Obama Campaign Outlines Five Paths To Reelection
Sam Stein
HuffPost
WASHINGTON -- At a briefing with reporters on Tuesday morning, top officials in the Obama campaign outlined five distinct paths that they can pursue to help the president win reelection.
Speaking at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, chief strategist David Axelrod and campaign manager Jim Messina pledged to take the same numbers-based approach to the 2012 campaign that former campaign manager David Plouffe famously used in 2008. And in surveying the electoral map, they have gamed out several regional strategies to help them clear the threshold of 270 Electoral College votes.
Assuming the president is able to hold on to the states that Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) won in 2004 -- a not entirely risk-free assumption -- the campaign could try to follow what Axelrod and Messina are calling the "West Path." If Obama wins Colorado (and its nine electoral votes), New Mexico (five) and Nevada (six) and adds them to Kerry's 246 electoral votes, he would have 266. Add in the six electoral votes from Iowa, where Obama has been leading the polls (but Republicans have been making voter registration gains), and he'd have 272.
The second path for Obama to pursue is the "Florida Path," which would mean winning the Sunshine state and its 29 electoral votes. That total added to Kerry's 246 electoral votes would equal 275.
The third path is the "South Path," which involves winning North Carolina (and its 15 electoral votes) and Virginia (13) to Kerry's total to reach 274.
The fourth path is the "Midwest Path" which involves adding Ohio (and its 18 electoral votes) and Iowa (with its six) to Kerry's total to get to 270 on the nose.
(More here.)
HuffPost
WASHINGTON -- At a briefing with reporters on Tuesday morning, top officials in the Obama campaign outlined five distinct paths that they can pursue to help the president win reelection.
Speaking at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, chief strategist David Axelrod and campaign manager Jim Messina pledged to take the same numbers-based approach to the 2012 campaign that former campaign manager David Plouffe famously used in 2008. And in surveying the electoral map, they have gamed out several regional strategies to help them clear the threshold of 270 Electoral College votes.
Assuming the president is able to hold on to the states that Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) won in 2004 -- a not entirely risk-free assumption -- the campaign could try to follow what Axelrod and Messina are calling the "West Path." If Obama wins Colorado (and its nine electoral votes), New Mexico (five) and Nevada (six) and adds them to Kerry's 246 electoral votes, he would have 266. Add in the six electoral votes from Iowa, where Obama has been leading the polls (but Republicans have been making voter registration gains), and he'd have 272.
The second path for Obama to pursue is the "Florida Path," which would mean winning the Sunshine state and its 29 electoral votes. That total added to Kerry's 246 electoral votes would equal 275.
The third path is the "South Path," which involves winning North Carolina (and its 15 electoral votes) and Virginia (13) to Kerry's total to reach 274.
The fourth path is the "Midwest Path" which involves adding Ohio (and its 18 electoral votes) and Iowa (with its six) to Kerry's total to get to 270 on the nose.
(More here.)
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The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in more than 3/4ths of the states that will just be 'spectators' and ignored.
When the bill is enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes-- enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.
The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for president. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.
In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in closely divided Battleground states: CO - 68%, FL - 78%, IA 75%, MI - 73%, MO - 70%, NH - 69%, NV - 72%, NM-- 76%, NC - 74%, OH - 70%, PA - 78%, VA - 74%, and WI - 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK - 70%, DC - 76%, DE - 75%, ID - 77%, ME - 77%, MT - 72%, NE 74%, NH - 69%, NV - 72%, NM - 76%, OK - 81%, RI - 74%, SD - 71%, UT - 70%, VT - 75%, WV - 81%, and WY - 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR - 80%,, KY- 80%, MS - 77%, MO - 70%, NC - 74%, OK - 81%, SC - 71%, TN - 83%, VA - 74%, and WV - 81%; and in other states polled: CA - 70%, CT - 74%, MA - 73%, MN - 75%, NY - 79%, OR - 76%, and WA - 77%. Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.
The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 small, medium-small, medium, and large states. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions possessing 132 electoral votes -- 49% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.
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