{"id":2742,"date":"2012-05-06T16:08:52","date_gmt":"2012-05-06T21:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=2742"},"modified":"2012-05-06T16:08:52","modified_gmt":"2012-05-06T21:08:52","slug":"obama-romney-tie-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=2742","title":{"rendered":"Obama-Romney Tie Game?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that it’s all over but the shouting in the GOP presidential primaries, a number of articles are appearing in the political press about “Romney’s Path to 270” (i.e., the number of electoral college votes needed to win the presidency). These articles (e.g. Washington Post<\/a> and Pajamas Media<\/a> site) usually talk about the “solid blue” and “solid red” states, the states that will almost surely go Democrat (e.g. Connecticut) or Republican (e.g. Texas) in the upcoming presidential election. Then they identify the toss-ups and lay out various scenarios using hunches and educated guesses about what the swing voters in the swing states will be thinking, come Nov. 6.<\/p>\n

I have done this myself, using one of the various on-line electoral college scenario tallies (the feds offer a good one<\/a>, plain and simple, easy to use; your tax dollars at work!). And my favorite scenario — both from the perspective of being interesting, but also from the perspective of being possible and probable — is a tie!! (Admittedly, I’m not the first<\/a> to ponder this possibility).<\/p>\n

It’s a big maybe, and in my opinion comes down to what happens in Iowa. With Chris Christie as his running mate, Romney would most likely take New Hampshire. Indiana and North Carolina seem likely to go back to the GOP. Obama barely won them when the voters’ romance with him was young; as Sade once sang, “it’s never as good as the first time”.<\/p>\n

Mormon turnout will likely put Nevada back in the GOP column, and will also tip it for Romney in Arizona. Missouri stays red. Florida is Romney’s to lose according to early polls, so long as he stays away from Ryan as VP and doesn’t scare seniors regarding Social Security and Medicare. Ohio will tip red, given frustration with another stall in job recovery that will linger through the spring and summer (after an optimistic start to the year). The usual red states stay red. On the blue side, Obama keeps Virginia, Colorado, Pennsy, Michigan, New Mexico, Wisconsin and the usual coastal and Great Lakes suspects (California, NY, Oregon, Maryland, Illinois, Massachusetts, Hawaii, NJ, etc.). <\/p>\n

So it’s down to what Iowa does. The handful of Iowa polls<\/a> thus far indicate a lot of undecideds. Chris Christie was out in Iowa<\/a> during the cold of winter; as VP candidate he might tip enough of them into the red column. (I don’t want to jump on the “Christie is too fat<\/a>” bandwagon, but I’ll still mention that his girth might be an asset in places like Iowa and Ohio; his body is a lot more like many mid-westerners<\/a> than that of Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and Joe Biden.) But, he’d have to “get religion” as to round up the evangelicals that surprised everyone in the Iowa caucus by going with Santorum. Imagine, Chris Christie talking about what Jesus means to him . . . that I look forward to! <\/p>\n

But hey, Santorum managed to impress the heartland Bible-thumpers despite being a Roman Catholic; so I’m sure that his fellow Catholic, Chris Christie, can do it to. Then it’s 269 – 269. I forget exactly what happens then<\/a> — House of Reps picks the Prez, Senate pics the Veep? Romney and Biden?!? Or even more interesting, Romney and Hillary!?!<\/p>\n

Well, my political predictions on this blog haven’t been so good; I took both Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich seriously, so two strikes on me. I’m now saying that the election will wind up a tie in the Electoral College, and that will probably be my third strike. But you never know . . . this one is going to be very interesting, whether or not my political batting average goes over .000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that it’s all over but the shouting in the GOP presidential primaries, a number of articles are appearing in the political press about “Romney’s Path to 270” (i.e., the number of electoral college votes needed to win the presidency). These articles (e.g. Washington Post and Pajamas Media site) usually talk about the “solid blue” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2742"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2750,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2742\/revisions\/2750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}