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Nice reminder of how much the math is in our favor, for once.
Can Romney replicate Bush’s 2004 path to victory? It looks dicey. By Chris
Cillizza<http://www.washingtonpost.com/chris-cillizza/2011/02/24/AB7OmvI_page.html>,
Sunday, September 23, 1:24 PM

There’s little question that come Nov. 6, President Obama won’t equal the
365 electoral votes that the then-candidate Obama won in the 2008 election.

But the bigger and more important question when it comes to the
electoral-college conversation is whether former Massachusetts governor Mitt
Romney<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/mitt-romneys-september-challenge/2012/09/17/a3b64fe6-00db-11e2-b257-e1c2b3548a4a_story.html>can
come close to replicating the path to victory that President George W.
Bush took during his 2004 reelection race. At the moment that looks like a
dicey proposition, and that should make Republicans very nervous.

Let’s start with the Bush map that delivered him 286 electoral votes and a
second term. Bush won 31 states — a sum that included victories in the
following swing states: Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa, Ohio and
Florida. Those six wins gave Bush 73 electoral votes and the presidency.

If Romney was able to exactly follow Bush’s 2004 winning map, he would wind
up with 292 electoral votes — as a result of population changes reflected
in the decennial reapportionment of congressional seats in 2011— but that
scenario seems unlikely.

New Mexico and its five electoral votes will go for Obama. In Iowa, a state the
Romney team<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/romney-team-is-both-defiant-and-realistic/2012/09/22/0b69749a-0430-11e2-91e7-2962c74e7738_story.html?tid=pm_politics_pop&wp_login_redirect=0>had
real hopes of winning, those hopes have faded somewhat with a new
NBC-Marist-Wall
Street Journal<http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/09/19/8-takeaways-from-the-nbc-wall-street-journal-poll/>poll
showing Obama up eight points and even GOP operatives privately
conceding that the state is not moving in their direction.

Subtract New Mexico and Iowa from Romney’s total and he drops to 281
electoral votes — still enough for him to win. But that’s not the full
picture. Poll after poll show Romney steadily behind — in mid-single digits
— in Ohio. Subtract Ohio (as well as New Mexico and Iowa) from Romney’s
attempt to re-create the Bush map and he drops to 263 electoral votes and
loses.

And that’s not even considering the fact that the three other swing states
Bush won in 2004 — Colorado, Florida and Nevada — are, at best, tossup
races right now for Romney. (A new independent poll in Florida released
over the weekend showed Obama at 48 percent among likely voters to Romney’s
47 percent.)

Or the fact that some states that President Bush never worried about —
Virginia and North Carolina in particular — are quite competitive; a new
Washington Post poll shows Obama with a statistically significant lead over
Romney in Virginia. (Democrats insist they have data that shows Arizona to
be a low-single-digit race, but we remain unconvinced Obama can win there
after losing it in 2008.)

The other problem for Romney when it comes to comparing Bush’s 2004 map
with his own blueprint for 2012 is that while there are plenty of states
that Bush won where Romney will or could lose, there are very few states
that Bush lost where Romney looks to come out on top.

Wisconsin is Romney’s best chance to turn a blue state in 2004 into a red
state in 2012. Obama’s trip to
Milwaukee<http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/obama-visits-wisconsin-as-campaign-tries-to-curb-ryans-influence/2012/09/22/46c7e95e-04e9-11e2-91e7-2962c74e7738_story.html>on
Saturday — his first since February — suggests that his campaign may
be
worried about the numbers, but, again, the latest independent polling in
the Badger State pegs Obama to a mid-single-digit lead. New Hampshire is
another state Romney, who spent four years as governor of neighboring
Massachusetts, could turn blue to red in 2012.

Aside from those two states, there is little evidence that Romney can or
will expand the Bush 2004 map. That failure to expand begins (and could
well end) in Pennsylvania and Michigan, two massive electoral-vote treasure
troves that Republicans thought might move in their direction this year as
a result of the economic difficulties that have affected the entire Rust
Belt region. Romney’s close personal ties to Michigan also gave Republicans
some hope that this year would be different for them.

Put Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes) or Michigan (16 electoral votes) into
Romney’s column and all of the sudden a loss in Ohio is nullified; if
Romney won Ohio and Michigan, it would all but cancel out defeats in Iowa,
New Mexico and Nevada.

But victory for Romney in either Pennsylvania or Michigan seems remote at
the moment, a reality that, when coupled with the gains Obama has made from
the 2004 Bush victory map, makes one thing abundantly clear: If Romney is
to win in November, he must run an increasingly narrow electoral-college
gantlet to do so.

While threading that needle is, obviously, not out of the question,
Romney’s current electoral-vote ceiling is — at best — in the mid 280s, a
no-room-for-error map that no candidate wants to face six weeks before an
election.


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Alexander Snyder-Mackler
(302) 598-867