# 90 A Belated Halloween Scare

I don't believe the following scenario will happen, but enough other folk are writing about it that obviously a lot of people are thinking about it: Barack Obama could win the popular vote but lose the electoral vote.

Many of the battleground states (apparently now including Pennsylvania, though I cannot get this afternoon's polling numbers) are tightening. Tightening is normal at the end of a presidential campaign, so I don't put a lot of stock in it. Nonetheless, if Obama wins a few populous states by a large number of votes, and loses all the battleground states and Pennsylvania by a very small number of votes, John McCain could be elected president with a majority of electoral votes and not even a plurality of popular votes.

I don't believe that will happen, but it is a possibility. If the battleground states are really close--Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania(?)--and each one goes for McCain by the narrowest of margins, Obama could lose. What makes this kind of scare possible is that Obama is way ahead in several big states (CA, IL,NY), and may build up a very large popular vote cushion, while simultaneously he is ahead only very slightly in most of the battleground states. Any further slippage and he could lose by a handful of votes in those states, but still win the national popular vote.

If such an event comes to pass, expect the Democratic congress to push for "electoral college reform," since it will then have been two elections out of the last three in which such an event happened.

I've always applauded the concept behind the electoral college: by combining the number of senators from a given state (two) with the number of representatives (currently varies from one to fifty-three), our founding fathers gave the smaller states a very slight mathematical advantage in determining the presidency.

In addition, modern political practicality indicates that, because smaller states have a slightly disproportionate influence in electing the president, there's more of a chance that candidates will actually visit some of the backwater areas to solicit small town and rural votes in a state that has few metropolitan areas.

In theory that's a wonderful idea. This year, in practice, I don't think it worked: I actually don't remember any of the President or VP candidates visiting Idaho this year. Now, it may be that everyone knew in advance that Idaho is the reddest of the Red states, and there's no need to jump out of a plane between Minneapolis/St. Paul and Seattle to visit us, so we went without a candidate in the state.

We won't have long to wait to find out how this election finally plays out. If Obama sweeps the northeast AND wins Pennsylvania, I think it's all over but receiving the official results from the midwest and the west. Remember that the Pacific coast will provide Obama with 73 Pacific Standard Time votes almost guaranteed, plus whatever he can pick up in the Mountain Standard Time Zone (e.g., CO, NV, and NM).

On the other hand, we may find out that there still is a Bradley effect, and that the polls are still not accurate. We have one day.

-- triton --

Postscript at 5:59 p.m.: I just saw today's Pennsylvania polls. Obama is still up, now by 7 points. But there's still the question whether the polls are overstating Obama's support, as they clearly did in the Democratic primary.