that adds up to, it would probably go Bush.

So, our best state targets of opportunity in 2004, based simply on the 2000 results and electoral vote totals, look like Florida, Ohio, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, in roughly that order.  How it actually sorts out depends on the dynamics at work in each state, not to mention in the country as a whole.

-- Rick Robinson

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Last revised 11/07/2006 ... by RM Robinson

Email me: Lyonesse@compuserve.com

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