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:

Stop worrying about Ohio

Mitt Romney, having been dragged through the washers over Michigan, is now being told he needs to win Ohio or else the world will end. Santorum is supposed to be the big dangerman because he is from neighbouring Pennsylvania and is all about the blue collar works in the “rust belt”.

Ohio seems important because it is a swing state in the general election. It is vitally important in the general because, as I have mentioned before, only about 12 states are contested in a general election. Some states tend to always vote one way or another. Republicans will not win Massachusetts or California. Democrats will not win Mississippi or Oklahoma. That’s just how it goes. Ohio is one of the states that changes its mind every so often, so you’ll see a huge effort in this state by both parties leading into November.

However, claiming Romney needs to win it in the primary to secure it in the general election is untrue. Although Ohio is an open primary (anyone can vote in it, as opposed to having to register with the party in some other states) it will be a small amount of Republicans who vote on the day. The amount of voters in a primary is always smaller than the number of voters in an election. Now, believe you me, the voters who vote Republican on primary day will almost certainly be voting Republican on election day, in spite of who wins the nomination. In other words, if Rick Santorum wins Ohio, but Mitt Romney wins the Republican nomination, the probability of Ohio falling Democrat or Republican remains pretty much the same.

Let’s look at an example: In the 2008 Democrat primaries, Barack Obama lost the nomination race in five major swing states and still went on to win them in the general election. Michigan, Florida, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and ---> *OHIO*<--- all preferred Hillary Clinton over Obama. But all five states were carried by Democrats.

Also, it’s not as though Romney hasn’t beaten the rest in a major swing state before during this nomination process. He won Florida – remember the state that was so important in handing George Bush 43 the election in 2000? Florida will have 29 electoral votes in the 2012 election, ten more than Ohio. It is a VITAL state to win in a general, and by current media analysis it should factor into the same “need to win” as Ohio. Florida has voted for the winner of the general election in every vote since 1964, with the exception of 1992. Ohio has voted along with the winning party in every election since 1964. So outside one election result, Florida is as determinative as Ohio.

An aside from my point of view, Romney’s biggest danger on Super Tuesday is not Rick Santorum. It is Newt Gringrich who is polling very competitively in southern states: Georgia (Gingrich’s home state), Oklahoma and Tennessee all go a-voting on Tuesday 6 March, with those three boasting 177 delegates between them. Getting drilled in all of the southern states, which is quite plausible, would hurt Romney far more than dropping Ohio. 

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.