How Obama polarizes the electorate

Barack Obama’s support seems to be disproportionately concentrated in a relatively small number of states. That’s the conclusion I drew when I took a look at Gallup’s midyear Obama job approval numbers by state, cited in my Examiner colleague

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.