04 September 2008
Winning an Electoral College Majority
The Electoral College system makes electing the president of the United States much more complicated than simply counting all of the popular votes. The major political parties have to craft strategies for winning the few “swing states” that can determine the election.
David Mark is senior editor at Politico and politico.com, print and online publications covering national U.S. politics.
By David Mark
Americans cast ballots for president of the United States every four years, but, strange as it may sound, there are no national elections. Rather, Americans vote for national office in 51 individual elections in the 50 states and the District of Columbia (the capital city, Washington). Added together, these tallies comprise the Electoral College and decide presidential campaigns.
Piecing together an Electoral College majority is a complex task. Presidential campaigns spend countless hours devising strategies to reach the magic number of 270 electoral votes, a majority of the 538 total. Building an Electoral College majority inevitably means the expenditure of precious time and resources in one state at the expense of another. In the final weeks before election day, campaigns must make difficult decisions daily about the states that should be seriously targeted and those to be abandoned. Picking the wrong states in which to campaign means the difference between winning the White House and being out in the political cold on Inauguration Day, January 20.
Still, political realities mean that the majority of states, up to 30 or so, are probably safely Democratic or Republican and not in serious contention. Spending time and money in these safe states would be a serious waste for either campaign.
Static Playing Field
The first decade of the 21st century has shown there to be fewer and fewer obvious targets than in past presidential elections. Remarkably little turnover occurred in the electoral map between the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. In fact, only three states switched sides: Iowa and New Mexico, which went from supporting Democratic nominee Al Gore in 2000 to Republican President George W. Bush in 2004, and New Hampshire, which backed Bush in 2000 but went for Democratic nominee John Kerry four years later. That makes for one of the most static presidential maps in recent memory.
Yet in 2004, 13 states were decided by seven or fewer percentage points: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. So in 2008, campaign strategists for Republican nominee John McCain and Democratic standard-bearer Barack Obama are looking for ways to expand the playing field and to put more states’ Electoral College votes in play.
Obama’s plan, for instance, calls for broadening the electoral map by challenging McCain in typically Republican states, including North Carolina, Missouri, and Montana. McCain’s strategy, meanwhile, aims to compete for states that have recently voted Democratic, such as Pennsylvania -- where Obama was soundly beaten in the primary election for the Democratic nomination by Senator Hillary Clinton -- and Michigan, where Obama did not compete in the primary. Officials from both campaigns confidently predict that they will steal states that have been in the other party’s column in recent elections.
Electoral College Strategies
Obama’s route to the necessary 270 electoral votes starts with holding every state won by John Kerry in 2004 and focusing on a handful of states that Obama advisers think are ripe for conversion. Kerry won 252 electoral votes. To pick up 18 more electoral votes, Obama will target Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado, among others. His list also includes Ohio, where he lost the primary to Clinton but which, in 2006 midterm elections, shifted dramatically toward the Democrats. For his part, McCain hopes voters will help him hold on to Ohio, which has been critical to Republican success in the past two presidential elections, and convert Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to the Republican column.
But sometimes campaigns’ Electoral College state-targeting strategies are not everything they seem. Campaigns often engage in elaborate ruses to make it appear as if they are spending serious amounts of money to win a state, when in reality they have no such intentions. The idea is to force the rival campaigns to spend precious time and money in states they would have ordinarily considered safe -- to play defense in their home territory.
A classic example of this “head fake” strategy came during the heated closing days of the 2000 presidential campaign, when Democratic Vice President Al Gore ran to succeed his boss, President Bill Clinton, while the Republican nominee was Texas Governor George W. Bush. In October 2000, just weeks before election day, the Bush campaign made the questionable decision to run expensive television and radio ads in California, which, with 54 electoral votes (it now has 55), is the mother lode of presidential politics. The Bush team spent more than $1 million advertising in California’s expensive media markets -- Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego -- and Republican vice presidential nominee Dick Cheney spent a precious day barnstorming the state in the campaign’s closing days
The Gore campaign, however, did not take the bait. Confident of strong Democratic support in California, the Democratic team focused its finite resources elsewhere. That turned out to be a smart strategy, as Gore won California handily, with 53 percent of the vote to Bush’s 42 percent.
But in Ohio, the Gore campaign pulled out far too early and denied itself the potential opportunity to win the state’s 21 electoral votes. While Gore’s campaign had expected a large Republican victory in Ohio, it turned out that Bush won by only 3.5 percentage points. With more attention, the statewide result might very well have been different, and a victory would have more than ensured the presidency for Gore.
The 2008 nominees have similarly mentioned several states as possibilities to be competitive; in reality, though, they will likely not be so. Obama’s aides have said some states where they intend to campaign -- such as Georgia, Missouri, Montana, and North Carolina -- might ultimately not turn from Republican to Democratic. But the result of making an effort there could force McCain to spend money or send him to campaign in what should be safe ground, rather than using those resources in crucial battleground states such as Ohio.
Winner Take All
For presidential campaign strategists, one of the most frustrating aspects of the Electoral College is the rule in almost every state that the winner of the statewide vote gets all of that state’s electoral votes, no matter how close the margin. George W. Bush in 2000 famously won Florida -- and the presidency -- by 537 votes out of more than 6 million cast in the Sunshine State. Still, even that narrowest of margins, made official only after 36 days of legal wrangling and a Supreme Court decision stopping a statewide recount, was enough to give the Republican ticket all of the state’s electoral votes.
In 1988, Republican nominee George H.W. Bush won 426 Electoral College votes to 112 for Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, making it appear as a lopsided victory. But Bush’s margins of victory in many states were relatively slim, making for a broad but shallow victory (California, 51 to 48 percent; Connecticut, 52 to 47 percent; Illinois, 51 to 49 percent; Maryland, 51 to 48 percent; Missouri, 52 to 48 percent; New Mexico, 52 to 47 percent; Pennsylvania 51 to 48 percent; Vermont, 51 to 48 percent). The vote differentials in other Electoral College-rich states were not considerably larger. With a campaign more responsive to attacks against them and being more aggressive in setting the issues agenda, Democrats might have won.
And in 2000, Gore lost New Hampshire 48.1 percent to 46.8 percent. That proved to be a crucial margin because New Hampshire’s four electoral votes would have given Gore an Electoral College majority of 271 -- making the disputed Florida results irrelevant. Also, a victory for Gore in his home state of Tennessee in 2000 would have locked up the election. Instead, Tennessee’s 11 electoral votes went to Bush, by about 4 percentage points, making Gore the first presidential nominee to lose his home state since Democrat George McGovern in 1972, and helping to cost him the presidency.
Electability in the General Election
When Democratic and Republican primary election voters cast ballots for their party’s nominee, they often take into consideration not only which candidate they prefer based on issues and personal qualities, but also which one has the best chance for winning the general election in November.
That’s a big reason why John Kerry won the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination over former Vermont Governor Howard Dean. Early in the election cycle, Dean’s furious criticism of the Iraq war and Bush administration policies generally propelled him from obscurity to front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary pack. His fiery rhetoric struck a chord with Democratic primary voters, who felt frustrated that many of their party’s own leaders in Congress had been unwilling to challenge Bush aggressively.
But Dean’s uneven performance on the campaign trail and his inexperience in national politics led Democratic primary voters eventually to choose Kerry, a senator for nearly 20 years. Kerry was a known quantity and a serviceable, if uninspiring speaker, whom they figured would be a tougher opponent against Bush. In the aftermath of the primaries, a quipster said many Democrats “dated Dean, married Kerry.”
The Electoral College map became a major issue in the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination fight. In a race that lasted for nearly six months and wasn’t decided until all primary and caucus states had cast ballots, Hillary Clinton argued that she should be her party’s nominee because she stood a better chance than nomination rival Barack Obama of beating Republican nominee John McCain in the general election.
Clinton pointed to her primary victories in swing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The argument seemed to hold little water with Democrats, who chose Obama as the party nominee to oppose McCain.
Democrats will find out November 4 whether the electorate validates the party’s nomination choice. After all, a winning Electoral College coalition is a constantly shifting target for campaigns. Perhaps most vexing, it is virtually the only facet of American government in which the winner of the greatest number of votes in an election is not automatically the victor. As the Obama and McCain campaigns work frantically in the election’s final weeks to stitch together at least 270 votes, what seems like a winning combination one day could come up short in the only measure that ultimately counts – the state-by-state count on Election Day.
The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.
