An authoritative new analysis of the fall Electoral College vote finds President Obama just 23 Electoral Votes shy of reelection, and he could lose up to five states won in 2008 and still beat Mitt Romney.
But his hold is so weak and and the economy such a threat that Romney could win it all just by taking Virginia, a finding that should vault Gov. Bob McDonnell into the top tier of potential vice presidential nominees.
On Thursday morning, Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball team at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics will reveal a map that gives Obama 247 Electoral Votes and Romney 206. Some 270 are needed for victory. They previewed the analysis with Secrets.
If Obama simply keeps the 23 states plus D.C. where he won a greater popular vote than his 2008 average of 52.87 percent, he will end up with 272 Electoral Votes, said Sabato’s team. That would be historic: no reelected president has ever won without adding a state to the coalition that put him in the White House.
In that scenario, Virginia is a must win to offset New Hampshire which gave Obama 54.9 percent of the vote in 2008 but now favors Romney, former governor of neighboring Massachusetts. The Old Dominion in 2008 came closest to matching Obama’s national vote average and it’s still politically split.
Without it, Obama loses, meaning Virginia, not Ohio or Florida, could be the key battleground state, giving McDonnell an edge over Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, the current odds-on VP pick.
Here’s what the Crystal Ball says about Virginia:
| Of all the states in 2008, Virginia (52.63% for Obama) came closest to matching the president’s national average. If one assumes that Obama can keep all of his overperforming states from 2008 minus New Hampshire — the fickle state next door to the one where Romney was governor — then the election comes down to Virginia, not to Ohio. Indeed, it’s not hard at this early point to imagine Romney winning Florida and/or Ohio but still losing the election. It is also easy to imagine Obama losing overall if he can’t win the Old Dominion, which gave Obama a considerably larger share of its 2008 votes than did Florida or Ohio. |
