As of this writing, Mitt Romney slightly leads most national tracking polls while Barack Obama slightly leads most battleground state polls. That suggests the possibility that we could see a split between the popular vote winner and the electoral college winner.
What's curious about that, of course, is that the possibility is becoming common. It happened in 2000. It nearly happened in 2004. It's close to happening now. I'm wondering if we've "built" a system more likely to produce this result.
We have a closely divided, polarized electorate; there's no doubt about that. But that's happened before in American history and yet we seem somewhat more likely to have split results now. What's changed since I've become politically active (1980) is the intense focus on battleground states.
There has always been some level of concentration; no Republican has ever won without Ohio, for instance. But in recent years--at least since 2000 or so, I think--the focus has been overwhelming and the ability of the campaigns to narrowcast or target particular voters has become much more powerful, given advances in advertising and marketing. Or what THEY see as "advances."
As a result, you have one set of voters--in battleground states--who are absolutely saturated with information and persuasive messages. You have another set of voters--in places like Illinois--who might occasionally see a presidential campaign ad on cable, but that's about it. The former are likely to evaluate the candidates, I suspect, through all of those messages. The latter are simply likely to pick things up from time to time.
That may partly explain why one-party regions become ever more lopsided. As voters see or hear only one candidate's supporters around them, they slowly move that way. Their "reality" is such that this is the only thing that makes sense, in the absence of other information. If I live in the south, Romney "makes sense." If I live in NYC, Obama "makes sense," given my lived daily reality.
To take this year as an example, Romney's opened massive 20-22 point margins in southern states and those have been increasing. There are likely explanations for that initial regional bias, but the sheer size of the margin may result partly from the fact that Obama isn't even trying to convince people in the South to support him. As a result, Romney's margins keep growing there--but Nate Silver's model indicates he has less than a 30% chance of winning the election because he's losing the contested areas. Popular vote victory; electoral college defeat.
Pure speculation. But I am wondering about the outcome of elections in which all of the persuasion is directed at 9 states. I would think there have to be some serious legitimacy issues in other regions. Not only did he not win my state, one might say, but he didn't even TRY to persuade me. Why should I regard him as a legitimate president? It's a problem, I think.
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