No one is talking about Virginia or Florida

For the last few weeks the media has banged on about Ohio non-stop, as both campaigns have pretty much based themselves there. 

But let me be quite clear: if Mitt Romney loses Florida he has lost the election. Obama can virtually bank on 247 electoral college votes. Florida's 28 votes will put him above the electoral victory margin of 270. And it Florida will be one of the first states to close its polls and begin to announce results. If Obama wins it, you can switch off and go to bed. 

Virginia's 13 electoral college votes have also bene overlooked. Polling in the state, much like in Ohio, has been tight but with Obama up in most polls. Should Virginia vote for Romney, according to my predictions, Romney will be within 22 electoral college votes of 270 - meaning he would only need to flip a minimum of two states to win: Ohio and New Hampshire could do it. 

So yes, the focus on Ohio is warranted. But overlooking the states which will publish preliminary results early, Florida and Virginia, is total folly. 

Incidentally, this is what I think will happen:

Huntsman's mistake to leave out Iowa

 Image from http://whitehouse2012.wordpress.com

I found an interesting little piece on Politico, a piece of it is below, about how ex-Utah governor Jon Huntsman may have played his strategies really badly coming up to the Republican presidential nomination vote in New Hampshire. New Hampshire is a state which should favour the middle-of-the-road Republicans which are pretty limited to ex-Massachusetts governor, and favourite for the nomination Mitt Romney (who boasts a storming poll lead) and Huntsman.

Huntsman centered his campaign around doing well in New Hampshire, and totally dismissed his own chances in Iowa, where social conservatives run the roost. Now, while no one could really have expected social conservatives to unite behind ex-Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, had Huntsman thrown his lot into Iowa, it would have pinched votes solely from Romney, weakening his entry into New Hampshire.

Artur Davis, a former Democrat congressman for Alamaba spells it out nicely here in Politico:

The decision to bypass Iowa looms largest: it’s likely that Huntsman’s active presence there would have pulled enough votes from Mitt Romney to leave him wounded in third place. Crippling Romney was always Huntsman’s pathway in New Hampshire, and Huntsman seemed not to recognize that Iowa was the place to do it.

Read the full writ here. 

Something to ponder when Huntsman shuts shop after he takes a pasting at the opening primary on Tuesday (10 January).

Crunching some primary numbers, Gingrich leading

I am currently coming to terms with the intricacies of the Republican primary, the process which will determine which candidate will take on President Barack Obama in the November 2012 elections.

Now, one of the first things worth noting is that the first four primaries/caucuses (I am just going to use primaries from now on to mean both) in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida don't on their own mean an immense amount. Florida, the most important of those four contains 50 delegate votes. California, for example, contains 172 delegate votes. What these primaries do mean, however, is momentum. The press is likely to go nuts with the results of the first four primaries, and so focus its attention on those who are leading. This is not a precise science: often early leaders in the race, such as Mike Huckabee in 2008, fall out to stronger candidates who perform in more important states. However, a strategy of concentrating solely on the big states can also be a banana skin, as ex-NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani discovered in 2008.

However, this year, former House speaker Newt Gingrich is leading in the Iowa, South Carolina and Florida polls, while Mitt Romney leads in New Hampshire. At the end of January, when these four polls are done, I predict a massive amount of attention on Gingrich because of the way things will look. Remember, perspective is important, but often thrown out the window.

The first three states which hold primaries (Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina), award their delegate votes proportionally. Florida, however, is a winner-takes-all deal. If current polling, which I nipped from Real Clear Politics remains the same as it does now (which it won't, as polling still includes Herman Cain who only dropped out on Saturday), Newt will be far ahead of former Massachusetts governor come the end of January.

In Iowa (28 delegate votes), Gingrich is polling at 26%, Romney at 16% and Texas congressman Ron Paul at 14%. Roughly, this would mean that Gingrich would snag seven votes, Romney four and Paul three.

In New Hampshire (12 delegate votes), Romney leads at 37%, Gingrich 21% and Paul 14%. This translates to five votes for Romney, two for Gingrich and one for Paul.

In South Carolina (25 delegate votes), Gingrich polls at 27%, Romney at 18% and ex-candidate Herman Cain at 18%. This translates to eight votes for Gingrich, five for Romney and four for Cain.

In Florida (50 delegate votes), Gingrich leads with 36% of the poll compared to 20% for Romney, his closest challenger. This means Gingrich will scoop 50 delegate votes (winner takes all, remember?).

In total, after the first four primaries, Gingrich will have 67 delegate votes, Romney 14, and Paul and Cain will have four each.

So don't be surprised to see the media follow Gingrich around post-Florida, and for the ex-House speaker to maximise the attention on him.

To put it in perspective though, one requires around 1,200-odd delegate votes to win.

The basics of a US election

The American political system is structured somewhat oddly. As you probably know, it boils down to a vote between two parties – Republicans (Bush, Nixon, Eisenhower) and Democrats (Obama, JFK, Clinton) – and this vote is done per state. Now, each state has its own smaller election, and whoever wins this state gets ALL of the electoral votes belonging to that state. Whomsoever wins the most electoral votes becomes president. Get it?

 (image from http://www.270towin.com)

This means that a few states matter more than others during election time. For example, it is highly unlikely that conservative states such as Texas and Mississippi will vote Democrat in this upcoming election. The converse applies to California and Illinois who are unlikely to vote for a Republican in 2012. The other factor to take into account is the population of the state, which determines how influential the state is in picking the president. For example, in a race to 270 electoral votes, California offers candidates 55 votes, Texas 38, and New York and Florida with 29. States with a smaller population, such as North Dakota have three electoral votes. A win in a state gets the party all of the electoral votes; meaning that even a 51% vote for a Republican in a state gives the Republican ALL of the state's electoral votes. (The exception in this case is Nebraska, which only has five votes, but they are awarded proportionally).  

Now, if we take the 2008 election as an indication of which states might swing and determine the result of the election, it is no surprise that current President Barack Obama has been visiting Nevada, Virginia, North Carolina and Ohio recently. These are states he needs to win in order to maintain the presidency, as they have been known to change their minds – kind of like Mitt Romney. Most of them also have enough gravitas to decide the presidency.

Today Barack Obama is in Pennsylvania to bang on about extending payroll tax cuts to the working classes, and getting the wealthy to pay for them. While mostly working class Pennsylvania has usually swung Democrat, it voted the other way in the 2010 midterms which is one of the reasons the House of Representatives fell under Republican control. In 2012, Pennsylvania will carry 20 electoral votes. In the race to 270, that’s a rather nice chunk. Its neighbour, Ohio, will carry 18, and its neighbour Virginia has 13.

It’s also no surprise that on this trip the president is also visiting Florida, which holds 29 electoral votes. You’ll all remember Florida’s influence that robbed the world of the presidency of Al Gore in 2000 and heaved The Inconvenient Truth down the pipes of our televisions ever since. This is the impact that a swing state has.

So while the candidates for the presidency are appreciative of the support they will get from their bankable states, the real election will be contested in the swing states. Expect to see candidates and media all over Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico, Florida, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Nevada.