My Aisling

Electoral Votes - 329 to 209

The combined effects of reallocated electoral votes as a result of the 2000 Census and Gore's slim margins of victory in several states make Kerry's battle much more difficult.

The 2000 final tally was 271 to 266 (1 DC delegate abstained). With the same exact voting outcomes, due to reallocation of electoral votes as a result of Census 2000 data, W's victory tally would change to 278 to 260. The increase in EVs is similar to winning CT, IA, OK, or OR, all of which have 7 votes and as a group were won 3-1 by Gore. But that is just the beginning of the battle.

Gore's margin of victory in states is much more slim than I expected before I delved into the data. I calculated two initial sets of data. The goal is to calculate the margin of victory per electoral vote, both per state and a national simple average of state calculations. To do this, I took the margin of victory in each state for W or Gore and divided that number by the electoral votes won in that state. I suggest that this indicates the relative strength of the win in individual states and in the aggregate. The first set of data includes the votes cast for Nader; the second set excludes any votes cast for Nader.

(Votes cast for Nader exceeded the margin of victory between W and Gore in 7 states. Gore won 5 of those; W, 2. I have read opinions all over the map concerning from whom Nader draws votes - there is not a reliable manner to reallocate Nader's votes. No more discussion of Nader will occur in this post.)

The aggregate data is as follows:

Set 1 - with Nader votes

Average MOV for each Bush Electoral Vote - 17,619
Average MOV for each Gore Electoral Vote - 14,765

Set 2 - without Nader votes

Average MOV for each Bush Electoral Vote - 23,496
Average MOV for each Gore Electoral Vote - 21,865

These data suggest that W's wins were on average larger than Gore's.

But the data needs to be refined, I suggest, to remove the extreme vote totals. I recalculated the sans-Nader data after removing the three 1MM+ vote wins (and DC because the data is so skewed), the difference comes alive:

Set 3

Average MOV for each Bush Electoral Vote - 22,073 (w/o TX)
Average MOV for each Gore Electoral Vote - 14,602 (w/o CA, NY, DC)

Within the above data, Gore had four narrow escapes - in each of IA, NM, OR, and WI, representing collectively 30 EVs, his margin of victory per electoral vote was less than 1,000. W's only <1K victory was FL - and who knows what the outcome would have been if the pro-Republican panhandle had not been messed with by the main-stream media calling the state before the polls closed.

Present polls have four states leaving the dem side and switching to the pubs - NJ, NM, PA, and WI. Two of these four are in the narrow escapes above.

Kerry is losing half the close states and some of the majors. The present electoral vote count is 329 to 209. Who says this is going to be close?


Sources:
Change in Electoral Votes by state from 2000 to 2004
2000 Election, Popular & Electoral Votes
RCP-Gathered Polls