Post by jeffolie on Oct 30, 2012 15:32:11 GMT -6
Storm: Romney wins popular vote, Too Close To Call, "the dog ate the homework" excuse.
" ... enormous lead, combined with the post-storm burdens, suggests that there’s markedly less incentive than usual for Obama voters in deep-blue states to vote
The lack of electricity 1 week before the election most likely will dampen the popular vote in Sandy impacted Obama states and decrease his popular vote which some polls had Romney winning before the distruptive storm.
my jeffolie view: neither said something stupid in their storm statements that would change my "Too Close To Call" opinion.
The often seen piece's author, Jeff Greenfield's reputation as a Democratic advocate results in his continued advocacy that Obama should win. Greenfield conceded the popular vote to Romney using the storm excuse. This whine reminds me of "the dog ate the homework" excuse.
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Why Hurricane Sandy might cost Obama the popular vote—but not the presidency
" ... where these voters are: overwhelmingly, they’re in states where Obama is all but certain to win, and with huge pluralities. (The latest poll out of New York gives the President a 61-35 advantage over Mitt Romney, which translates to a 2-million-vote plurality.)
This enormous lead, combined with the post-storm burdens, suggests that there’s markedly less incentive than usual for Obama voters in deep-blue states to vote.
The likely result? An increased chance that Obama will lose the national popular vote to Romney, and thus an increased chance that we’ll see, as we did in 2000, a split between the popular vote and the Electoral College tally that in fact decides the presidency.
Should Obama win the election this way, it would be historic: We’ve never had an incumbent president returned to office while losing the popular vote. (Gerald Ford came close; despite losing the popular vote by 1.7 million votes, a shift of barely 11,000 votes in Ohio and Hawaii would have kept him in the White House).
More significant, it would rekindle the argument over the Electoral College that arose—briefly—in 2000: Is this 200-year old mechanism, with an overtly anti-democratic tilt (small states have disproportionately more clout than big states), the right way to choose a president?
After immersing myself in the mysteries of the Electoral College for a novel I wrote in the ’90s, I came away believing that the case for scrapping it is less obvious than I originally thought.
For one thing, losing the popular vote is not necessarily a sign of what “the people” really wanted. Candidates structure their campaigns around the Electoral College; had 2000 been a popular vote election, George W. Bush would have spent more time running up the vote in Texas and California’s inland empire, while Al Gore would have been campaigning in Dallas and Atlanta.
For another, the chaos that enveloped Florida back in 2000 might extend to every state if the popular vote was as close as it was in 1960, 1968, and 2000 (and as it may well be this time). Instead of lawyers and operatives descending on Florida, they might be loaded onto C-130s and parachuted into every state where disputes arose.
more... news.yahoo.com/why-hurricane-sandy-might-cost-obama-the-popular-vote-but-not-the-presidency-1030125687.html
Jeff Greenfield is a Yahoo! News columnist and the host of “Need to Know” on PBS. A five-time Emmy winner, he has spent more than 30 years on network television, including time as the senior political correspondent for CBS News, the senior analyst for CNN, and the political and media analyst for ABC News. His most recent book is “Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics.”