Byron York’s Beltway Confidential blogpost.
Overall Gallup showed Obama approval at 63% nationally in midyear, presumably in dates around June 30 and July 1. We can confidently assume that it’s somewhat lower now, so to get some perspective I counted up the electoral votes of the states in which his approval is above 63%, those in which it is exactly 63% and those in which it’s under 63%. The result is shown in the following table.
State Obama approval Electoral votes
>63% 220
=63% 39
States with above average Obama approval are concentrated in the Northeast (every state northeast of the Potomac except NH and DE), in the Great Lakes (IL, MN, MI) and on the Pacific (HI, CA). Note that every one of these states was carried not only by Obama in 2008 but by John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000. Two Obama-Kerry-Gore states show average approval (WA, OR). Ten states with 111 electoral votes carried by Obama in 2008 showed under average approval (NH, DE, OH, IN, WI, IA, NC, FL, CO, NV); two states with 18 electoral votes (VA, NM) showed average approval.
The picture is sharpened if you take Polidata’s projections of the number of electoral votes that each state will have in the 2012 election. Then the table looks like this:
State Obama approval Electoral votes
>63% 213
=63% 40
Conclusion: Obama seems to be polarizing the electorate that potentially puts him and his party in a less than ideal situation in the electoral college and races for the House than they were in 2008. He’s doing well on the coasts, including the coasts of the Great Lakes, but not so well in the flyover.
